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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3746-h.zip b/3746-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8aa5bd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/3746-h.zip diff --git a/3746-h/3746-h.htm b/3746-h/3746-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8220eab --- /dev/null +++ b/3746-h/3746-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,23617 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.footnote {font-size: smaller ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Judgment House + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Posting Date: May 13, 2009 [EBook #3746] +Release Date: February, 2003 +First Posted: August 15, 2001 +Last Updated: June 13, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUDGMENT HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Juli Rew. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +by +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +Gilbert Parker +</H2> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H2> + +<TABLE ALIGN="center" WIDTH="80%"> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap01">THE JASMINE FLOWER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap02">THE UNDERGROUND WORLD</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap03">A DAUGHTER OF TYRE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap04">THE PARTNERS MEET</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap05">A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap06">WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap07">THREE YEARS LATER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap08">"HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap09">THE APPIAN WAY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap10">AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap11">IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap12">THE KEY IN THE LOCK</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap13">"I WILL NOT SING"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap14">THE BAAS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap15">THE WORLD WELL LOST</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap16">THE COMING OF THE BAAS</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap17">IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS?</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap18">LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap19">TO-MORROW . . . PREPARE!</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap20">THE FURNACE DOOR</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap21">THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap22">IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap23">"MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap24">ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap25">WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap26">JASMINE'S LETTER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap27">KROOL</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap28">"THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap29">THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap30">"AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap31">THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap32">THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap33">"ALAMACHTIG!"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap34">"THE ALPINE FELLOW"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXV </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap35">AT BRINKWORT'S FARM</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVI </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap36">SPRINGS OF HEALING</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap37">UNDER THE GUN</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXVIII </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap38">"PHEIDIPPIDES"</A></TD> +</TR> + +<TR> +<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXXIX </TD> +<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top"> +<A HREF="#chap39">"THE ROAD IS CLEAR"</A></TD> +</TR> + +</TABLE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4> +NOTE +</H4> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Except where references to characters well-known to all the world occur +in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public or +private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a historical +novel. It is in conception and portraiture a work of the imagination. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Strangers come to the outer wall—<BR> + (Why do the sleepers stir?)<BR> + Strangers enter the Judgment House—<BR> + (Why do the sleepers sigh?)<BR> + Slow they rise in their judgment seats,<BR> + Sieve and measure the naked souls,<BR> + Then with a blessing return to sleep.<BR> + (Quiet the Judgment House.)<BR> + Lone and sick are the vagrant souls—<BR> + (When shall the world come home?)"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far,<BR> + God must judge the couple: leave them as they are—<BR> + Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory,<BR> + And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story!<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all,<BR> + Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall?<BR> + No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places!<BR> + While I count three, step you back as many paces!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at<BR> + Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What<BR> + would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "So is Pheidippides happy for ever,—the noble strong man<BR> + Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a<BR> + God loved so well:<BR> + He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell<BR> + Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began<BR> + So to end gloriously—once to shout, thereafter to be mute:<BR> + 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Oh, never star<BR> + Was lost here, but it rose afar."<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BOOK I +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE JASMINE FLOWER +</H3> + +<P> +The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air +was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the +gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the +boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this +sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power of +the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast of +the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack of +enterprise had somewhat forfeited. +</P> + +<P> +Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypnotized by the +unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage name was Al'mah. At the +moment of the opera's supreme appeal the eyes of three people at least +were not in the thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first +row of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of about +thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in +his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes +over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction +which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name +was Adrian Fellowes. +</P> + +<P> +Either the opera and the singer had no charms for Adrian Fellowes, or +else he had heard both so often that, without doing violence to his +musical sense, he could afford to study the effect of this wonderful +effort upon the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the +stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked; of happy colour, +and, apparently, with a mind and soul in which no conflicts ever +raged—to the advantage of his attractive exterior. Only at the summit +of the applause did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the +gloating look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table with +the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes that he has +beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit which has tricked him so +often. Now the cold-blue eyes caught, for a second, the dark-brown eyes +of the Celtic singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, +eagerly, and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad +faces before her. +</P> + +<P> +In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man and a very young +woman, who also in the crise of the opera were not looking at the +stage. The eyes of the man, sitting well back—purposely, so that he +might see her without marked observation—were fixed upon the +rose-tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk gown, +which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair and wonderful colour +of her face. Her eyes were fixed upon her lap, the lids half closed, as +though in reverie, yet with that perspicuous and reflective look which +showed her conscious of all that was passing round her—even the effect +of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel. +</P> + +<P> +She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat faster because of +it; and a temperament adjustable to every mood and turn of human +feeling was answering to the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, +child-likeness, and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate +consciousness. She was responsive to the passionate harmony; but she +was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet deferential appeal to her +emotions of the dark, distinguished, bearded man at her side, with the +brown eyes and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign +Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him a tact and an +insinuating address peculiarly alluring to her sex. She was well aware +of Ian Stafford's ambitions, and had come to the point where she +delighted in them, and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or for +woe"; but she would probably have resented the suggestion that his +comparative poverty was weighed against her natural inclinations and +his real and honest passion. For she had her ambitions, too; and when +she had scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that something +only little less than a diadem would really satisfy her. +</P> + +<P> +Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards another occupant +of her box, who sat beside her pretty stepmother—a big, bronzed, +clean-shaven, strong-faced man of about the same age as Ian Stafford of +the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her request. Ian +had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to the millions he +had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and on the Rand. At +first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form she had inwardly +contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and that other +spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in the stalls, +towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, happy glance, +and with which she herself had been familiar since her childhood. The +contrast had not been wholly to the advantage of the nabob; though, to +be sure, he was simply arrayed—as if, indeed, he were not worth a +thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense of power, but his +occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own great sense of +humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur delightful to +hear. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and that she +interested him was evident by the sudden arrest of his look and his +movements when introduced to her. Ian Stafford had noted this look; but +he had seen many another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as much +natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the shoulders of his +mind; for the millions alone would not influence her, that was sure. +Had she not a comfortable fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was not the +kind of man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and nature. So much +had happened between Jasmine and himself, so deep an understanding had +grown up between them, that it only remained to bring her to the last +court of inquiry and get reply to a vital question—already put in a +thousand ways and answered to his perfect satisfaction. Indeed, there +was between Jasmine and himself the equivalent of a betrothal. He had +asked her to marry him, and she had not said no; but she had bargained +for time to "prepare"; that she should have another year in which to be +gay in a gay world and, in her own words, "walk the primrose path of +pleasure untrammelled and alone, save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy." +</P> + +<P> +Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was well. And now the +year was nearly up, and she had not changed; had, indeed, grown more +confiding and delicately dependent in manner towards him, though seeing +him but seldom alone. +</P> + +<P> +As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to himself, "So +exquisite and so clever, what will she not be at thirty! So well +poised, and yet so sweetly child-like dear dresden-china Jasmine." +</P> + +<P> +That was what she looked like—a lovely thing of the time of Boucher in +dresden china. +</P> + +<P> +At last, as though conscious of what was going on in his mind, she +slowly turned her drooping eyes towards him, and, over her shoulder, as +he quickly leaned forward, she said in a low voice which the others +could not hear: +</P> + +<P> +"I am too young, and not clever enough to understand all the music +means—is that what you are thinking?" +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes commanded hers, +but still deferentially, as he said: "You know of what I was thinking. +You will be forever young, but yours was always—will always be—the +wisdom of the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at twenty-two." +</P> + +<P> +"How trying that you should know my age so exactly—it darkens the +future," she rejoined with a soft little laugh; then, suddenly, a cloud +passed over her face. It weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed before +her into space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous anxiety. What +did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous, for her small sensuous +lips drew closer, and the fan she held in her lap slipped from her +fingers to the floor. +</P> + +<P> +This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan to her, said +into a face again alive to the present: "You look as though you were +trying to summon the sable spirits of a sombre future." +</P> + +<P> +Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once more quite +self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it +chimes with every mood and circumstance." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough +power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed +through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! +Three millions at thirty-three—and millions beget millions!" +</P> + +<P> +... Power—millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the +display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full +occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of +life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. +Power—that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had made his +fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the vanity of +mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for his +fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which nearly +every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a fortune +which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human nature, then +had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, the native +genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He had died at +last with the smile on his lips which had followed his remark, quoted +in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The world wants to +be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I stunned it. My +fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid me well. But +they all love being fooled best." +</P> + +<P> +Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons and +herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was the +only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of his +existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception so +acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only one +of his blood who had anything of himself in character or personality, +and he predicted—too often in her presence—that she "would give the +world a start or two when she had the chance." His intellectual +contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced in her with no +prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from the age of +three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too +much intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite +adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and charm; +behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own way and bend +other wills to hers. +</P> + +<P> +The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her +stepmother and of Ian Stafford—one, because she was jealous and +obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and an +ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give +save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in +England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, +determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity which +even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar high +above the capable average. That chance, the predestined alluring +opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was ready +for the spring—nerved the more to do so by the thought that Jasmine +would appreciate his success above all others, even from the standpoint +of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded. How did it come +that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously the +insouciant child? +</P> + +<P> +He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the impression of +force and natural power of the millionaire struck him now, as it had +often done. As though summoned by them both, Byng turned his face and, +catching Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet," he said, with +a little jerk of the head towards the stage, where, for the moment, +minor characters were in possession, preparing the path for the last +rush of song by which Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her +first night to a complete triumph. +</P> + +<P> +With face turned full towards her, something of the power of his head +seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was honest, alert, and almost brutally +simple—the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and +the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had in +them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat +self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were +combined of strength, activity, and also a little of grace. +</P> + +<P> +"I never had much chance to hear great singers before I went to South +Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this swallows me like a storm on +the high veld—all lightning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot +in my time." +</P> + +<P> +With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine leaned over and +whispered—for the prima donna was beginning to sing again: +</P> + +<P> +"There's nothing you have missed in your race that you cannot ride back +and collect. It is those who haven't run a race who cannot ride back. +You have won; and it is all waiting for you." +</P> + +<P> +Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation came to him—the +kind of thing he felt once when he was sixteen, and the vicar's +daughter had suddenly held him up for quite a week, while all his +natural occupations were neglected, and the spirit of sport was +humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time—who was there +in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not carouse, +when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; when men got +so dead beat, with no homes anywhere—only shake-downs and the Tents of +Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be his slave, to keep +his home; but that was a business which had revolted him, and he had +never repeated the experiment. Then, there had been an adventuress, a +wandering, foreign princess who had fooled him and half a dozen of his +friends to the top of their bent; but a thousand times he had preferred +other sorts of pleasures—cards, horses, and the bright outlook which +came with the clinking glass after the strenuous day. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him—his primitive, +almost Edenic sincerity; his natural indolence and native force: a +nature that would not stir until greatly roused, but then, with an +unyielding persistence and concentrated force, would range on to its +goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will, vision and a +gallant heart. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward eagerly. There was a +rustle in the audience, a movement to a listening position, then a +tense waiting and attention. +</P> + +<P> +As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to Ian Stafford, +whose well-proportioned character, personality, and refinement of +culture were in such marked contrast to the personality of the other: +"They live hard lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of +himself." +</P> + +<P> +"Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal of one thing to +get another," Ian answered a little grimly. +</P> + +<P> +"Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper. +</P> + +<P> +Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience. The bold and +generous orchestration, the exceptional chorus, the fine and brilliant +tenor, had made a broad path for her last and supreme effort. The +audience had long since given up their critical sense, they were ready +to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was instant and +complete. Now, not an eye was turned away from the singer. Even the +Corinthian gallant at the end of the first row of stalls gave himself +up to feasting on her and her success, and the characters in the opera +were as electrified as the audience. +</P> + +<P> +For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the only thing in the +world, transposing all thoughts, emotions, all elements of life into +terms of melody. Then, at last, with a crash of sweetness, the voice +broke over them all in crystals of sound and floated away into a world +of bright dreams. +</P> + +<P> +An instant's silence which followed was broken by a tempest of +applause. Again, again, and again it was renewed. The subordinate +singers were quickly disposed of before the curtain, then Al'mah +received her memorable tribute. How many times she came and went she +never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her well up the +stage beside a table where two huge candles flared. The storm of +applause breaking forth once more, the grateful singer raised her arms +and spread them out impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon. +</P> + +<P> +As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught the flame +of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud of fire. The wild +applause turned suddenly to notes of terror as, with a sharp cry, she +stumbled forward to the middle of the stage. +</P> + +<P> +For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an +opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet +between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He +crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In +an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had +crushed out the flames with swift, strong movements. +</P> + +<P> +Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great arms, he strode +off with her behind the scenes. +</P> + +<P> +"Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried a strong voice from the +audience; and a cheer went up. +</P> + +<P> +In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage. "She is not +seriously hurt," he said simply to the audience. "We were just in time." +</P> + +<P> +Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafening applause +broke forth. +</P> + +<P> +"We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an admiring, teasing +laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"'We'—well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine, standing close to +him and looking up into his eyes with that ingratiating softness which +had deluded many another man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak +you took?" she added, whimsically. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly. "You'll have to wear +my overcoat home." +</P> + +<P> +"I certainly will," she answered. "Come—the giant's robe." +</P> + +<P> +People were crowding upon their box. +</P> + +<P> +"Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat from the hook +on the wall. +</P> + +<P> +As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prematurely aged father +whispered in the pretty stepmother's ear: "Jasmine'll marry that +nabob—you'll see." +</P> + +<P> +The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in love with Ian +Stafford," she said, decisively. +</P> + +<P> +"But she'll marry Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn reply. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE UNDERGROUND WORLD +</H3> + +<P> +"What's that you say—Jameson—what?" +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at the end of his cigar, and +stared at a man who was reading from a tape-machine, which gave the +club the world's news from minute to minute. +</P> + +<P> +"Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight hundred men. He +started from Pitsani two days ago. And Cronje with his burghers are out +after him." +</P> + +<P> +The flaming match burned Byng's fingers. He threw it into the +fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment, his face hot with +feeling, then he burst out: +</P> + +<P> +"But—God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The burghers'll catch him +at Doornkop or somewhere, and—" He paused, overcome. His eyes +suffused. His hands went out in a gesture of despair. +</P> + +<P> +"Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's lost the game for them." +</P> + +<P> +The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get in yet. He surely +planned the thing with due regard for every chance. Johannesburg—" +</P> + +<P> +"Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the Rand +should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide now. It +might have been—it was to have been—a revolution at Johannesburg, +with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a filibustering +business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as sure as guns. +'Gad, it makes me sick!" +</P> + +<P> +"Europe will like it—much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, offering +Byng a lighted match. +</P> + +<P> +Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on +Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870 +and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your +business, you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out +there, friends of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the +British kids that can't be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men +who pay all the taxes and can't become citizens. It's the justice you +can only buy; it's the foot of Kruger on the necks of the subjects of +his suzerain; it's eating dirt as Englishmen have never had to eat it +anywhere in the range of the Seven Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, +it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be at Doornkop, unless— But, no, +they'll track him, trap him, get him now. Johannesburg wasn't ready. +Only yesterday I had a cable that—" he stopped short ... "but they +weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or something; and Englishmen +aren't good conspirators, not by a damned sight! Now it'll be the old +Majuba game all over again. You'll see." +</P> + +<P> +"It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than +your first," remarked Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost, +as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never +touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal swizzle +revolted his aesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very slowly, +gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking. Then he +looked round. There was no one very near, though curious faces were +turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was passed from +mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched his chest with +a firm forefinger. +</P> + +<P> +"Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of that. Dr. +Jim'll never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque for +breakfast. But there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if the +chef doesn't turn up his nose too high. After all, what has brought +things to this pass? Why, mean, low tyranny and injustice. Why, just a +narrow, jealous race-hatred which makes helots of British men. Simple +farmers, the sentimental newspapers call them—simple Machiavellis in +veldschoen!" * +</P> + +<P CLASS="footnote"> +* A glossary of South African words will be found at the end of the +book. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he +replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox +way." +</P> + +<P> +"She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in +England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to get +in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of the +millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger standing +over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera we had +a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into flames on +the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the Transvaal, is +in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who will save her, +and—" +</P> + +<P> +A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face of +Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low, generous +laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at some +expense to himself—with his own overcoat, or with some one else's +cloak. Is that what you want to say?" +</P> + +<P> +All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us—even in +moments when interests are in existence so great that they should +obliterate all others—came to the surface. For a moment it almost made +Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done all +that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself into +his very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms of +memory and longing. +</P> + +<P> +He had read only one paper that morning, and it—the latest attempt at +sensational journalism—had so made him blush at the flattering +references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that he +had opened no other. He had left his chambers to avoid the telegrams +and notes of congratulation which were arriving in great numbers. He +had gone for his morning ride in Battersea Park instead of the Row to +escape observation; had afterwards spent two hours at the house he was +building in Park Lane; had then come to the club, where he had +encountered Ian Stafford and had heard the news which overwhelmed him. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have +done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to +think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a +soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman +than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a +mind of unusual decision. +</P> + +<P> +Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he +replied: +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my time, +and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I suppose +it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the trouble's on +you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd have funked the +whole thing, I suppose—jumping from that box onto the stage, and +grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it were. But that +wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man that's in most of +us, even when we're not very clever, does things right. It's when the +conventional man comes in and says, Let us consider, that we go wrong. +By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her beauty spoiled as any woman +ever was; but she's only got a few nasty burns on the arm and has +singed her hair a little." +</P> + +<P> +"You've seen her to-day, then?" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one +likely to rouse a man's interest in a woman. Al'mah was unmarried, so +far as the world knew, and a man of Byng's kind, if not generally +inflammable, was very likely to be swept off his feet by some unusual +woman in some unusual circumstance. Stafford had never seen Rudyard +Byng talk to any woman but Jasmine for more than five minutes at a +time, though hundreds of eager and avaricious eyes had singled him out +for attention; and, as it seemed absurd that any one should build a +palace in Park Lane to live in by himself, the glances sent in his +direction from many quarters had not been without hopefulness. And +there need not have been, and there was not, any loss of dignity on the +part of match-making mothers in angling for him, for his family was +quite good enough; his origin was not obscure, and his upbringing was +adequate. His external ruggedness was partly natural; but it was also +got from the bitter rough life he had lived for so many years in South +Africa before he had fallen on his feet at Kimberley and Johannesburg. +</P> + +<P> +As for "strange women," during the time that had passed since his +return to England there had never been any sign of loose living. So, to +Stafford's mind, Byng was the more likely to be swept away on a sudden +flood that would bear him out to the sea of matrimony. He had put his +question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply. It came +frankly and instantly: +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this +morning—with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe it, +but I saw her, too. She'd been up since six o'clock, she said. Couldn't +sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy blossom all the +same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, and a nurse +doing the needful. It's an odd dark kind of beauty she has, with those +full lips and the heavy eyebrows. Well, it was a bull in a china-shop, +as you might judge—and thank you kindly, Mr. Byng, with such a jolly +laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so +wonderfully—thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had +planned it all. And wouldn't I stay to breakfast? And not a bit stagey +or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond—a gem in her +way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the +prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; +and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at +breakfast—why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and +cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all +right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." +</P> + +<P> +As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to +him, so patently true and honest in every particular. It was rather +contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged +fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to +the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's +personality. It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who +would be comparing Jasmine's quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, +and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius +of the singer. It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a personality +more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him perfectly at ease +mentally and physically. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was +so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant +woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and +attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in +marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she +had naturally shown only the one side of her nature—she adapted +herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at +an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well. +</P> + +<P> +Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be—she had been so from a +child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had +made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving +surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the +spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married +again; and then it had been too late to control her. The wonder was +that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so +determined, so capable. Was it because she had unusual brain and +insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to +see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had +kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely +from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense +emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman +of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very +amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize women. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was concerned. +He had not heard her father's remark of the night before, "Jasmine will +marry that nabob—you'll see." +</P> + +<P> +He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a +note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room fire. +He could not help but see—he knew the envelope, and no other +handwriting was like Jasmine's, that long, graceful, sliding hand. Byng +turned it over before opening it. +</P> + +<P> +"Hello," he said, "I'm caught. It's a woman's hand. I wonder how she +knew I was here." +</P> + +<P> +Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself: "If +Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she'd find out. I wonder—I +wonder." +</P> + +<P> +He watched Byng, over whose face passed a pleased smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Why," Byng said, almost eagerly, "it's from Miss Grenfel—wants me to +go and tell her about Jameson and the Raid." +</P> + +<P> +He paused for an instant, and his face clouded again. "The first thing +I must do is to send cables to Johannesburg. Perhaps there are some +waiting for me at my rooms. I'll go and see. I don't know why I didn't +get news sooner. I generally get word before the Government. There's +something wrong somewhere. Somebody has had me." +</P> + +<P> +"If I were you I'd go to our friend first. When I'm told to go at once, +I go. She wouldn't like cablegrams and other things coming between you +and her command—even when Dr. Jim's riding out of Matabeleland on the +Rand for to free the slaves." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford's words were playful, but there was, almost unknown to +himself, a strange little note of discontent and irony behind. +</P> + +<P> +Byng laughed. "But I'll be able to tell her more, perhaps, if I go to +my rooms first." +</P> + +<P> +"You are going to see her, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly. There's nothing to do till we get news of Jameson at bay in +a conga or balled up at a kopje." Thrusting the delicately perfumed +letter in his pocket, he nodded, and was gone. +</P> + +<P> +"I was going to see her myself," thought Stafford, "but that settles +it. It will be easier to go where duty calls instead, since Byng takes +my place. Why, she told me to come to-day at this very hour," he added, +suddenly, and paused in his walk towards the door. +</P> + +<P> +"But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to reflect.... +"Well, there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, that's sure. +France, Austria, Russia can spit out their venom now and look to their +mobilization. And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap if Dr. Jim gets +caught! What a mess it will be! Well—well—well!" +</P> + +<P> +He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this +was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A DAUGHTER OF TYRE +</H3> + +<P> +"Monsieur voleur!" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the +opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in +his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume +greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet +by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to +him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence +and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous +protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt +quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy +and beauty and bloom. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand +rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran +off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive one +it was." +</P> + +<P> +"Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable." +</P> + +<P> +She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat +this morning—before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of +thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came +back." +</P> + +<P> +"It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I +didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." +</P> + +<P> +"In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." +</P> + +<P> +"Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." +</P> + +<P> +"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself—or +went out and hanged itself?" +</P> + +<P> +He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made +especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very +chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in full +view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words—a deep, round +chuckle it was. +</P> + +<P> +"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield +where I could see it and breakfast too." +</P> + +<P> +"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of +a boudoir." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not so good a breakfast as I got." +</P> + +<P> +"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a +little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like +those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while +at all. +</P> + +<P> +"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I +give up. I can't talk in your way." +</P> + +<P> +"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her +eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, no frontal attacks—only flank movements, and getting round the +kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there." +</P> + +<P> +"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock +dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" +</P> + +<P> +His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness +suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, +"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch +Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop +or thereabouts, if I know myself—and Oom Paul." +</P> + +<P> +Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about +this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be +settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima +donna's boudoir, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little laugh. +"Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid +flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or +been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I +hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she +was recovering from that dreadful shock very quickly? But could you +think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to have asked about her?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were +talking—not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be thinking +that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to me to—" +</P> + +<P> +She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languishing humour. "Now +you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head +turned, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head," he broke +in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an +opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him. +</P> + +<P> +There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was +half-assumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was +so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that the +unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however +agreeably so. Then she said to him: "I won't say you were brave last +night—that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; +it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with +great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at all +in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a +burning building, was it?" +</P> + +<P> +"There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned," he replied. +"I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to move +quick—by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was just a +little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was nearer to +the stage." +</P> + +<P> +"Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford." +</P> + +<P> +"They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb +for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening things; +and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we +veld-rangers and adventurers." +</P> + +<P> +"You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions," she said, almost shyly. +"You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last +night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should think." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage natures. +The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the sculpture of +Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music of a master, +though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've carried a banjo +and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved my life with the +cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun +within reach, but I'd been playing the cornet, and just as he was +crouching I blew a blast from it—one of those jarring discords of +Wagner in the "Gotterdammerung"—and he turned tail and got away into +the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be the most acute of all the +senses with the pioneer. If you've ever been really dying of thirst, +and have reached water again, its sounds become wonderful to you ever +after that—the trickle of a creek, the wash of a wave on the shore, +the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a fall, the swish of a rainstorm. +It's the same with birds and trees. And trees all make different +sounds—that's the shape of the leaves. It's all music, too." +</P> + +<P> +Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and +observation of his words. "So it wasn't strange that you should be +ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?" She looked at him +keenly. "Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given +to a woman who in other respects—" she paused. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's +what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world +of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of +irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I +suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they +don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It +alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would +commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance +of it all." +</P> + +<P> +"Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, when she was laughing and jesting—and when she kissed me +good-bye." +</P> + +<P> +"When—she—kissed you—good-bye?" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine drew back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the +other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had +been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it +had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been +allowed to read books of verse—Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, +Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others—unchallenged and unguided. The +understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been +at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to her by slow but subtle +means—an apprehension from instinct, not from knowledge. There had +never been a shock to her mind. +</P> + +<P> +The knowledge of things had grown imperceptibly, and most of life's +ugly meanings were known—at a great distance, to be sure, but still +known. Yet there came a sudden half-angry feeling when she heard +Rudyard Byng say, so loosely, that Al'Mah had kissed him. Was it +possible, then, that a man, that any man, thought she might hear such +things without resentment; that any man thought her to know so much of +life that it did not matter what was said? Did her outward appearance, +then, bear such false evidence? +</P> + +<P> +He did not understand quite, yet he saw that she misunderstood, and he +handled the situation with a tact which seemed hardly to belong to a +man of his training and calibre. +</P> + +<P> +"She thought no more of kissing me," he continued, presently, in a calm +voice—"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely to see +again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her than +kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it as soon +as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat +unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little +Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist and bohemian." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine's face cleared, and her equilibrium was instantly restored. She +was glad she had misunderstood. Yet Al'mah had not kissed her when she +left, while expressing gratitude, too. There was a difference. She +turned the subject, saying: "Of course, she insists on sending me a new +cloak, and keeping the other as a memento. It was rather badly singed, +wasn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +"It did its work well, and it deserves an honoured home. Do you know +that even as I flung the cloak round her, in the excitement of the +moment I 'sensed,' as my young nephew says, the perfume you use." +</P> + +<P> +He lifted his hand, conscious that his fingers still carried some of +that delicate perfume which her fingers left there as they lay in his +palm when she greeted him on his entrance. "It was like an incense from +the cloak, as it blanketed the flames. Strange, wasn't it, that the +undersense should be conscious of that little thing, while the +over-sense was adding a sensational postscript to the opera?" +</P> + +<P> +She smiled in a pleased way. "Do you like the perfume? I really use +very little of it." +</P> + +<P> +"It's like no other. It starts a kind of cloud of ideas floating. I +don't know how to describe it. I imagine myself—" +</P> + +<P> +She interrupted, laughing merrily. "My brother says it always makes him +angry, and Ian Stafford calls it 'The Wild Tincture of +Time'—frivolously and sillily says that it comes from a bank whereon +the 'wild thyme' grows! But now, I want to ask you many questions. We +have been mentally dancing, while down beyond the Limpopo—" +</P> + +<P> +His demeanour instantly changed, and she noted the look cf power and +purpose coming into the rather boyish and good-natured, the rash and +yet determined, face. It was not quite handsome. The features were not +regular, the forehead was perhaps a little too low, and the hair grew +very thick, and would have been a vast mane if it had not been kept +fairly close by his valet. This valet was Krool, a +half-caste—Hottentot and Boer—whom he had rescued from Lobengula in +the Matabele war, and who had in his day been ship-steward, barber, +cook, guide, and native recruiter. Krool had attached himself to Byng, +and he would not be shaken off even when his master came home to +England. +</P> + +<P> +Looking at her visitor with a new sense of observation alive in her, +Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of +sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, +adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in the +chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and +hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel suggestion +of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in fact and by +suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent underlying force, a +capacity to do huge things when once roused. He had been roused in his +short day. The life into which he had been thrown with men of vaster +ambition and much more selfish ends than his own, had stirred him to +prodigies of activity in those strenuous, wonderful, electric days when +gold and diamonds changed the hard-bitten, wearied prospector, who had +doggedly delved till he had forced open the hand of the Spirit of the +Earth and caught the treasure that flowed forth, into a millionaire, +into a conqueror, with the world at his feet. He had been of those who, +for many a night and many a year, eating food scarce fit for Kaffirs, +had, in poverty and grim endeavour, seen the sun rise and fall over the +Magaliesberg range, hope alive in the morning and dead at night. He had +faced the devilish storms which swept the high veld with lightning and +the thunderstone, striking men dead as they fled for shelter to the +boulders of some barren, mocking kopje; and he had had the occasional +wild nights of carousal, when the miseries and robberies of life and +time and the ceaseless weariness and hope deferred, were forgotten. +</P> + +<P> +It was all there in his face—the pioneer endeavour, the reckless +effort, the gambler's anxiety, the self-indulgence, the crude passions, +with a far-off, vague idealism, the selfish outlook, and yet great +breadth of feeling, with narrowness of individual purpose. The rough +life, the sordid struggle, had left their mark, and this easy, coaxing, +comfortable life of London had not covered it up—not yet. He still +belonged to other—and higher—spheres. +</P> + +<P> +There was a great contrast between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was +handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a mind +which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a skill +of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen +languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human +intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with +him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming again. +The contrast was prodigious—and perplexing, for Rudyard Byng had +qualities which compelled her interest. She sighed as she reflected. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you can't get three millions all to yourself with your own +hands without missing a good deal and getting a good deal you could do +without," she said to herself, as he wonderingly interjected the +exclamation: +</P> + +<P> +"Now, what do you know of the Limpopo? I'll venture there isn't another +woman in England who even knows the name." +</P> + +<P> +"I always had a thirst for travel, and I've read endless books of +travel and adventure," she replied. "I'd have been an explorer, or a +Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man." +</P> + +<P> +"Can you ride?" he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her +slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and +white. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, man of little faith!" she rejoined. "I can't remember when I +didn't ride. First a Shetland pony, and now at last I've reached +Zambesi—such a wicked dear." +</P> + +<P> +"Zambesi—why Zambesi? One would think you were South African." +</P> + +<P> +She enjoyed his mystification. Then she grew serious and her eyes +softened. "I had a friend—a girl, older than I. She married. Well, +he's an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son then, +and wild for sport. They went on their honeymoon to shoot in Africa, +and they visited the falls of the Zambesi. She, my friend, was standing +on the edge of the chasm—perhaps you know it—not far from +Livingstone's tree, between the streams. It was October, and the river +was low. She put up her big parasol. A gust of wind suddenly caught it, +and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly swept +into the chasm. A man with them pulled her back in time—but she hung +on to that red parasol. Only when it was all over did she realize what +had really happened. Well, when she came back to England, as a kind of +thank-offering she gave me her father's best hunter. That was like her, +too; she could always make other people generous. He is a beautiful +Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi. I wanted the red parasol, too, +but Alice Tynemouth wouldn't give it to me." +</P> + +<P> +"So she gave it to the man who pulled her back. Why not?" +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know she did that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford's chambers. I +conjecture right, do I?" +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her +faintly smiling lips; but she only said, "You see he was entitled to +it, wasn't he?" To herself, however, she whispered, "Neither of +them—neither ever told me that." +</P> + +<P> +At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard +Byng. "If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him. There +is news from South Africa." +</P> + +<P> +Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened. "No, tell him to come here," she +said to the footman. "Mayn't he?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +Byng nodded, and remained standing. He seemed suddenly lost to her +presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, +intense. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided +that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct personality. +Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau +riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain +was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy—and he was worth +three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal +castle in Wales leased for a period of years. There was nothing greatly +striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height +and bulk; but his eye was strong and clear, his head was powerful, and +his quick smile was very winning. Yet—yet, he was not the type of man +who, to her mind should have made three millions at thirty-three. It +did not seem to her that he was really representative of the great +fortune-builders—she had her grandfather and others closely in mind. +She had seen many captains of industry and finance in her grandfather's +house, men mostly silent, deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their +manner and persons the accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless +aggression and domination. +</P> + +<P> +Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions? It +could not be just that alone. She remembered her grandfather used to +say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of +every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew when +to take it, and how to use it. "The lucky man is the man that sits up +watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping"—that was the +way he had put it. So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of those +who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but not a +hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he was, +still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in England +and the prettiest and best-born. He certainly had inherent breeding. +His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be as +distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford—as Ian Stafford, who, however, +had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his name and +might never do so. +</P> + +<P> +She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to +Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future—ambassador at Paris +or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall—Ian, +gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his luck +and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a prince +of princelier days. Ian gratified every sense in her, met every demand +of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical instinct, and +was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so hard to wait for +luck, for place, for power, for the environment where she could do +great things, could fill that radiant place which her cynical and +melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had prefigured +for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and he had +filled her brain—purposely—with ambitious ideas. He had done it when +she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he had +overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be vivid +and indelible when he was gone. He had meant to bless, for, to his +mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain +power, "to make the band play when you come," was the true philosophy +of life. And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was +accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection +by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or +admonition. He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had +built the structure of his success. He had made material things the +basis of life's philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly +materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at +the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she +had a passion which was represented by books of biography without +number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her bedroom +and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity—when Lady +Tynemouth brought them to her—she read the newest and most daring +productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the +world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had +remarked to Alice Tynemouth: +</P> + +<P> +"You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose the +over-coloured thing three times out of five—it used to be more than +that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in everything. I +need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in everything. I +wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being ruled." +</P> + +<P> +To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband—not a difficult +thing to find—would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd choose +the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one time, out +of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A little +cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in colour—and +everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no orientation." +</P> + +<P> +Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no +doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give her +greater proportion—and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with three +millions behind her—she herself had only the tenth of one million—she +could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, perfect life +where the world would come as to a court, and— +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, +and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from +some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted—her idealistic +self wanted—to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and +thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! Why +should it be so hard for her? +</P> + +<P> +She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged +note. +</P> + +<P> +Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, +was standing in the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Cronje! ... Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother +in the tone. +</P> + +<P> +Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the +fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a +crushed captive. +</P> + +<P> +"Where?" Byng asked, huskily. +</P> + +<P> +"Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by +Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in +his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition +suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, +somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without +present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a +foe—one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil +influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every +individual life. +</P> + +<P> +"Doornkop—what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine. "I knew they'd +put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and +they've done it—Kruger and Joubert. Englishmen aren't slim enough to +be conspirators. Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, +gambling with the Almighty. It's bury me deep now. It's Paul Kruger +licking his chops over the savoury mess. 'Oh, isn't it a pretty dish to +set before the king!' What else, Krool?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing more in the cables?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +"That will do, Krool. Wait. Go to Mr. Whalen. Say I want him to bring a +stenographer and all the Partners—he'll understand—to me at ten +to-night." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +Krool bowed slowly. As he raised his head his eyes caught those of +Jasmine. For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the +man's eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face. The look +had its revelation which neither ever forgot. A quiver of fear passed +through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a +hardening of her will, as against some possible danger. +</P> + +<P> +As Krool left the room he said to himself: "The Baas speaks her for his +vrouw. But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal—p'r'aps." +</P> + +<P> +Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of +the Rooinek—of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his +fingers again with a malignant cruelty. +</P> + +<P> +Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that +old ironic humour which was always part of him: "'Fee, fo, fi, fum, I +smell the blood of an Englishman.'" +</P> + +<P> +Her face contracted with pain. "They will take Dr. Jim's life?" she +asked, solemnly. +</P> + +<P> +"It's hard to tell. It isn't him alone. There's lots of others that we +both know." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, yes, of course. It's terrible, terrible," she whispered. +</P> + +<P> +"It's more terrible than it looks, even now. It's a black day for +England. She doesn't know yet how black it is. I see it, though; I see +it. It's as plain as an open book. Well, there's work to do, and I must +be about it. I'm off to the Colonial Office. No time to lose. It's a +job that has no eight-hours shift." +</P> + +<P> +Now the real man was alive. He was transformed. The face was set and +quiet. He looked concentrated will and power as he stood with his hands +clasped behind him, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes alight with +fire and determination. To herself Jasmine seemed to be moving in the +centre of great events, having her fingers upon the levers which work +behind the scenes of the world's vast schemes, standing by the secret +machinery of government. +</P> + +<P> +"How I wish I could help you," she said, softly, coming nearer to him, +a warm light in her liquid blue eyes, her exquisite face flushing with +excitement, her hands clasped in front of her. +</P> + +<P> +As Byng looked at her, it seemed to him that sweet honesty and +high-heartedness had never had so fine a setting; that never had there +been in the world such an epitome of talent, beauty and sincerity. He +had suddenly capitulated, he who had ridden unscathed so long. If he +had dared he would have taken her in his arms there and then; but he +had known her only for a day. He had been always told that a woman must +be wooed and won, and to woo took time. It was not a task he +understood, but suddenly it came to him that he was prepared to do it; +that he must be patient and watch and serve, and, as he used to do, +perhaps, be elate in the morning and depressed at night, till the day +of triumph came and his luck was made manifest. +</P> + +<P> +"But you can help me, yes, you can help me as no one else can," he said +almost hoarsely, and his hands moved a little towards her. +</P> + +<P> +"You must show me how," she said, scarce above a whisper, and she drew +back slightly, for this look in his eyes told its own story. +</P> + +<P> +"When may I come again?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I want so much to hear everything about South Africa. Won't you come +to-morrow at six?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly, to-morrow at six," he answered, eagerly, "and thank you." +</P> + +<P> +His honest look of admiration enveloped her as her hand was again lost +in his strong, generous palm, and lay there for a moment thrilling +him.... He turned at the door and looked back, and the smile she gave +seemed the most delightful thing he had ever seen. +</P> + +<P> +"She is a flower, a jasmine-flower," he said, happily, as he made his +way into the street. +</P> + +<P> +When he had gone she fled to her bedroom. Standing before the mirror, +she looked at herself long, laughing feverishly. Then suddenly she +turned and threw herself upon the bed, bursting into a passion of +tears. Sobs shook her. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Ian," she said, raising her head at last, "oh, Ian, Ian, I hate +myself!" +</P> + +<P> +Down in the library her stepmother was saying to her father, "You are +right, Jasmine will marry the nabob." +</P> + +<P> +"I am sorry for Ian Stafford," was the response. +</P> + +<P> +"Men get over such things," came the quietly cynical reply. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She +has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never +had—the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and—" +</P> + +<P> +He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his +child. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish—Nelly, I do wish that—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any +use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone—as her grandfather +did." +</P> + +<P> +"God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman—" +</P> + +<P> +Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from her +grandfather's nature was a perilous gift. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE PARTNERS MEET +</H3> + +<P> +England was more stunned than shocked. The dark significance, the evil +consequences destined to flow from the Jameson Raid had not yet reached +the general mind. There was something gallant and romantic in this wild +invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and insufficient +clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the merest flurry of +battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with Fate—challenging a +republic of fighting men with well-stocked arsenals and capable +artillery, with ample sources of supply, with command of railways and +communications. It was certainly magnificent; but it was magnificent +folly. +</P> + +<P> +It did not take England long to decide that point; and not even the +Laureate's paean in the organ of the aristocracy and upper middle class +could evoke any outburst of feeling. There was plenty of admiration for +the pluck and boldness, for the careless indifference with which the +raiders risked their lives; for the romantic side of the dash from +Pitsani to the Rand; but the thing was so palpably impossible, as it +was carried out, that there was not a knowing mind in the Islands which +would not have echoed Rhodes' words, "Jameson has upset the apple-cart." +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng did not visit Jasmine the next evening at six o'clock. His +world was all in chaos, and he had not closed his eyes to sleep since +he had left her. At ten o'clock at night, as he had arranged, "The +Partners" and himself met at his chambers, around which had gathered a +crowd of reporters and curious idlers; and from that time till the grey +dawn he and they had sat in conference. He had spent two hours at the +Colonial Office after he left Jasmine, and now all night he kneaded the +dough of a new policy with his companions in finance and misfortune. +</P> + +<P> +There was Wallstein, the fairest, ablest, and richest financier of them +all, with a marvellous head for figures and invaluable and commanding +at the council-board, by virtue of his clear brain and his power to +co-ordinate all the elements of the most confusing financial problems. +Others had by luck and persistence made money—the basis of their +fortunes; but Wallstein had showed them how to save those fortunes and +make them grow; had enabled them to compete successfully with the games +of other great financiers in the world's stock-markets. Wallstein was +short and stout, with a big blue eye and an unwrinkled forehead; +prematurely aged from lack of exercise and the exciting air of the high +veld; from planning and scheming while others slept; from an inherent +physical weakness due to the fact that he was one of twin sons, to his +brother being given great physical strength, to himself a powerful +brain for finance and a frail if ample body. Wallstein knew little and +cared less about politics; yet he saw the use of politics in finance, +and he did not stick his head into the sand as some of his colleagues +did when political activities hampered their operations. In +Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle with Oom Paul, not +from lack of will, but because he had no stomach for daily intrigue and +guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; and he was convinced that +only a great and bloody struggle would end the contest for progress and +equal rights for all white men on the Rand. His inquiries had been bent +towards so disposing the financial operations, so bulwarking the mining +industry by sagacious designs, that, when the worst came, they all +would be able to weather the storm. He had done his work better than +his colleagues knew, or indeed even himself knew. +</P> + +<P> +Probably only Fleming the Scotsman—another of the Partners—with a +somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which +compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so +cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how +extraordinary Wallstein's work had been—only Fleming, and Rudyard +Byng, who knew better than any and all. +</P> + +<P> +There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the +Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein +and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to Rhodes, +being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a master of +commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the days when he +trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had made his first +ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made en route to +Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle of compound +multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again he had a +collateral interest in the commissariat. +</P> + +<P> +Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an +indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a +few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of the +moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year or in +that, for this thing or for that—cheques written very often on the +backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the fly-leaf +of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so stirred by +half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of his vain +slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, caring +little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he once +wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of his +henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday. +</P> + +<P> +So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel +came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead +financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the +conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that +one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty +thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a purpose +in which it was expedient their own hands should not appear. They felt +confident that a man who could so carefully and secretly build up his +own fortune had a gift which could be used to advantage. A man who +could be so subterranean in his own affairs would no doubt be equally +secluded in their business. Selfishness would make him silent. And so +it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, the factotum, who in +his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he brushed his own, after the +Kaffir servant had messed them about, came to be a millionaire and one +of the Partners. For him South Africa had no charms. He was happy in +London, or at his country-seat in Leicestershire, where he followed the +hounds with a temerity which was at base vanity; where he gave the +county the best food to be got outside St. Petersburg or Paris; where +his so-called bachelor establishment was cared for by a coarse, +gray-haired housekeeper who, the initiated said, was De Lancy's South +African wife, with a rooted objection to being a lady or "moving in +social circles"; whose pleasure lay in managing this big household +under De Lancy's guidance. There were those who said they had seen her +brush a speck of dust from De Lancy's coat-collar, as she emerged from +her morning interview with him; and others who said they had seen her +hidden in the shrubbery listening to the rather flaccid conversation of +her splendid poodle of a master. +</P> + +<P> +There were others who had climbed to success in their own way, some by +happy accident, some by a force which disregarded anything in their +way, and some by sheer honest rough merit, through which the soul of +the true pioneer shone. +</P> + +<P> +There was also Barry Whalen, who had been educated as a doctor, and, +with a rare Irish sense of adaptability and amazing Celtic cleverness, +had also become a mining engineer, in the days when the Transvaal was +emerging from its pioneer obscurity into the golden light of mining +prosperity. Abrupt, obstinately honest, and sincere; always protesting +against this and against that, always the critic of authority, whether +the authority was friend or foe; always smothering his own views in the +moment when the test of loyalty came; always with a voice like a young +bull and a heart which would have suited a Goliath, there was no one +but trusted Barry, none that had not hurried to him in a difficulty; +not because he was so wise, but because he was so true. He would never +have made money, in spite of the fact that his prescience, his mining +sense, his diagnosis of the case of a mine, as Byng called it, had been +a great source of wealth to others, had it not been for Wallstein and +Byng. +</P> + +<P> +Wallstein had in him a curious gentleness and human sympathy, little in +keeping with the view held of him by that section of the British press +which would willingly have seen England at the mercy of Paul +Kruger—for England's good, for her soul's welfare as it were, for her +needed chastisement. He was spoken of as a cruel, tyrannical, greedy +German Jew, whose soul was in his own pocket and his hand in the +pockets of the world. In truth he was none of these things, save that +he was of German birth, and of as good and honest German origin as +George of Hanover and his descendants, if not so distinguished. +Wallstein's eye was an eye of kindness, save in the vision of business; +then it saw without emotion to the advantage of the country where he +had made his money, and to the perpetual advantage of England, to whom +he gave an honourable and philanthropic citizenship. His charities were +not of the spectacular kind; but many a poor and worthy, and often +unworthy, unfortunate was sheltered through bad days and heavy weather +of life by the immediate personal care of "the Jew Mining Magnate, who +didn't care a damn what happened to England so long as his own nest was +well lined!" +</P> + +<P> +It was Wallstein who took heed of the fact that, as he became rich, +Barry Whalen remained poor; and it was he who took note that Barry had +a daughter who might any day be left penniless with frail health and no +protector; and taking heed and note, it was he made all the Partners +unite in taking some financial risks and responsibilities for Barry, +when two new mines were opened—to Barry's large profit. It was +characteristic of Barry, however, that, if they had not disguised their +action by financial devices, and by making him a Partner, because he +was needed professionally and intellectually and for other business +reasons, nicely phrased to please his Celtic vanity, he would have +rejected the means to the fortune which came to him. It was a far +smaller fortune than any of the others had; but it was sufficient for +him and for his child. So it was that Barry became one of the Partners, +and said things that every one else would hesitate to say, but were +glad to hear said. +</P> + +<P> +Others of the group were of varying degrees of ability and interest and +importance. One or two were poltroons in body and mind, with only a +real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive +individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, +whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose +small part in this veracious tale belongs elsewhere. +</P> + +<P> +Each had his place, and all were influenced by the great schemes of +Rhodes and their reflection in the purposes and actions of Wallstein. +Wallstein was inspired by the dreams and daring purposes of Empire +which had driven Rhodes from Table Mountain to the kraal of Lobengula +and far beyond; until, at last, the flag he had learned to love had +been triumphantly trailed from the Cape to Cairo. +</P> + +<P> +Now in the great crisis, Wallstein, of them all, was the most +self-possessed, save Rudyard Byng. Some of the others were paralyzed. +They could only whine out execrations on the man who had dared +something; who, if he had succeeded, would have been hailed as the +great leader of a Revolution, not the scorned and humiliated captain of +a filibustering expedition. A triumphant rebellion or raid is always a +revolution in the archives of a nation. These men were of a class who +run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the +fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs. +Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of +the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the +business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever +the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers +of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying +to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward +themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were +the disappearing factors. +</P> + +<P> +At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the +two sections who represented the more extreme views and the unpolitical +minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who were not +cleverer financially than their friends, but who had political sense +and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more concerned, at this +dark moment, for the political and national consequences of the Raid, +than for the certain set-back to the mining and financial enterprises +of the Rand. A few of the richest of them were the most hopeless +politically—ever ready to sacrifice principle for an extra dividend of +a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost souls, ready to bow the knee +to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, undemocratic, and corrupt government, +if only the dividends moved on and up. +</P> + +<P> +Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural +political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his +pocket. He had a passionate love for the land—for England—which had +given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good name. +So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid +deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and manly +appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but have +heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited +pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to +take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by +the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the +English mother; who said as he sat and watched the tide flow in and +out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three days' trip to the +sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling down, and one day in +packing up again." +</P> + +<P> +Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took +the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow +from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen +to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and +Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South +Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst +happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + ... The dull dank morn stare in,<BR> + Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England. +</P> + +<P> +"I will go. I must go," remarked Byng at last, though there was a +strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of +Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his +duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and +that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had been +in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him the most +vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some regard and +much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at all. +</P> + +<P> +"I will go," Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard +faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet +their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How +many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions were +not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companionship and +champagne—or something less expensive. +</P> + +<P> +As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a +dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his +dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile +face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean +hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death +passing the hemlock-brew. +</P> + +<P> +At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their +conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear +nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being Byng's +servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and particularly +now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and apparently frank +of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but without avail; and +now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful determination. He knew +that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was sitting opposite the +double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes light up. Instantly, +however, that light vanished. They all might have been wooden men, and +Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and concentrated were his +actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some of them shrank a little +as he leaned over and poured the brown, steaming liquid and the hot +milk into the bowls. Only once did the factotum look at anybody +directly, and that was at Byng just as he was about to leave the room. +Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly at his master's face in a +mirror, and again that baleful light leaped up in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: "Byng, it's +all damn foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, +'specially now." +</P> + +<P> +"Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?" Byng asked with +a contemptuous little laugh. "Sugar—what?" He pushed the great bowl of +sugar over the polished table towards Barry. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on one +another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east wind +blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're +living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, +because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious +beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, +Barry." +</P> + +<P> +"We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the shore," was +the moody and nervously indignant reply. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too—with me." +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen persisted. "We're in for complications, Byng. England has +to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any +spies. He's more Boer than native." +</P> + +<P> +"There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our +mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm +not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside +will sell us perhaps—as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one +inside." +</P> + +<P> +There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his +fellows furtively. +</P> + +<P> +"We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we +need not fear any spying," continued Byng. +</P> + +<P> +"If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, +it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to +prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are +justifiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's +necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my +cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand—if I +can." +</P> + +<P> +There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one said: +</P> + +<P> +"You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to +Johannesburg?" +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't say anything about wanting to go. I said I'd go because one +of us—or two of us—ought to go. There's plenty to do here; but if I +can be any more use out there, why, Wallstein can stay here, and—" +</P> + +<P> +He got no further, for Wallstein, to whom he had just referred, and who +had been sitting strangely impassive, with his eyes approvingly fixed +on Byng, half rose from his chair and fell forward, his thick, white +hands sprawling on the mahogany table, his fat, pale face striking the +polished wood with a thud. In an instant they were all on their feet +and at his side. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen lifted up his head and drew him back into the chair, then +three of them lifted him upon a sofa. Barry's hand felt the breast of +the prostrate figure, and Byng's fingers sought his wrist. For a moment +there was a dreadful silence, and then Byng and Whalen looked at each +other and nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Brandy!" said Byng, peremptorily. +</P> + +<P> +"He's not dead?" whispered some one. +</P> + +<P> +"Brandy—quick," urged Byng, and, lifting up the head a little, he +presently caught the glass from Whalen's hand and poured some brandy +slowly between the bluish lips. "Some one ring for Krool," he added. +</P> + +<P> +A moment later Krool entered. "The doctor—my doctor and his own—and a +couple of nurses," Byng said, sharply, and Krool nodded and vanished. +"Perhaps it's only a slight heart-attack, but it's best to be on the +safe side." +</P> + +<P> +"Anyhow, it shows that Wallstein needs to let up for a while," +whispered Fleming. +</P> + +<P> +"It means that some one must do Wallstein's work here," said Barry +Whalen. "It means that Byng stays in London," he added, as Krool +entered the room again with a rug to cover Wallstein. +</P> + +<P> +Barry saw Krool's eyes droop before his words, and he was sure that the +servant had reasons for wishing his master to go to South Africa. The +others present, however, only saw a silent, magically adept figure +stooping over the sick man, adjusting the body to greater ease, +arranging skilfully the cushion under the head, loosening and removing +the collar and the boots, and taking possession of the room, as though +he himself were the doctor; while Byng looked on with satisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +"Useful person, eh?" he said, meaningly, in an undertone to Barry +Whalen. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think he's at home in England," rejoined Barry, as meaningly +and very stubbornly: "He won't like your not going to South Africa." +</P> + +<P> +"Am I not going to South Africa?" Byng asked, mechanically, and looking +reflectively at Krool. +</P> + +<P> +"Wallstein's a sick man, Byng. You can't leave London. You're the only +real politician among us. Some one else must go to Johannesburg." +</P> + +<P> +"You—Barry?" +</P> + +<P> +"You know I can't, Byng—there's my girl. Besides, I don't carry enough +weight, anyhow, and you know that too." +</P> + +<P> +Byng remembered Whalen's girl—stricken down with consumption a few +months before. He caught Whalen's arm in a grip of friendship. "All +right, dear old man," he said, kindly. "Fleming shall go, and I'll +stay. Yes, I'll stay here, and do Wallstein's work." +</P> + +<P> +He was still mechanically watching Krool attend to the sick man, and he +was suddenly conscious of an arrest of all motion in the half-caste's +lithe frame. Then Krool turned, and their eyes met. Had he drawn +Krool's eyes to his—the master-mind influencing the subservient +intelligence? +</P> + +<P> +"Krool wants to go to South Africa," he said to himself with a strange, +new sensation which he did not understand, though it was not quite a +doubt. He reassured himself. "Well, it's natural he should. It's his +home.... But Fleming must go to Johannesburg. I'm needed most here." +</P> + +<P> +There was gratitude in his heart that Fate had decreed it so. He was +conscious of the perfume from Jasmine's cloak searching his senses, +even in this hour when these things that mattered—the things of +Fate—were so enormously awry. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY +</H3> + +<P> +"Soon he will speak you. Wait here, madame." +</P> + +<P> +Krool passed almost stealthily out. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat +incongruous furnishing—leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins +from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape +Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical +subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the +walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little +roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the +incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was expressive +of tastes and habits not yet settled and consistent. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's eyes had taken it all in rather wistfully, while she had +waited for Krool's return from his master; but the wistfulness was due +to personal trouble, for her eyes were clouded and her motions languid. +But when she saw the banjo, the cornet, and the roulette-table, a deep +little laugh rose to her full red lips. +</P> + +<P> +"How like a subaltern, or a colonial civil servant!" she said to +herself. +</P> + +<P> +She reflected a moment, then pursued the thought further: "But there +must be bigness in him, as well as presence of mind and depth of +heart—yes, I'm sure his nature is deep." +</P> + +<P> +She remembered the quick, protecting hands which had wrapped her round +with Jasmine Grenfel's cloak, and the great arms in which she had +rested, the danger over. +</P> + +<P> +"There can't be much wrong with a nature like his, though Adrian hates +him so. But, of course, Adrian would. Besides, Adrian will never get +over the drop in the mining-stock which ruined him—Rudyard Byng's +mine.... It's natural for Adrian to hate him, I suppose," she added +with a heavy sigh. +</P> + +<P> +Mentally she took to comparing this room with Adrian Fellowes' +sitting-room overlooking the Thames Embankment, where everything was in +perfect taste and order, where all was modulated, harmonious, soigne +and artistic. Yet, somehow, the handsome chambers which hung over the +muddy river with its wonderful lights and shades, its mists and +radiance, its ghostly softness and greyness, lacked in something that +roused imagination, that stirred her senses here—the vital being in +her. +</P> + +<P> +It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She +knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, art, +hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with the +solid achievement of talent and force in the business of life. Here was +a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the stamps working in +the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of the Kaffir compound +at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind the wire boundaries. +</P> + +<P> +Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to +the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and +creative Deity—if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on +her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there +was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which +encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity +could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, +like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities +swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal +wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its +thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague +which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or devastated +by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful breast to +feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the +breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to +their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse +in the end—ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, she +thought. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of +sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an +open hand for the poor and miserable,—now that she could afford +it—and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her +humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was +sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and Adrian +was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not to +Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph at +Covent Garden—why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a +hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome face +which had told her then of the completeness of her triumph. +</P> + +<P> +The half-caste valet entered again. "Here come, madame," he said with +something very near a smile; for he liked this woman, and his dark, +sensual soul would have approved of his master liking her. +</P> + +<P> +"Soon the Baas, madame," he said as he placed a chair for her, and with +the gliding footstep of a native left the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Sunny creature!" she remarked aloud, with a little laugh, and looked +round. Instantly her face lighted with interest. Here was nothing of +that admired disorder, that medley of incongruous things which marked +the room she had just left; but perfect order, precision, and balance +of arrangement, the most peaceful equipoise. There was a great carved +oak-table near to sun-lit windows, and on it were little regiments of +things, carefully arranged—baskets with papers in elastic bands; +classified and inscribed reference-books, scales, clips, pencils; and +in one clear space, with a bunch of violets before it, the photograph +of a woman in a splendid silver frame—a woman of seventy or so, +obviously Rudyard Byng's mother. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's eyes softened. Here was insight into a nature of which the +world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of +disciplined hours and careful hands—cabinets with initialed drawers, +shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing +moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their +actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive +influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn +quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the +inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life. Her eyes +travelled on with the gratified reflection that she had been admitted +here. Above the books were rows of sketches—rows of sketches! +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, as her eyes rested on them, she turned pale and got to her +feet. They were all sketches of the veld, high and low; of natives; of +bits of Dutch architecture; of the stoep with its Boer farmer and his +vrouw; of a kopje with a dozen horses or a herd of cattle grazing; of a +spruit, or a Kaffir's kraal; of oxen leaning against the disselboom of +a cape-wagon; of a herd of steinboks, or a little colony of meerkats in +the karoo. +</P> + +<P> +Her hand went to her heart with a gesture of pain, and a little cry of +misery escaped her lips. +</P> + +<P> +Now there was a quick footstep, and Byng entered with a cordial smile +and an outstretched hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, this is a friendly way to begin the New Year," he said, +cheerily, taking her hand. "You certainly are none the worse for our +little unrehearsed drama the other night. I see by the papers that you +have been repeating your triumph. Please sit down. Do you mind my +having a little toast while we talk? I always have my petit dejeuner +here; and I'm late this morning." +</P> + +<P> +"You look very tired," she said as she sat down. +</P> + +<P> +Krool here entered with a tray, placing it on a small table by the big +desk. He was about to pour out the tea, but Byng waved him away. +</P> + +<P> +"Send this note at once by hand," he said, handing him an envelope. It +was addressed to Jasmine Grenfel. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I'm tired—rather," he added to his guest with a sudden weariness +of manner. "I've had no sleep for three nights—working all the time, +every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn't feed you, one +needs plenty of sleep. You can't play with yourself here as you can on +the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will do. On-saddle +and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a little sleep; +and the air does the rest. It has been a worrying time." +</P> + +<P> +"The Jameson Raid—and all the rest?" +</P> + +<P> +"Particularly all the rest. I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and +the others. England will demand—so I understand," he added with a +careful look at her, as though he had said too much—"the right to try +Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but it's +different with the Jo'burgers. They will be arrested—" +</P> + +<P> +"They have been arrested," she intervened. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, is it announced?" he asked without surprise. +</P> + +<P> +"It was placarded an hour ago," she replied, heavily. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I fancied it would be," he remarked. "They'll have a close +squeak. The sympathy of the world is with Kruger—so far." +</P> + +<P> +"That is what I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and +shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls. +</P> + +<P> +"What you have come about?" he said, putting down his cup of tea and +looking at her intently. "How are you concerned? Where do you come in?" +</P> + +<P> +"There is a man—he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, +Phillips, Hammond, and the rest—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that's bad! A relative, or—" +</P> + +<P> +"Not a relative, exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she +went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches. +</P> + +<P> +"How did you come by these?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Blantyre's sketches? Well, it's all I ever got for all Blantyre owed +me, and they're not bad. They're lifted out of the life. That's why I +bought them. Also because I liked to think I got something out of +Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn't. He could paint a bit—don't +you think so?" +</P> + +<P> +"He could paint a bit—always," she replied. +</P> + +<P> +A silence followed. Her back was turned to him, her face was towards +the pictures. +</P> + +<P> +Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the tone. "Are +you interested in Blantyre?" he asked, cautiously. Getting up, he came +over to her. +</P> + +<P> +"He has been arrested—as I said—with the others." +</P> + +<P> +"No, you did not say so. So they let Blantyre into the game, did they?" +he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had said, he +added: "Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest in +Blantyre?" +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him straight in the eyes. For a face naturally so full of +humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I will tell you as much as I can—enough for you to understand," +she answered. +</P> + +<P> +He drew up a chair to the fire, and she sat down. He nodded at her +encouragingly. Presently she spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, at twenty-one I was studying hard, and he was painting—" +</P> + +<P> +"Blantyre?" +</P> + +<P> +She inclined her head. "He was full of dreams—beautiful, I thought +them; and he was ambitious. Also he could talk quite marvellously." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Blantyre could talk—once," Byng intervened, gently. +</P> + +<P> +"We were married secretly." +</P> + +<P> +Byng made a gesture of amazement, and his face became shocked and +grave. "Married! Married! You were married to Blantyre?" +</P> + +<P> +"At a registry office in Chelsea. One month, only one month it was, and +then he went away to Madeira to paint—'a big commission,' he said; and +he would send for me as soon as he could get money in hand—certainly +in a couple of months. He had taken most of my half-year's income—I +had been left four hundred a year by my mother." +</P> + +<P> +Byng muttered a malediction under his breath and leaned towards her +sympathetically. +</P> + +<P> +With an effort she continued. "From Madeira he wrote to tell me he was +going on to South Africa, and would not be home for a year. From South +Africa he wrote saying he was not coming back; that I could divorce him +if I liked. The proof, he said, would be easy; or I needn't divorce him +unless I liked, since no one knew we were married." +</P> + +<P> +For an instant there was absolute silence, and she sat with her fingers +pressed tight to her eyes. At last she went on, her face turned away +from the great kindly blue eyes bent upon her, from the face flushed +with honourable human sympathy. +</P> + +<P> +"I went into the country, where I stayed for nearly three years, +till—till I could bear it no longer; and then I began to study and +sing again." +</P> + +<P> +"What were you doing in the country?" he asked in a low voice. +</P> + +<P> +"There was my baby," she replied, her hands clasping and unclasping in +pain. "There was my little Nydia." +</P> + +<P> +"A child—she is living?" he asked gently. +</P> + +<P> +"No, she died two years ago," was the answer in a voice which tried to +be firm. +</P> + +<P> +"Does Blantyre know?" +</P> + +<P> +"He knew she was born, nothing more." +</P> + +<P> +"We were married secretly." +</P> + +<P> +"And after all he has done, and left undone, you want to try and save +him now?" +</P> + +<P> +He was thinking that she still loved the man. "That offscouring!" he +said to himself. "Well, women beat all! He treats her like a +Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the +hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women—always +women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants him +back!" +</P> + +<P> +She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind. Rising, with a +bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment +in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: +</P> + +<P> +"You think it is love for him that prompts me now?" Her eyes blazed, +but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously +pulled at the tails of her sable muff. "You are wrong—absolutely. I +would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch +me. Oh, I know what his life must have been—the life of him that you +know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of +Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating +husks with the swine. I realize him now. He was easily susceptible to +good and evil, to the clean and the unclean; and he might have been +kept in order by some one who would give a life to building up his +character; but his nature was rickety, and he has gone down and not up." +</P> + +<P> +"Then why try to save him? Let Oom Paul have him. He'll do no more +harm, if—" +</P> + +<P> +"Wait a minute," she urged. "You are a great man"—she came close to +him—"and you ought to understand what I mean, without my saying it. I +want to save him for his own sake, not for mine—to give him a chance. +While there's life there's hope. To go as he is, with the mud up to his +lips—ah, can't you see! He is the father of my dead child. I like to +feel that he may make some thing of his life and of himself yet. That's +why I haven't tried to divorce him, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"If you ever want to do so—" he interrupted, meaningly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. I have always been sure that nothing could be quite so +easy; but I waited, on the chance of something getting hold of him +which would lift him out of himself, give him something to think of so +much greater than himself, some cause, perhaps—" +</P> + +<P> +"He had you and your unborn child," he intervened. +</P> + +<P> +"Me—!" She laughed bitterly. "I don't think men would ever be better +because of me. I've never seen that. I've seen them show the worst of +human nature because of me—and it wasn't inspiring. I've not met many +men who weren't on the low levels." +</P> + +<P> +"He hasn't stood his trial for the Johannesburg conspiracy yet. How do +you propose to help him? He is in real danger of his life." +</P> + +<P> +She laughed coldly, and looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "You +ask that, you who know that in the armory of life there's one +all-powerful weapon?" +</P> + +<P> +He nodded his head whimsically. "Money? Well, whatever other weapons +you have, you must have that, I admit. And in the Transvaal—" +</P> + +<P> +"Then here," she said, handing him an envelope—"here is what may help." +</P> + +<P> +He took it hesitatingly. "I warn you," he remarked, "that if money is +to be used at all, it must be a great deal. Kruger will put up the +price to the full capacity of the victim." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose this victim has nothing," she ventured, quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing but what the others give him, I should think. It may be a very +costly business, even if it is possible, and you—" +</P> + +<P> +"I have twenty thousand pounds," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"Earned by your voice?" he asked, kindly. +</P> + +<P> +"Every penny of it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I wouldn't waste it on Blantyre, if I were you. No, by Heaven, +you shall not do it, even if it can be done! It is too horrible." +</P> + +<P> +"I owe it to myself to do it. After all, he is still my husband. I have +let it be so; and while it is so, and while"—her eyes looked away, her +face suffused slightly, her lips tightened—"while things are as they +are, I am bound—bound by something, I don't know what, but it is not +love, and it is not friendship—to come to his rescue. There will be +legal expenses—" +</P> + +<P> +Byng frowned. "Yes, but the others wouldn't see him in a hole—yet I'm +not sure, either, Blantyre being Blantyre. In any case, I'm ready to do +anything you wish." +</P> + +<P> +She smiled gratefully. "Did you ever know any one to do a favor who +wasn't asked to repeat it—paying one debt by contracting another, +finding a creditor who will trust, and trading on his trust? Yet I'd +rather owe you two debts than most men one." She held out her hand to +him. "Well, it doesn't do to mope—'The merry heart goes all the day, +the sad one tires in a mile-a.' And I am out for all day. Please wish +me a happy new year." +</P> + +<P> +He took her hand in both of his. "I wish you to go through this year as +you ended the last—in a blaze of glory." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, really a blaze if not of glory," she said, with bright tears, yet +laughing, too, a big warm humour shining in her strong face with the +dark brown eyes and the thick, heavy eyebrows under a low, broad +forehead like his own. They were indeed strangely alike in many ways +both of mind and body. +</P> + +<P> +"They say we end the year as we begin it," he said, cheerily. "You +proved to Destiny that you were entitled to all she could give in the +old year, and you shall have the best that's to be had in 1897. You are +a woman in a million, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"May I come and breakfast with you some morning?" she asked, gaily. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if ever I'm thought worthy of that honour, don't hesitate. As +the Spanish say, It is all yours." He waved a hand to the surroundings. +</P> + +<P> +"No, it is all yours," she said, reflectively, her eyes slowly roaming +about her. "It is all you. I'm glad to have been here, to be as near as +this to your real life. Real life is so comforting after the mock kind +so many of us live; which singers and actors live anyhow." +</P> + +<P> +She looked round the room again. "I feel—I don't know why it is, but I +feel that when I'm in trouble I shall always want to come to this room. +Yes, and I will surely come; for I know there's much trouble in store +for me. You must let me come. You are the only man I would go to like +this, and you can't think what it means to me—to feel that I'm not +misunderstood, and that it seems absolutely right to come. That's +because any woman could trust you—as I do. Good-bye." +</P> + +<P> +In another moment she had gone, and he stood beside the table with the +envelope she had left with him. Presently he opened it, and unfolded +the cheque which was in it. Then he gave an exclamation of astonishment. +</P> + +<P> +"Seven thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "That's a better estimate of +Krugerism than I thought she had. It'll take much more than that, +though, if it's done at all; but she certainly has sense. It's seven +thousand times too much for Blantyre," he added, with an exclamation of +disgust. "Blantyre—that outsider!" Then he fell to thinking of all she +had told him. "Poor girl—poor girl!" he said aloud. "But she must not +come here, just the same. She doesn't see that it's not the thing, just +because she thinks I'm a Sir Galahad—me!" He glanced at the picture of +his mother, and nodded toward it tenderly. "So did she always. I might +have turned Kurd and robbed caravans, or become a Turk and kept +concubines, and she'd never have seen that it was so. But Al'mah +mustn't come here any more, for her own sake.... I'd find it hard to +explain if ever, by any chance—" +</P> + +<P> +He fell to thinking of Jasmine, and looked at the clock. It was only +ten, and he would not see Jasmine till six; but if he had gone to South +Africa he would not have seen her at all! Fate and Wallstein had been +kind. +</P> + +<P> +Presently, as he went to the hall to put on his coat and hat to go out, +he met Barry Whalen. Barry looked at him curiously; then, as though +satisfied, he said: "Early morning visitor, eh? I just met her coming +away. Card of thanks for kind services au theatre, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it isn't any business of yours what it is, Barry," came the +reply in tones which congealed. +</P> + +<P> +"No, perhaps not," answered his visitor, testily, for he had had a +night of much excitement, and, after all, this was no way to speak to a +friend, to a partner who had followed his lead always. Friendship +should be allowed some latitude, and he had said hundreds of things +less carefully to Byng in the past. The past—he was suddenly conscious +that Byng had changed within the past few days, and that he seemed to +have put restraint on himself. Well, he would get back at him just the +same for the snub. +</P> + +<P> +"It's none of my business," he retorted, "but it's a good deal of +Adrian Fellowes' business—" +</P> + +<P> +"What is a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business?" +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah coming to your rooms. Fellowes is her man. Going to marry her, +I suppose," he added, cynically. +</P> + +<P> +Byng's jaw set and his eyes became cold. "Still, I'd suggest your +minding your own business, Barry. Your tongue will get you into trouble +some day.... You've seen Wallstein this morning—and Fleming?" +</P> + +<P> +Barry replied sullenly, and the day's pressing work began, with the +wires busy under the seas. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE +</H3> + +<P> +At a few moments before six o'clock Byng was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room. As he entered, the man who sat at the end of the front +row of stalls the first night of "Manassa" rose to his feet. It was +Adrian Fellowes, slim, well groomed, with the colour of an apple in his +cheeks, and his gold-brown hair waving harmoniously over his +unintellectual head. +</P> + +<P> +"But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I've ever known," Jasmine +was saying as Byng entered. +</P> + +<P> +Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she pretended +not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that Byng heard +them as he came forward. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he is selfish," she added to Byng, as she shook hands. "I've +known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of +everything and given nothing for it." Turning again to Fellowes, she +continued: "Yes, it's true. The golden apples just fall into your +hands." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation," +Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an +enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Such a boy—Adrian," Jasmine said, as they sat down. +</P> + +<P> +"Boy—he looks thirty or more!" remarked Byng in a dry tone. +</P> + +<P> +"He is just thirty. I call him a boy because he is so young in most +things that matter to people. He is the most sumptuous person—entirely +a luxury. Did you ever see such colouring—like a woman's! But selfish, +as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian. Yes, he really is very useful. +He would be a private secretary beyond price to any one who needed such +an article. He has tact—as you saw—and would make a wonderful master +of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the household and equerry and +lord-chamberlain in one. There, if ever you want such a person, or if—" +</P> + +<P> +She paused. As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast +between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's +clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who knew +their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The +result was a looseness and carelessness of good things—giving him, in +a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little +crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had +touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with the +square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not common. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly," he intervened, smiling indulgently; "if ever I want a +comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I'll remember +'Adrian.' In these days one can never tell. There's the Sahara. It +hasn't been exploited yet. It has no emperor." +</P> + +<P> +"I like you in this mood," she said, eagerly. "You seem on the surface +so tremendously practical and sensible. You frighten me a little, and I +like to hear you touch things off with raillery. But, seriously, if you +can ever put anything in that boy's way, please do so. He has had bad +luck—in your own Rand mine. He lost nearly everything in that, +speculating, and—" +</P> + +<P> +Byng's face grew serious again. "But he shouldn't have speculated; he +should have invested. It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth +to speculate. But I will remember him, if you say so. I don't like to +think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine. I'll keep him in +mind. Make him one of my secretaries perhaps." +</P> + +<P> +Then Barry Whalen's gossip suddenly came to his mind, and he added: +"Fellowes will want to get married some day. That face and manner will +lead him into ways from which there's only one outlet." +</P> + +<P> +"Matrimony?" She laughed. "Oh dear, no, Adrian is much too selfish to +marry." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought that selfishness was one of the elements of successful +marriages. I've been told so." +</P> + +<P> +A curious look stole into her eyes. All at once she wondered if his +words had any hidden meaning, and she felt angrily self-conscious; but +she instantly put the reflection away, for if ever any man travelled by +the straight Roman road of speech and thought, it was he. He had only +been dealing in somewhat obvious worldly wisdom. +</P> + +<P> +"You ought not to give encouragement to such ideas by repeating them," +she rejoined with raillery. "This is an age of telepathy and +suggestion, and the more silent we are the safer we are. Now, please, +tell me everything—of the inside, I mean—about Cecil Rhodes and the +Raiders. Is Rhodes overwhelmed? And Mr. Chamberlain—you have seen him? +The papers say you have spent many hours at the Colonial Office. I +suppose you were with him at six o'clock last evening, instead of being +here with me, as you promised." +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head. "Rhodes? The bigger a man is the greater the crash +when he falls; and no big man falls alone." +</P> + +<P> +She nodded. "There's the sense of power, too, which made everything +vibrate with energy, which gave a sense of great empty places +filled—of that power withdrawn and collapsed. Even the bad great man +gone leaves a sense of desolation behind. Power—power, that is the +thing of all," she said, her eyes shining and her small fingers +interlacing with eager vitality: "power to set waves of influence in +motion which stir the waters on distant shores. That seems to me the +most wonderful thing." +</P> + +<P> +Her vitality, her own sense of power, seemed almost incongruous. She +was so delicately made, so much the dresden-china shepherdess, that +intensity seemed out of relation to her nature. Yet the tiny hands +playing before her with natural gestures like those of a child had, +too, a decision and a firmness in keeping with the perfectly modelled +head and the courageous poise of the body. There was something regnant +in her, while, too, there was something sumptuous and sensuous and +physically thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an +exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla +fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no jewelry +whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and waved like +gossamer in the sun. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I don't know," he rejoined, admiration unbounded in his eyes for +the picture she was of maidenly charm and womanly beauty, "I should say +that goodness was a more wonderful thing. But power is the most common +ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions get it in any +large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first heard the stamps +pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You never heard that +sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air reverberates +greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives a sense of +power—power that crushes—as the stamps of a great mine pounding away +night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it seems to you that +some unearthly power is hammering the world into shape. You get up and +go to the window and look out into the night. There's the deep blue +sky—blue like nothing you ever saw in any other sky, and the stars so +bright and big, and so near, that you feel you could reach up and pluck +one with your hand; and just over the little hill are the lights of the +stamp-mills, the smoke and the mad red flare, the roar of great hammers +as they crush, crush, crush; while the vibration of the earth makes you +feel that you are living in a world of Titans." +</P> + +<P> +"And when it all stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the +stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and +desolate—and frightening?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is anything you like. If all the mills all at once, with the +thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the +smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more +ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of +peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir +of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they +would dwindle too." +</P> + +<P> +"If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease—?" +</P> + +<P> +He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't +want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of +emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging them +afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that Cecil +Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly—I mean your +practical interests?" +</P> + +<P> +He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this distance. +One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything may happen." +</P> + +<P> +She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At last +she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke. +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much +to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you have +a political mind—the statesman's intelligence, the Times said. That +letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of Commerce +dinner—" +</P> + +<P> +She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence +for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not +myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein +was taken ill suddenly. So I stay—I stay." +</P> + +<P> +She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The +whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her +cheeks—that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face +while life was left to her. +</P> + +<P> +"If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added. +</P> + +<P> +She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special +Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We +need you here. We—" +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was +conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It stole +to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with enamoured +eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a nature which +had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in other directions had +taught him much, but experiences with her sex had been few. The designs +of other women had been patent to him, and he had been invincible to +all attack; but here was a girl who, with her friendly little fortune +and her beauty, could marry with no difficulty; who, he had heard, +could pick and choose, and had so far rejected all comers; and who, if +she had shown preference at all, had shown it for a poor man like Ian +Stafford. She had courage and simplicity and a downright mind; that was +clear. And she was capable. She had a love for big things, for the +things that mattered. Every word she had ever said to him had +understanding, not of the world alone, and of life, but of himself, +Rudyard Byng. She grasped exactly what he would say, and made him say +things he would never have thought of saying to any one else. She drew +him out, made the most of him, made him think. Other women only tried +to make him feel. If he had had a girl like this beside him during the +last ten years, how many wasted hours would have been saved, how many +bottles of champagne would not have been opened, how many wild nights +would have been spent differently! +</P> + +<P> +Too good, too fine for him—yes, a hundred times, but he would try to +make it up to her, if such a girl as this could endure him. He was not +handsome, he was not clever, so he said to himself, but he had a little +power. That he had to some degree rough power, of course, but power; +and she loved power, force. Had she not said so, shown it, but a moment +before? Was it possible that she was really interested in him, perhaps +because he was different from the average Englishman and not of a +general pattern? She was a woman of brains, of great individuality, and +his own individuality might influence her. It was too good to be true; +but there had ever been something of the gambler in him, and he had +always plunged. If he ever had a conviction he acted on it instantly, +staked everything, when that conviction got into his inner being. It +was not, perhaps, a good way, and it had failed often enough; but it +was his way, and he had done according to the light and the impulse +that were in him. He had no diplomacy, he had only purpose. +</P> + +<P> +He came over to her. "If I had gone to South Africa would you have +remembered my name for a month?" he asked with determination and +meaning. +</P> + +<P> +"My friends never suffer lunar eclipse," she answered, gaily. "Dear +sir, I am called Hold-Fast. My friends are century-flowers and are +always blooming." +</P> + +<P> +"You count me among your friends?" +</P> + +<P> +"I hope so. You will let me make all England envious of me, won't you? +I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny +circle." +</P> + +<P> +"A hero—you mean me? Well, I begin to think I have some courage when I +ask you to let me inside your 'tiny' circle. I suppose most people +would think it audacity, not courage." +</P> + +<P> +"You seem not to be aware what an important person you are—how almost +sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like yours, +a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in vain." +</P> + +<P> +She got to her feet now. "Oh, but believe me, believe me," she said, +with sweet and sudden earnestness, "I am prouder than I can say that +you will let me be a friend of yours! I like men who have done things, +who do things. My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once. He was a big man, big as can +be. He had the world by the ear always." +</P> + +<P> +"He spoiled me for the commonplace," she replied. "If I had lived in +Pizarro's time, I'd have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber." +</P> + +<P> +He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy. "If you mean +to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way +you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I've spoiled the +Peruvians, too." +</P> + +<P> +"I like you when you say things like that," she murmured. "If you said +them often—" +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and +excitement. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned. "Will +you—" +</P> + +<P> +He paused. His courage forsook him. Boldness had its limit. He feared a +repulse which could never be overcome. "Will you, and all of you here, +come down to my place in Wales next week?" he blundered out. +</P> + +<P> +She was glad he had faltered. It was too bewildering. She dared not yet +face the question she had seen he was about to ask. Power—yes, he +could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious soul. +There were other things. There was the desire of the heart, the longing +which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright stars, +the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and +joy—and Ian Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she drew herself together. She was conscious that the servant +was entering the room with a letter. +</P> + +<P> +"The messenger is waiting," the servant said. +</P> + +<P> +With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the fire. +She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes at last +with a slight sense of dizziness. Then she said to the servant: +</P> + +<P> +"Tell the messenger to wait. I will write an answer." +</P> + +<P> +"I am sure we shall be glad to go to you in Wales next week," she +added, turning to Byng again. "But won't you be far away from the +centre of things in Wales?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've had the telegraph and a private telephone wire to London put in. +I shall be as near the centre as though I lived in Grosvenor Square; +and there are always special trains." +</P> + +<P> +"Special trains—oh, but it's wonderful to have power to do things like +that! When do you go down?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"To-morrow morning." +</P> + +<P> +She smiled radiantly. She saw that he was angry with himself for his +cowardice just now, and she tried to restore him. "Please, will you +telephone me when you arrive at your castle? I should like the +experience of telephoning by private wire to Wales." +</P> + +<P> +He brightened. "Certainly, if you really wish it. I shall arrive at ten +to-morrow night, and I'll telephone you at eleven." +</P> + +<P> +"Splendid—splendid! I'll be alone in my room then. I've got a +telephone instrument there, and so we could say good-night." +</P> + +<P> +"So we can say good-night," he repeated in a low voice, and he held out +his hand in good-bye. When he had gone, with a new, great hope in his +heart, she sat down and tremblingly re-opened the note she had received +a moment before. +</P> + +<P> +"I am going abroad" it read—"to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St. +Petersburg. I think I've got my chance at last. I want to see you +before I go—this evening, Jasmine. May I?" +</P> + +<P> +It was signed "Ian." +</P> + +<P> +"Fate is stronger than we are," she murmured; "and Fate is not kind to +you, Ian," she added, wearily, a wan look coming into her face. +</P> + +<P> +"Mio destino," she said at last—"mio destino!" But who was her +destiny—which of the two who loved her? +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BOOK II +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THREE YEARS LATER +</H3> + +<P> +"Extra speshul—extra speshul—all about Kruger an' his guns!" +</P> + +<P> +The shrill, acrid cry rang down St. James's Street, and a newsboy with +a bunch of pink papers under his arm shot hither and thither on the +pavement, offering his sensational wares to all he met. +</P> + +<P> +"Extra speshul—extra speshul—all about the war wot's comin'—all +about Kruger's guns!" +</P> + +<P> +From an open window on the second floor of a building in the street a +man's head was thrust out, listening. +</P> + +<P> +"The war wot's comin'!" he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And +all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you +do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a +shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull." +</P> + +<P> +He hummed to himself an impromptu refrain to an impromptu tune: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull, Johnny Bull,<BR> + Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Stepping out of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down +the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad +looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the +doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good +judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was speeding +upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock—a sharp, insistent +stroke—and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust forward, his +eyes glittering. The fire in such eyes is always cold, for hunger is +poor fuel to the native flame of life. +</P> + +<P> +"Extra speshul, m'lord—all about Kruger's guns." +</P> + +<P> +He held out the paper to the figure that darkened the window, and he +pronounced the g in Kruger soft, as in Scrooge. +</P> + +<P> +The hand that took the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, +skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for +it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers +had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face +regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He +had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was an expert +observer. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank y' kindly," he said; then, as the fingers made assurance of the +fortune which had come to him, "Ow, thank ye werry much, y'r gryce," he +added. +</P> + +<P> +Something alert and determined in the face of the boy struck the giver +of the coin as he opened the paper to glance at its contents, and he +paused to scan him more closely. He saw the hunger in the lad's eyes as +they swept over the breakfast-table, still heavy with uneaten +breakfast—bacon, nearly the whole of an omelette, and rolls, toast, +marmalade and honey. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait a second," he said, as the boy turned toward the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, y'r gryce." +</P> + +<P> +"Had your breakfast?" +</P> + +<P> +"I has me brekfist w'en I sells me pypers." The lad hugged the +remaining papers closer under his arms, and kept his face turned +resolutely away from the inviting table. His host correctly interpreted +the action. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor little devil—grit, pure grit!" he said under his breath. "How +many papers have you got left?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +The lad counted like lightning. "Ten," he answered. "I'll soon get 'em +off now. Luck's wiv me dis mornin'." The ghost of a smile lighted his +face. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll take them all," the other said, handing over a second shilling. +</P> + +<P> +The lad fumbled for change and the fumbling was due to honest +agitation. He was not used to this kind of treatment. +</P> + +<P> +"No, that's all right," the other interposed. +</P> + +<P> +"But they're only a h'ypenny," urged the lad, for his natural cupidity +had given way to a certain fine faculty not too common in any grade of +human society. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm buying them at a penny this morning. I've got some friends +who'll be glad to give a penny to know all about Kruger's guns." He too +softened the g in Kruger in consideration of his visitor's +idiosyncrasies. +</P> + +<P> +"You won't be mykin' anythink on them, y'r gryce," said the lad with a +humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford's heart wide; for to him +heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll get at them in other ways," Stafford rejoined. "I'll get my +profit, never fear. Now what about breakfast? You've sold all your +papers, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm fair ready for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's +glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was +relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, sit down—this breakfast isn't cold yet.... But, no, you'd +better have a wash-up first, if you can wait," Stafford added, and rang +a bell. +</P> + +<P> +"Wot, 'ere—brekfist wiv y'r gryce 'ere?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I've had mine"—Stafford made a slight grimace—"and there's +plenty left for you, if you don't mind eating after me." +</P> + +<P> +"I dusted me clothes dis mornin'," said the boy, with an attempt to +justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast. "An' I washed me +'ends—but pypers is muck," he added. +</P> + +<P> +A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the +bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot +again. It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his +bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had +eaten since his return to England after three years' absence, +everything was in order. +</P> + +<P> +For Gleg was still more the child of habit—and decorous habit—than +himself. It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his +master's philanthropic activities. Much as he disapproved of them, he +could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow +disarmed him. He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and would +have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot from his +hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his master's smile +was worth a good deal to Gleg. It was an exacting if well-paid service, +for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in Europe, and he had +grown excessively so during the past three years, which, as Gleg +observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in him. He had grown +more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his daily life, and +ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct personal share in his +life. There were no more little tea-parties and dejeuners chez lui, +duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or aunt—for there was no +embassy in Europe where he had not relatives. +</P> + +<P> +"'Ipped—a bit 'ipped. 'E 'as found 'em out, the 'uzzies," Gleg had +observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in +his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who +had 'ipped him. +</P> + +<P> +As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of +marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford +read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the +food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an occasional +glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped +across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire—for, late +September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had come and gone, +leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome. +</P> + +<P> +At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were +decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is the +coffee hot?" +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time," +the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Was there enough?" +</P> + +<P> +"I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade +and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot—tykes y'r longer to +drink it," he added. +</P> + +<P> +Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his money. +He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of a +crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not +fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the neglect +of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour to a waif +of humanity. +</P> + +<P> +As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like +him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them +would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal. The +words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: +</P> + +<P> +"War Inevitable—Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the Nozzle +with War Stores—Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement—Sullen and +Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." ... And so on. +</P> + +<P> +And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter +and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, +this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this +sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So much +withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with +which to deal with their miseries—perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped +up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease and loss. +</P> + +<P> +He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the heading +of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, aloud, with +a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the breakfasts will +be fewer. It works down one way or another—it all works down to this +poor little devil and his kind." +</P> + +<P> +"Now, what's your name?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Jigger," was the reply. +</P> + +<P> +"What else?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothin', y'r gryce." +</P> + +<P> +"Jigger—what?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's the only nyme I got," was the reply. +</P> + +<P> +"What's your father's or your mother's name?" +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't got none. I only got a sister." +</P> + +<P> +"What's her name?" +</P> + +<P> +"Lou," he answered. "That's her real name. But she got a fancy name +yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a hunderd +uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh—Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of +his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who +gave her that name? Who were her godfathers and godmothers?" +</P> + +<P> +"I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd +have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was always +plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy." +</P> + +<P> +"What did she do before yesterday?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't +sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild—for she 'adn't +'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, +'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a +start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, +'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, an' +says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if you'll +be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' Lou says, +says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me bread-baskit full, an' +then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er flowers, an' give 'er five +bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv that, an' 'ad brekfist; an' +sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took her off. She's in the opery +now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her +picture 's on the 'oardings—" +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er—that's 'er!" he said, pointing +to the mantel-piece. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait +in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when +Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it then. It +had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had occupied +for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his country's +work—and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to meet the +heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known. +</P> + +<P> +"So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded +assent. +</P> + +<P> +"Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +The boy did so. "It's 'er—done up for the opery," he declared. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to +her." +</P> + +<P> +"Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to +that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be +cold,' I says to Lou." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford laughed softly at the illustration. Many a time the lad +snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his +figure of speech from real life. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Me—I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the +two shillings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a +fair start." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm +going to give you a sovereign," he said—"twenty shillings, for your +fair start; and I want you to come to me here next Sunday-week to +breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it." +</P> + +<P> +"Me—y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's face. +"Twenty bob—me!" +</P> + +<P> +The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He +seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't +do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with +the papers, and tell me what you've done." +</P> + +<P> +"Gawd—my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in +the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a +whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late +visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, +with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way. +</P> + +<P> +With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he said. +"Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows—who knows!" +</P> + +<P> +His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over +and stood looking at it musingly. +</P> + +<P> +"You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't +pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell +it—not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or +is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that +can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and +kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, for +gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? Vain, +vain, vain—and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There might +be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women weren't so +dishonourable—the secret orchard rather than the open highway and +robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!" +</P> + +<P> +He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight +before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, coming +back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old memories, empty +out the box-room, and come across some useless and discarded things. +I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly useless business +turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all into the junk-shop, +and cuts his losses." +</P> + +<P> +He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page—the +social column first—with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't +done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, +with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of +them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables—New +York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little +with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he +had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not +come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered. +And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a +land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; +for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still +impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That refuge had +its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather +heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the +gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road. +</P> + +<P> +It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock +on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as he +went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places like +Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to +stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where +their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got +farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes +of people—those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the +Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years +had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more +keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long +before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and more +the master of England—new-made wealth; and some of it was too +ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge. +</P> + +<P> +All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following +announcement: +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a +few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to +receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the +Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign Minister, +the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of Tynemouth, and Mr. +Tudor Tempest." +</P> + +<P> +"'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she would. +She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths to the +claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth to the +desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has done, +and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. The +Slavonian Ambassador—him, and the French Foreign Minister! That looks +like a useful combination at this moment—at this moment. She has a +gift for combinations, a wonderful skill, a still more wonderful +perception—and a remarkable unscrupulousness. She's the naturally +ablest woman I have ever known; but she wants to take short-cuts to a +worldly Elysium, and it can't be done, not even with three times three +millions—and three millions was her price." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly he got up and went over to a table where were several +dispatch-boxes. Opening one, he drew forth from the bottom, where he +had placed it nearly three years ago, a letter. He looked at the long, +sliding handwriting, so graceful and fine, he caught the perfume which +had intoxicated Rudyard Byng, and, stooping down, he sniffed the +dispatch-box. He nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"She's pervasive in everything," he murmured. He turned over several +other packets of letters in the box. "I apologize," he said, +ironically, to these letters. "I ought to have banished her long ago, +but, to tell you the truth, I didn't realize how much she'd influence +everything—even in a box." He laughed cynically, and slowly opened the +one letter which had meant so much to him. +</P> + +<P> +There was no show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth showed +any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious and +scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and read +it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked at it +since he received it in Vienna and had placed it in the dispatch-box. +</P> + +<P> +"Dear Ian," it ran, "our year of probation—that is the word isn't +it?—is up; and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am going +to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very strong, and +not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being reminded +daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I have had so +many good hours together, there has been such confidence between us, +that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall always want +to go to you, and ask your advice, and learn to be wise. You will not +turn a cold shoulder on me, will you? I think you yourself realized +that my wish to wait a year before giving a final answer was proof that +I really had not that in my heart which would justify me in saying what +you wished me to say. Oh yes, you knew; and the last day when you bade +me good-bye you almost said as much! I was so young, so unschooled, +when you first asked me, and I did not know my own mind; but I know it +now, and so I go to Rudyard Byng for better or for worse—" +</P> + +<P> +He suddenly stopped reading, sat back in his chair, and laughed +sardonically. +</P> + +<P> +"For richer, for poorer'—now to have launched out on the first phrase, +and to have jibbed at the second was distinctly stupid. The quotation +could only have been carried off with audacity of the ripest kind. 'For +better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, +till death us do part, amen—' That was the way to have done it, if it +was to be done at all. Her cleverness forsook her when she wrote that +letter. 'Our year of probation'—she called it that. Dear, dear, what a +poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! She was sworn to me, bound +to me, wanted a year in which to have her fling before she settled +down, and she threw me over—like that." +</P> + +<P> +He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the +fire, threw it in, and watched it burn. +</P> + +<P> +"I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly +now. "A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute. It's a +terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to +keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman. If anything had happened +to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor all the +King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" +</P> + +<P> +Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply. Unlike +him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, +tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the +waste-basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and humiliation. +Finally, she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it into the flames. +She had watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not hotter than that +in her own eyes, which presently were washed by a flood of bitter tears +and passionate and unavailing protest. For hours she had sobbed, and +when she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every +word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since: the sceptic +comment at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the +whispered detraction in every loud accent of praise. +</P> + +<P> +"Dear Jasmine," his letter had run, "it is kind of you to tell me of +your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands +news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all. I am fortunate +in having my information from the very fountain of first knowledge. You +have seen and done much in the past year; and the end of it all is more +fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire or conceive. You +will adorn the new sphere into which you enter. You are of those who do +not need training or experience: you are a genius, whose chief +characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom nature and +Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you it is given +to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We have had good +times together—happy conversations and some cheerful and entertaining +dreams and purposes. We have made the most of opportunity, each in his +and her own way. But, my dear Jasmine, don't ever think that you will +need to come to me for advice and to learn to be wise. I know of no one +from whom I could learn, from whom I have learned, so I much. I am +deeply your debtor for revelations which never could have come to me +without your help. There is a wonderful future before you, whose +variety let Time, not me, attempt to reveal. I shall watch your going +on"—(he did not say goings on)—"your Alpine course, with clear +memories of things and hours dearer to me than all the world, and with +which I would not have parted for the mines of the Rand. I lose them +now for nothing—and less than nothing. I shall be abroad for some +years, and, meanwhile, a new planet will swim into the universe of +matrimony. I shall see the light shining, but its heavenly orbit will +not be within my calculations. Other astronomers will watch, and some +no doubt will pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of +the flower that was turned into a star! +<BR><BR> +"Always yours sincerely, IAN STAFFORD." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away to +his writing-table. There he sat for a while and answered several notes, +among them one to Alice Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, whose +red parasol still hung above the mantel-piece, a relic of the +Zambesi—and of other things. +</P> + +<P> +Periodically Lady Tynemouth's letters had come to him while he was +abroad, and from her, in much detail, he had been informed of the rise +of Mrs. Byng, of her great future, her "delicious" toilettes, her great +entertainments for charity, her successful attempts to gather round her +the great figures in the political and diplomatic world; and her +partial rejection of Byng's old mining and financial confreres and +their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their +place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately +aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. +</P> + +<P> +Ian had read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could and +would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in the +not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not +malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, +and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her +invitation now to spend the next week-end with her and her husband; and +then, with letters to two young nephews in his pocket, he prepared to +sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the +children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a +generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had +married, he would not have been content with a childless home—with a +childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to +him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had +no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like +her and me," Lady Tynemouth's letter had said. +</P> + +<P> +Three millions then—and how much more now?—and big houses, and no +children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had +come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom +life had been checkered but never dull. +</P> + +<P> +He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes +caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed. +</P> + +<P> +"It was all done that night at the opera," he said. "Jasmine made up +her mind then to marry him, ... I wonder what the end will be.... Sad +little, bad little girl.... The mess of pottage at the last? Quien +sabe!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" +</H3> + +<P> +The air of the late September morning smote Stafford's cheeks +pleasantly, and his spirits rose as he walked up St. James's Street. +His step quickened imperceptibly to himself, and he nodded to or shook +hands with half a dozen people before he reached Piccadilly. Here he +completed the purchases for his school-boy nephews, and then he went to +a sweet-shop in Regent Street to get chocolates for his young +relatives. As he entered the place he was suddenly brought to a +standstill, for not two dozen yards away at a counter was Jasmine Byng. +</P> + +<P> +She did not see him enter, and he had time to note what matrimony, and +the three years and the three million pounds, had done to her. She was +radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but +increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark +green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and +texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a single +brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In the hat, +too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter green. +</P> + +<P> +She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who +was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her +with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always her +way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest, +magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her, nothing of charm +and beauty and eloquence,—how eloquent she had always been!—of +esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full +toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some +piled-up tables in the centre of the shop. +</P> + +<P> +Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes, +at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance—he could +not say trouble—had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the +corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic, +self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent +and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old +days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of +these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a +lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap +into full exercise, or even to recognize itself. +</P> + +<P> +So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been +capable—not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to +acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of +fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster, +his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even +wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves—so dead that +no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in his +breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was conscious of +a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to the situation. +</P> + +<P> +Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of +the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and contempt for +one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other women—to +that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and ill-natured soil +exhausted of its power, of its generous and native health. There was a +strange apathy in his senses, an emotional stillness, as it were, the +atrophy of all the passionate elements of his nature. But because of +this he was the better poised, the more evenly balanced, the more +perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or dimmed by any stress of +emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and his forward tread had +leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one part of himself far below +the level of activity or sensation, while new resolves, new powers of +mind, new designs were set in motion to make his career a real and +striking success. He had the most friendly ear and the full confidence +of the Prime Minister, who was also Foreign Secretary—he had got that +far; and now, if one of his great international schemes could but be +completed, an ambassadorship would be his reward, and one of +first-class importance. The three years had done much for him in a +worldly way, wonderfully much. +</P> + +<P> +As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre—not by +her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter selfishness +and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's fires were out, +and that he could meet her without the agitation of a single nerve. He +despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He knew the strain +that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather plangent +grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the power that +it would bring—and the notoriety, too, again an inheritance from her +grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and he could the more +easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion were still. +</P> + +<P> +She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, +the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of +gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and +experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, +then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was +still there, he felt; but how much else was also there—of charm, of +elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to +discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare +splendour, variety and vanity. +</P> + +<P> +Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His +intellectual side would always be stimulated by her, she would always +"incite him to mental riot," as she had often said. Time had flown, +love had flown, and passion was dead; but friendship stayed. Yes, +friendship stayed—in spite of all. Her conduct had made him blush for +her, had covered him with shame, but she was a woman, and therefore +weak—he had come to that now. She was on a lower plateau of honour, +and therefore she must be—not forgiven—that was too banal; but she +must be accepted as she was. And, after all, there could be no more +deception; for opportunity and occasion no longer existed. He would go +and speak to her now. +</P> + +<P> +At that moment he was aware that she had caught sight of him, and that +she was startled. She had not known of his return to England, and she +was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. The words of the letter he had +written her when she had thrown him over rushed through her brain now, +and hurt her as much as they did the first day they had been received. +She became a little pale, and turned as though to find some other +egress from the shop. There being none, there was but one course, and +that was to go out as though she had not seen him. He had not even been +moved at all at seeing her; but with her it was different. She was +disturbed—in her vanity? In her peace? In her pride? In her senses? In +her heart? In any, or each, or all? But she was disturbed: her +equilibrium was shaken. He had scorched her soul by that letter to her, +so gently cold, so incisive, so subtly cruel, so deadly in its irony, +so final—so final. +</P> + +<P> +She was ashamed, and no one else in the world but Ian Stafford could so +have shamed her. Power had been given to her, the power of great +riches—the three millions had been really four—and everything and +everybody, almost, was deferential towards her. Had it brought her +happiness, or content, or joy? It had brought her excitement—much of +that—and elation, and opportunity to do a thousand things, and to +fatigue herself in a thousand ways; but had it brought happiness? +</P> + +<P> +If it had, the face of this man who was once so much to her, and whom +she had flung into outer darkness, was sufficient to cast a cloud over +it. She felt herself grow suddenly weak, but she determined to go out +of the place without appearing to see him. +</P> + +<P> +He was conscious of it all, saw it out of a corner of his eye, and as +she started forward, he turned, deliberately walked towards her, and, +with a cheerful smile, held out his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Now, what good fortune!" he said, spiritedly. "Life plays no tricks, +practices no deception this time. In a book she'd have made us meet on +a grand staircase or at a court ball." +</P> + +<P> +As he said this, he shook her hand warmly, and again and again, as +would be fitting with old friends. He had determined to be master of +the situation, and to turn the moment to the credit of his account—not +hers; and it was easy to do it, for love was dead, and the memory of +love atrophied. +</P> + +<P> +Colour came back to her face. Confusion was dispelled, a quick and +grateful animation took possession of her, to be replaced an instant +after by the disconcerting reflection that there was in his face or +manner not the faintest sign of emotion or embarrassment. From his +attitude they might have been good friends who had not met for some +time; nothing more. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, what a place to meet!" she said. "It really ought to have been at +a green-grocer's, and the apotheosis of the commonplace would have been +celebrated. But when did you return? How long do you remain in England?" +</P> + +<P> +Ah, the sense of relief to feel that he was not reproaching her for +anything, not impeaching her by an injured tone and manner, which so +many other men had assumed with infinitely less right or cause than he! +</P> + +<P> +"I came back thirty-six hours ago, and I stay at the will of the +master-mind," he answered. +</P> + +<P> +The old whimsical look came into her face, the old sudden flash which +always lighted her eyes when a daring phrase was born in her mind, and +she instantly retorted: +</P> + +<P> +"The master-mind—how self-centred you are!" +</P> + +<P> +Whatever had happened, certainly the old touch of intellectual +diablerie was still hers, and he laughed good-humoredly. Yes, she might +be this or that, she might be false or true, she might be one who had +sold herself for mammon, and had not paid tribute to the one great +natural principle of being, to give life to the world, man and woman +perpetuating man and woman; but she was stimulating and delightful +without effort. +</P> + +<P> +"And what are you doing these days?" he asked. "One never hears of you +now." +</P> + +<P> +This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and +she replied: "That's because you are so secluded—in your kindergarten +for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" +</P> + +<P> +It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough +to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and +buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish—and determined. +</P> + +<P> +"You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily. +</P> + +<P> +"It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied. "It is sure to +make one a host of enemies." +</P> + +<P> +"So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and there +was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; +but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her +murderous treatment of him. +</P> + +<P> +"But your career is not yet begun," he remarked. +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes flashed—was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire +of intellectual combat? +</P> + +<P> +"I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort. +</P> + +<P> +"That is not a career—it is casual exploration in a dark continent," +he rejoined. +</P> + +<P> +"Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly. Suddenly a +thought lighted her eyes. "Are you by any chance free to-morrow night +to dine with us—quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see +you—and hear you," she added, teasingly. +</P> + +<P> +He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked +her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the +ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend an +evening where she sparkled. +</P> + +<P> +"I am free, and will come with pleasure," he replied. +</P> + +<P> +"That is delightful," she rejoined, "and please bring a box of bons +mots with you. But you will come, then—?" She was going to add, "Ian," +but she paused. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I'll come—Jasmine," he answered, coolly, having read her +hesitation aright. +</P> + +<P> +She flushed, was embarrassed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod she +left him. +</P> + +<P> +In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny hand +clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in her +eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall—he +shall—he shall!" she gasped, angrily. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE APPIAN WAY +</H3> + +<P> +"Cape to Cairo be damned!" +</P> + +<P> +The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed +slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his +desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, +as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and +beat the floor impatiently with his foot. +</P> + +<P> +At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly +at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which +Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the +pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in +on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely +realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and +perilous days—and for himself less often than ever before, so had +London and London life worked upon him—that he, or those who shared +with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in +dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just +uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more. +</P> + +<P> +Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further. +"Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the British +Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want is the +present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of us. I +want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five +millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native +labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with +Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want to +see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng." +</P> + +<P> +The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously bitter. "That's +what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry Whalen? Well, you +can want it with a little less blither and a little more manners." +</P> + +<P> +A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which +had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened +in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger +looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on: +</P> + +<P> +"It doesn't matter what you want—not a great deal, if the others agree +generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it matters +much in any case. What have you come to see me about?" +</P> + +<P> +"I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to be. +It isn't—" +</P> + +<P> +Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would +do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with +a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he +burst into a laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I +oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he +broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, +you'd better try to see me at my chambers—or at the office in London +Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles you. You +take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let me say in +passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor +less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from +the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the +cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more of you than I did +then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want to see you any more +or any fewer. But, Barry"—his voice changed, grew warmer, +kinder—"circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of all of us +are shaped differently—yours as well as mine—here in this +pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; +and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our +Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on—in our +front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble +buccaneer—not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, where +Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and—and, 'If +you please, sir, your bath is ready'! ... Don't be an idiot-child, +Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let myself go. I don't +do it often these days—not since Jameson spilt the milk and the can +went trundling down the area. It's little time we get for dreaming, +these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the world's work and +our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, Barry; it's dreams +that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the +stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be Cape to Cairo in +good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please.... Why, what's +got into you? And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow? +You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein's to-night. Is there +anything that's skulking at our heels to hurt us?" +</P> + +<P> +The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came +over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, +Byng resuming his seat meanwhile. +</P> + +<P> +Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his +words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends +to bring up to-night—a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead +as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite +of Milner and Jo?" +</P> + +<P> +A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, +loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he +looked as though squaring himself to resist attack. +</P> + +<P> +"Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to +say—or bring up, you call it?" +</P> + +<P> +"He's going to say that some one is betraying us—all we do that's of +any importance and most we say that counts—to Kruger and Leyds. He's +going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle." +</P> + +<P> +Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became +quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming—or you—suspect?" he asked, +with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the +face; then he said, slowly: +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at +least three years old, and you know them. +</P> + +<P> +"Krool?" +</P> + +<P> +"Krool—for sure." +</P> + +<P> +"What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we +say and do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a +consideration." +</P> + +<P> +"Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort +of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?" +</P> + +<P> +Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it +very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there +were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or +two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England +knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London +life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by +himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, +had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin +and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the muscles. +Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself to brandy +and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two or three +minutes' silence, and then he said: +</P> + +<P> +"There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't +Krool." +</P> + +<P> +"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my +friend." +</P> + +<P> +"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I am +to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't know." +He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn. +</P> + +<P> +He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and +with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her +to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to +himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having babbled. But +certainly there had been leakage—there had been leakage regarding most +critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause him to say +reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn: +</P> + +<P> +"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious tone. +</P> + +<P> +He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was +against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything by +his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago. +</P> + +<P> +"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped in," +Barry continued. +</P> + +<P> +"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where +trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as his +visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"—he pointed. "Glue +your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell me if you can +hear anything—any word I say." +</P> + +<P> +Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather +louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for +some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not a word—scarcely a murmur." +</P> + +<P> +"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like a +glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading +into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside +baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the +two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud." +</P> + +<P> +The test produced the same result. +</P> + +<P> +"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical +laugh. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled +him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he had +suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had regarded +Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the Partners all +believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought came to him, +too terrible to put into words—even in his own mind. +</P> + +<P> +There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to Byng. +There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who had +been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing the +hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind of +master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could do. Yes, +there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there was Mrs. +Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the private +secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each other. What came to +Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out some words of good-bye +with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for he had a chivalrous heart +and mind, and he was not prone to be malicious. +</P> + +<P> +"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a +quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, +whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I +think—not here, my friend." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the +veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for +us, Byng—not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm +spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal +jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it +comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one +else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no +good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will +run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, you +and I will be sick if we're not there—yes, even you with your +millions, Byng." +</P> + +<P> +With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the +veld, and shook it warmly. +</P> + +<P> +"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently. "But we're +all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here." +</P> + +<P> +"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the +music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of us. I +see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong shop. +We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas—big Baas, let's go +where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's going on +round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; where you +can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can +have a run for your money." +</P> + +<P> +Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses +strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not +ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an +Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than +the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish—I can see. The Celt can always +see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this old +land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, and +nobody cares a copper about anything that matters—" +</P> + +<P> +"About Cape to Cairo, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, just +the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these isles. +We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the +organs too." +</P> + +<P> +Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us +a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects +after the foie gras, Barry." +</P> + +<P> +Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the +hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he +did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece. +A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened. +</P> + +<P> +"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've +degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is +the matter? I've got everything—everything—everything." +</P> + +<P> +Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening +dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof. +</P> + +<P> +"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear—that you have thrown me +over—me—to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't +go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you." +</P> + +<P> +His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a +little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time +we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in +the full circle once again. There's work to do—more than ever there +was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning +business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must commune +together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, there's also +the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and +Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, +and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the dinner. As +soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table." +</P> + +<P> +With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft +golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he whispered, +softly, "I hate leaving you, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? +It's too late to put him off." +</P> + +<P> +"There's no need to put him off or to send him away—such old friends +as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person +that's got anything to say about that." +</P> + +<P> +She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that, +coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his +friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had +forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and +she had said nothing, done nothing. +</P> + +<P> +As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far +depths of her eyes—emerged, and was instantly gone again to the +obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on +Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise—and no +perplexity—there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she +answered: +</P> + +<P> +"I don't want to seem too conventional, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he rejoined. +"What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some latitude." +</P> + +<P> +"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the +responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the +dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she +closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of +satisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him. +</P> + +<P> +Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected. +"Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept +into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're +wonderful in blue—a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to +remember that gown before—years ago—" +</P> + +<P> +She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and +ruthless ruffian! A gown—this gown—years ago! My bonny boy, do you +think I wear my gowns for years?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a +frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it +looks all right—a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as +new." +</P> + +<P> +"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived. +Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate +wearing them two times." +</P> + +<P> +"Then what do they do with them—after the two times?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, +if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor +cousins or their particular friends—" +</P> + +<P> +"Their particular friends—?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her +very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart—" +</P> + +<P> +"Wait. What's 'the Mart'?" +</P> + +<P> +"The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked +discount." +</P> + +<P> +"And what becomes of them then?" +</P> + +<P> +"They are bought by ladies less fortunate." +</P> + +<P> +"Ladies who wear them?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what else would they do? Wear them—of course, dear child." +</P> + +<P> +Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me +there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I +could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours—of yours." +</P> + +<P> +She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but +you haven't known they were mine; that's all." +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like +you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine." +</P> + +<P> +She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you +are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my +clothes." +</P> + +<P> +He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down approvingly. +"Because I only see a general effect, but I always remember colour. +Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, or whatever the +miserable coffin-shop is called?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, not directly." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you mean by 'not directly'?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, +then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case—a +girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and he +suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because we +were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of +lucky find—that's what he called it." +</P> + +<P> +Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of +Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like +that you have on?" +</P> + +<P> +"This—let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, of +course." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown +cost—perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye. +</P> + +<P> +"Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty—maybe," she replied, with +a little burst of merriment. +</P> + +<P> +"And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and then +seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ruddy, do not be nasty—or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more +than twice—some of them a great many times, except when I detested +them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for +trade. That influences many ladies, of course." +</P> + +<P> +He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, or +something still harsher. +</P> + +<P> +"'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he answered. "It's +all such a hollow make-believe." +</P> + +<P> +"What is?" +</P> + +<P> +She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was +vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him—not exactly toward +her, but a change, nevertheless. +</P> + +<P> +"The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he +said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but +we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not +putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of +emptiness—of famine somewhere." +</P> + +<P> +He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow +contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of +life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, +and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to +do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind of +thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had forgotten. I +was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I was setting up +my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other fellows who +hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, Wilberforce and +I—well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into sets of people who +can afford to do certain things, and we leave such a lot of people +behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we would have clung to, +if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, or been so soddenly +selfish." +</P> + +<P> +A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges—oh, Boanerges Byng! +'Owever can you be so heloquent!" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that +look which had fascinated him—and so many others—in their day. The +perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, +and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, +here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in +his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly. +</P> + +<P> +"You exquisite siren—you siren of all time," he said, with a note of +joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face +back from him.... "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did—who knows! And now you +come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my +jasmine-flower." +</P> + +<P> +His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, +belying the passion and rapture of his words. +</P> + +<P> +In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She had +heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big impulses +working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was something +moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps it was only +a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a strange impression +on her. It was remembered by them both long after, when life had +scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet and they had +passed through flood and fire. +</P> + +<P> +She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an +element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him +gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye +for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human +nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never +understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business—and +politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to +understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and +insight of which she had not thought him capable. +</P> + +<P> +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers. Perhaps you did—who knows! ... And now you come down through +the centuries purified by Time—" +</P> + +<P> +The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a time +she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again and +again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in wild +dreams of her far past—once as a priestess of Isis, once as a +Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a +courtezan of Alexandria or Athens—many times as that: one of the +gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of +culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her +will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world were +well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but while +yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time had left +the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering look.... Often +and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had haunted her, +even before she was married; and she had been alternately humiliated +and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of +the dreams of a past life—that she was a slave in Athens who saved her +people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her sing to him, in a +voice quite in keeping with her personality, delicate and fine and +wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its quality, with trills +like a lark—a little meretricious but captivating. He had also written +for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the +letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill;<BR> + It stilled the tumult and the overthrow<BR> + When Athens trembled to the people's will;<BR> + I knew it—'twas a thousand years ago.<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "I see the fountains, and the gardens where<BR> + You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow;<BR> + I feel the quiver of the raptured air<BR> + I heard you in the Athenian grove—I hear you now."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband +steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, +where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did he +understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really talk +to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled out of +any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened up to his +sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her thought, his +was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because it had not +been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really tried to +find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness and +subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and untrammelled +exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and adventure +upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of remorse, went +through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length and looked at +her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their natures a +chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth and +excitement and variety—oh, infinite variety there had been!—but had +the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full soul +of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the governing +influence in their marriage where she was concerned? +</P> + +<P> +Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years +of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone +together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which he +had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of +a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart. Even in +his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious. She had +been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic +enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from +being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and +yet—and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good +causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she +had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a +moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct +personal sympathy? +</P> + +<P> +Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a +little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it +that he was disappointed that they were two and no more—always two, +and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him +say hard things about their own two commendable selves? +</P> + +<P> +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purified by +Time, to be my jasmine-flower"— +</P> + +<P> +She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And +what were you a thousand years ago, my man?" +</P> + +<P> +He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose +fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting +Caesar." +</P> + +<P> +It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long +ago. +</P> + +<P> +Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened +wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared +to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it—I have it. +This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we met. It's +the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the same style. +Why, I see it all as plain as can be—there at the opera. And you wore +blue the day I tried to propose to you and couldn't, and asked you down +to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" He laughed, happily almost. +"Yes, you wore blue the first time we met—like this." +</P> + +<P> +"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those +first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily smoothed +out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that day three +years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering that Ian +Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown just +before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue +this night—to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And +presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house—and +with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she +meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had +never met one—not one, neither bishop nor octogenarian. +</P> + +<P> +"Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, +lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down and +apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll—" +</P> + +<P> +There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that Mr. +Stafford was in the drawing-room. +</P> + +<P> +"Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," +she added to her husband—"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel +sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house." +</P> + +<P> +Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her +arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over +things—over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of life +than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; but +perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together—eh?" There was +a strange, troubled longing in his look. +</P> + +<P> +She nodded and smiled. "Certainly—to-night when you get back," she +said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She +laughed, and so did he. +</P> + +<P> +As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a +shadow in her eyes and over her face. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said. +</P> + +<P> +Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and +looked back, she said: +</P> + +<P> +"Poor boy ... Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added with a +nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness she +entered to Ian Stafford. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER X +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST +</H3> + +<P> +As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and +existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He +was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's +houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, and +many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless +legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had built +for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose +names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly +acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that +coarsened taste—an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit +you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng +had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could +always be had in London for a price, where time had softened all the +outlines, had given that subdued harmony in architecture which only +belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any money those wonderful +Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which had a glory quite their +own. There must, therefore, be an air of newness in the new mansion, +which was too much in keeping with the new money, the gold as yet not +worn smooth by handling, the staring, brand-new sovereigns looking like +impostors. +</P> + +<P> +As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of evening, +he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic sense. It was a +big building, severely simple in design, yet with the rich grace, +spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian palace: compact, +generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully proportionate. +</P> + +<P> +"Egad, Byng, you had a good architect—and good sense!" he said to +himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on the +scene too." +</P> + +<P> +The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the +essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see. +</P> + +<P> +When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and +outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be +seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was +noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, +and the old furniture—Italian, Spanish—which relieved the +spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence +to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill. +</P> + +<P> +As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which +maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the +hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring +of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency +to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate +artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine. +</P> + +<P> +The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It +was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking +exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its +nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its +half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the +arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much +like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew that +Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally flamboyant +taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it were. She had, like +a literary artist, polished and refined and stippled the effect, till +something of personal touch had gone, and there remained classic +elegance without the sting of life and the idiosyncrasy of its +creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room would not quite do, +though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment was not yet +complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's sitting-room his +breath came a little quicker, for here would be the real test; and +curiosity was stirring greatly in him. +</P> + +<P> +Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a +flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous audacity. +Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian lamps and +lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up cushions, +the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; but +everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with that +paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he picked +them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked by +marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all showing +the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, however, +that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them he had read +with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in one of them he +found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath which she had +written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing point. There +were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it was borne in on +him that not many of these annotated books belonged to the past three +years. The millions had come, the power and the place; but something +had gone with their coming. +</P> + +<P> +He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she entered; +and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of his +figure, the poise of the intellectual head—the type of a perfect, +well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and +executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but +she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of her +skirts and came forward. +</P> + +<P> +He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and +he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was +near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw her. She +watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was piqued to +observe that he who had in that far past always swept her with an +admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only gave her +deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the note to all +she said and did that evening—the daring, the brilliance, the light +allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment on the +present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by beauty and +by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild and desperate +revolt. +</P> + +<P> +For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's +association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of +punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing +that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a +combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not +happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet she +had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in a +sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written +her, when she turned from him to the man she married. +</P> + +<P> +The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for +his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old +place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago—ah, it was so +long!—came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, +still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world—in +that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes +had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her +realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual +passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical attraction +Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that he gave her +mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who knew the song +her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her and with so +cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not triumph in his +self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always by his careless +indifference to everything that had ever been between them. If he +treated her so because of what she had done to him, with what savagery +might not she be treated, if all that had happened in the last three +years were open as a book before him! +</P> + +<P> +Her husband—she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the +past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and +daring assault upon her heart—or emotions—from quarters of unusual +distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true +proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five +months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make +the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought a +change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard. +</P> + +<P> +"Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why +did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not realize +that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the forces +contending against her purity and devotion would never have gathered at +her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, if she had +loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have loved him, +ought to have loved him. +</P> + +<P> +The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men +instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the +imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call +upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without +intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if +not the censure, of the world—or so she thought; and in the main she +was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would +have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three +years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, +putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you—what you +are." +</P> + +<P> +Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily +greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to +dine with Wallstein. +</P> + +<P> +"But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said—"such old +friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that +kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he +continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope +Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone—in a heavy +movement of good-nature and magnanimity. +</P> + +<P> +"Changed—greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford +to himself. "This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has +vanished, and other things are disappearing." +</P> + +<P> +At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite +appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare +simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and +stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a +mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat +with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for clever +women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his life, +save with men in his own profession chiefly. +</P> + +<P> +But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a +change, and the transition was made with much skill and sensitiveness. +Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more reflective note, and +the drift of the conversation changed. Books brought the new current; +and soon she had him moving almost unconsciously among old scenes, +recalling old contests of ideas, and venturing on bold reproductions of +past intellectual ideals. But though they were in this dangerous field +of the past, he did not once betray a sign of feeling, not even when, +poring over Coventry Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she +read the lines which they had read together so long ago, with no +thought of any significance to themselves: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "With all my will, but much against my heart,<BR> + We two now part.<BR> + My very Dear,<BR> + Our solace is the sad road lies so clear...<BR> + Go thou to East, I West.<BR> + We will not say<BR> + There's any hope, it is so far away..."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he had +finished: +</P> + +<P> +"A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story +was—a hopeless love, of course. An affaire—an 'episode'—London +ladies now call such things." +</P> + +<P> +"You find London has changed much since you went away—in three years +only?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Three years—why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged to +live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of +pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with the +clock." +</P> + +<P> +She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the mantel-piece. +"See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, the little silver +hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but what time is it +really—for you, for instance?" +</P> + +<P> +"In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so +intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger. +</P> + +<P> +"It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so exactly. You +did not miss it by a fraction." +</P> + +<P> +"It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight +o'clock when I arrived—by the world's time. Since then I have been +dead to time—and the world." +</P> + +<P> +"You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, the middle place—then you are in purgatory?" +</P> + +<P> +"But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with +a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along +so coolly that it incensed her further. +</P> + +<P> +"Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to +still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I +could." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as +she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path—eagerly, +childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied +the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her +more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed +him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not now +a vestige of power over him—either of his senses or his mind; that he +was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose +senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, +eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get—by +what devious ways had she travelled to find it! +</P> + +<P> +As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, +and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a +strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came from +her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her Nelson to +the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, and alone. +Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her sigh—his name, +Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and +clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had +kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and +had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she +was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and +tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born +coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, +to bring him back to her feet—to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. +Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she +deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my exile, as sweet as my +revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to +whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of +that other best which time and love and life truly lived might +accomplish; and the wild thing died in him. +</P> + +<P> +The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of +Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for +the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so +much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary +taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in +so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that +she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward +renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep—that arrogant, +cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the +same sin as the person he despises— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Sweet is the refuge of scorn."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the +price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had +sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a +woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always +present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it +brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It +ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been +impeccable— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "The shaft of slander shot<BR> + Missed only the right blot!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him +with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye. +</P> + +<P> +She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the +door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one +lightning survey—like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of +the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans the +veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the life. His +look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and Stafford +inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife whose hatred +was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized the antipathy. +Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had +endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to +South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to +Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved +invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt +and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured +to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary +his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had made light of +Jasmine's prejudices. +</P> + +<P> +"The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's +servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The +boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, +and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the +reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have +induced his servant to fetch the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused. +</P> + +<P> +"Won't you see her here?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the +room. +</P> + +<P> +For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed +herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou—Jigger's sister," she said, with white +lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad—knocked +down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer a +promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but if +so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer himself. +'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all right—the best +as ever—the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and +streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best—my Gawd, 'e was +the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r gryce, wouldn't +y'r?" +</P> + +<P> +Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was +simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like +Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep +black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech +that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that +Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in +the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and +friendly help. +</P> + +<P> +"Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked. +</P> + +<P> +"It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, +Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it +ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, +not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her +impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to help. +Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three hours +ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they had +done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past three +years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, mothering, +passionately pitiful girl. +</P> + +<P> +"What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to +Krool, who stood outside the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the +suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never miss +the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you'll not miss it—an' 'e ain't got +much left." +</P> + +<P> +"I will go, too—if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You +must let me go. I want to help—so much." +</P> + +<P> +"No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in +Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you +must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you will. +Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know." +</P> + +<P> +He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with +Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that +Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, +somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than in +all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all her +art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one tiny +stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous incident had +softened him, had broken down the barriers which had checked and +baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said +good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand. +</P> + +<P> +Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered +in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, +were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were +never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor +royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there +had been so little time to meditate—had there even been the wish? +</P> + +<P> +The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses +and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and +luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving—nearly two hours—alone +with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the +corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play softly. +Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things she knew +years before, improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took +no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat +there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had +written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet +passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of +wasted chances was in it— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills,<BR> + A word came to me, beautiful and good;<BR> + If I had spoken it, that message of the stars,<BR> + Love would have filled thy blood:<BR> + Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms,<BR> + Thy heart a nestling bird;<BR> + A moment fled—it passed:<BR> + I seek in vain<BR> + For that forgotten word."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away into +an aching silence. +</P> + +<P> +She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead +on them. +</P> + +<P> +"When will it all end—what will become of me!" she cried in pain that +strangled her heart. "I am so bad—so bad. I was doomed from the +beginning. I always felt it so—always, even when things were +brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me—there is nothing, +nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk +in it." +</P> + +<P> +With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went +over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with +the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to +drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a curious +stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to the door +that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light was still +burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was clumsily, +heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the balustrade. He was +singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin harmony with an +occasional laugh— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "For this is the way we do it on the veld,<BR> + When the band begins to play;<BR> + With one bottle on the table and one below the belt,<BR> + When the band begins to play—"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It was Rudyard, and he was drunk—almost helplessly drunk. +</P> + +<P> +A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped it. With +a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing herself on the +divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried her face in her +arms. The hours went by. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART +</H3> + +<P> +"Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own +lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden +days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything—all scientifically +measured." +</P> + +<P> +With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated +surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at +Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then +remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill +yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of +potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting razor? +You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world is the +same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices any +difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by jumping +into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all +concerned. That was what he wanted—to end his own life and exasperate +the foreman." +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to +the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you mean. +It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives or +other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to detect +it?" +</P> + +<P> +The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert +couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; +but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly +verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of +injury artificially inflicted." +</P> + +<P> +"It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," +interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than +suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their +melodramatic indulgences—disfiguring themselves unnecessarily." +</P> + +<P> +Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" +of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose +handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the +conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it +can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll promise +not to use it." +</P> + +<P> +The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes passed +from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to Ian +Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased smile of +gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past three +years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain successful +operation in royal circles. +</P> + +<P> +Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and +held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he asked. +"Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there would be +little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done except by +the aroused expert." +</P> + +<P> +"If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the +needle above her palm. "Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, which +has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as surely as +though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would leave scarcely +the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny pin-prick, as it +were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average coroner's jury and +the average examination of the village doctor, who would die rather +than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart failure' as the +cause of death." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being +so near the point," she said. +</P> + +<P> +"Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically. +</P> + +<P> +"How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, Mr. +Mappin?" asked Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have a +favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the +minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men." +</P> + +<P> +He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes +held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the +needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so +far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high +price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, +perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very +reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their +friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a +great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the +thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament +Square." +</P> + +<P> +The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument will +be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, and +this is an ancient art." He tapped the case. "Turkey and the Mongol +lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for the dog!" +He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke. +</P> + +<P> +This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the +sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the +hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been +smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the dark +news had brought no personal shock. +</P> + +<P> +They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit +to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special carriage, +and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On the night +of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's house had +caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, saving the +lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it was almost +as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader than to take +him to a London hospital. +</P> + +<P> +Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and +Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and there +had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at breakfast in +St. James's Street. +</P> + +<P> +Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely +done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, Stafford +had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the surgeon said +that if the journey was successfully made, the after-results would be +all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had allowed himself to be +included in the house-party at Glencader. +</P> + +<P> +It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have +gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if +it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her +motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do +all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian +and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful pleasure. +Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together with her +duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the +silent house at midnight which had shocked her so—her husband reeling +up the staircase, singing a ribald song. +</P> + +<P> +The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to her. +She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that every +moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that Rudyard had +been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying to settle a +struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the mine itself, of +whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said before he left the +house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with Stafford, persistently +recurred to her mind. +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got +everything—everything, and yet—!" Her eyes were not opened. She had +had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there +had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed—no more. +She did not see that the man she had married to love and to cherish was +slowly changing—was the change only a slow one now?—before her eyes; +losing that brave freshness which had so appealed to London when he +first came back to civilization. Something had been subtracted from his +personality which left it poorer, something had been added which made +it less appealing. Something had given way in him. There had been a +subsidence of moral energy, and force had inwardly declined, though to +all outward seeming he had played a powerful and notable part in the +history of the last three years, gaining influence in many directions, +without suffering excessive notoriety. +</P> + +<P> +On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand +rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from +drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo +and the Vaal. +</P> + +<P> +As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, +putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: +</P> + +<P> +"The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, +my locum tenens, will give him every care." +</P> + +<P> +"When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on +towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled. +</P> + +<P> +"To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can +help it." +</P> + +<P> +"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, graciously. +"Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening. +Is it not thrilling?" +</P> + +<P> +There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian +Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an +enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry +Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was +cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely +bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that +Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was +an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have +been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few +times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at +the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her +husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the +value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the +vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his +friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had +been set free. +</P> + +<P> +Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to +his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the opera, +where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around her +admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that first +production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she had seen +her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for society or for +social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine led had no +charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it suited +Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social environment +of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were well rewarded. +</P> + +<P> +When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had +hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at +length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see +Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with +her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her husband, +and he might return—and return still less a man than when he deserted +her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, because +of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively set, whose +transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous impulses. Last of +all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and influences where +his days had been constantly spent during the past three years. +</P> + +<P> +Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, +deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and +his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first time,—she +had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was given—a vague +suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled her. His letter had +arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her answer was +immediate—she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance first +through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long "acquaintance" with +the great singer. +</P> + +<P> +From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that +rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did not +occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a man of +the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no particular +fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's face to that +of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was nothing behind her +glance which had to do with Al'mah. +</P> + +<P> +In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley +still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, +and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded. +</P> + +<P> +Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the +Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, +and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a +vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really +was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the +limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex +who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had +provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able +and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to +treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant +wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities of +Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute +politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and +outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue and +of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the arena +of international politics. +</P> + +<P> +As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of +Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the +former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply +engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised +negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in +Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet pierced. +This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an almost +scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The author of the +profoundly planned international scheme was this young man, who had +already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look about them in +dismay; for its activities were like those of underground wires; and +every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most remote, was mined and +primed, so that each embassy played its part with almost startling +effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and France was not too near +to prevent the incalculably smooth working of a striking and +far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing that England's +Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with his equally +extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, delighted in; and +Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American high in place had +colloquially said, "that they were up against a proposition which would +take some moving." +</P> + +<P> +The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if +M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, +pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian Stafford's +coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame in +diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the +Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not +captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which +lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who +worked with him. +</P> + +<P> +With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was a +matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of +England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South +Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she +would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed to +the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, would +come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her knees. This +diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent the worst in +any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out +advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many +friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set +her higher than she was now by a political metre. +</P> + +<P> +Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to +Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through +Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was +mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed +save in a general way by the smoking-room fire. +</P> + +<P> +Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming +to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation +to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of +the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent +accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who had +saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still +garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a +place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of +his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she +knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she +married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written +him about Jasmine, again and again,—of what she did and what the world +said—and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the most +jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously jealous, +and, of course, had no right to be. +</P> + +<P> +She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy +which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court proceedings. +Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and Tynemouth gave +it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond of outdoor life, +of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and travel, to have his eye +unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. +</P> + +<P> +"Play the game—play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of +the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it +would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of +his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he +had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's interest +in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never learned. +Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by nice, +clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be +pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice +something to do, and prevented her from being lonely—and all that kind +of thing." +</P> + +<P> +Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round +according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of her +weakness for Ian Stafford—of her open and rather gushing friendship +for him—had an almost honest dislike to seeing him brought into close +relations again with the woman who had dishonourably treated him. +Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly for herself; but that selfish +consideration did not overshadow the feeling that Jasmine had cheated +at cards, as it were; and that Ian ought not to be compelled to play +with her again. +</P> + +<P> +"But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth +concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so +strong—sometimes." +</P> + +<P> +At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted +laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love +with you." +</P> + +<P> +To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's +aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" (he +made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you did." +</P> + +<P> +To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and was +told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This conversation had +occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; and henceforth Alice +had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and wherever possible. So +far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine had, not +ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed to Jasmine +that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was some new cause +to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The Jigger episode had +done much, had altered the latitudes of their association, but the +perihelion of their natures was still far off; and she was +apprehensive, watchful, and anxious. +</P> + +<P> +This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting +and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the +child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, +however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador +and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward +to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him. +</P> + +<P> +A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm +afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble +again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go +there—and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had hoped. +Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are ready. There's +the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the Murderer's Leap, and +Lover's Land—something for all tastes," he added, with a dry note to +his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them +hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these +mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange the +afternoon. +</P> + +<P> +She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the only +ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it impossible +to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and welcome +Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she said. Adrian +stayed behind because he must superintend the arrangements of the +ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian Stafford stayed +because he had letters to write—ostensibly; for he actually meant to +go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message to the Prime +Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning. +</P> + +<P> +When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the +hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the +ball-room about those arrangements?" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign +that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she +laughingly asked him if he would come also. +</P> + +<P> +"If you don't mind—!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he +walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at the +corridor leading to his own little sitting-room. +</P> + +<P> +A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down +into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the +servants' quarters. +</P> + +<P> +"He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but +he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words—"the best +ever!" +</P> + +<P> +Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and +presently made her way to the housekeeper's room. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE KEY IN THE LOCK +</H3> + +<P> +A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room +where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the +bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she +had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the +least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian +sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the +gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting +revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of +delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of +the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people +played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in making +believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She was +dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, but of +exquisite material—the soft green velvet which she had worn when she +met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a perfect gold, +wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were shining—so +blue, so deep, so alluring. +</P> + +<P> +The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and +interest. +</P> + +<P> +"It's her—me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him +like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, +delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those +flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a +holiday by some philanthropic society. +</P> + +<P> +Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the +tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical—almost +suspicious—then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden she +carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger she +had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which he +had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the old +days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the best +feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to grow at +the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried away by +a great temptation—the glitter and show of power and all that gold can +buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and vanity. If +she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be living in a +small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable quarter, with +just enough to enable them to keep their end up with people who had +five thousand a year—with no box at the opera, or house in the +country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a thriving nursery +which would be a promise of future expense—if she had married him! ... +A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in him, and he did not +despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw him coming nearer, as, +standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, one sees trailing over +the distant hills, with the light behind, a welcome and beloved figure +with face turned towards the home in the green glade. +</P> + +<P> +A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he said: +"This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see Mr. +Mappin about it." +</P> + +<P> +As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the +nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative +person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all right; +and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she added, +quizzically. +</P> + +<P> +"Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the bowl +of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly left +the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, +some without solution." +</P> + +<P> +"Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was the +Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by +profession you were by nature." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low +tone, "M. Mennaval—you know him well?" +</P> + +<P> +She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying +her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's +pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship +worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased +pleasures. +</P> + +<P> +"I know him well—yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes of +an afternoon, and if he had more time—or if I had—he would no doubt +come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I have +less of it than anything else." +</P> + +<P> +"A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind +was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though +its full significance did not possess him yet. +</P> + +<P> +"The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone +of meaning. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in +the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had +opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count +Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some +deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the +engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both +ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and +M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat +weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in +him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count +Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in +the balance—dependent upon the success of his great diplomatic scheme. +</P> + +<P> +Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she +could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he +held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind +before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish +hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, of +an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she could +do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the unsettled +claim? If she could help to give him success, would not that, in the +end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon fade, the dust +would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; but his success +would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising through long years +to a great height, and remaining fixed and exalted. With a great belief +she believed in him and what he could do. He was a Sisyphus who could +and would roll the-huge stone to the top of the hill—and ever with +easier power. +</P> + +<P> +The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing +forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however +essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth +while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her +pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing +brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her +enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an +overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift—or curse—of +imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, +of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am +doomed—doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian Stafford +went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often in her +heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when Rudyard +reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties of her +temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the radiance which +broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and wonderful a +figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, that Fate +seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making pitfalls for her +feet. +</P> + +<P> +Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to +smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the +effort to know. +</P> + +<P> +"But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in +Moravia—which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study it." +</P> + +<P> +"If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little +difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he +himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not +got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his diplomacy. +Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian ambassador, had +checkmated him at every move towards the final victory. +</P> + +<P> +"It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling down +at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, suddenly +turning towards him again, she said: +</P> + +<P> +"But you are interested in Moravia—do you find it worth the time?" +</P> + +<P> +"Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and least +consequential way," she replied. +</P> + +<P> +She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now—is it a kind of +telepathy'—that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the +power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and Slavonia. +Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning now, and I +feel"—she smiled significantly—"that I am standing on the brink of +some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, prevents me +from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a low voice. +</P> + +<P> +He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though +he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if +what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came +to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help him +as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was +trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be +the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and +better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; +could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not +dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes? +</P> + +<P> +It was for Britain—for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of +the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race +in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; +and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of +intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and +those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; +only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching +further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had +dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the +Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of +territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and the +settlement of outstanding difficulties. +</P> + +<P> +His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door +to possibilities of prodigious consequence. +</P> + +<P> +He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The crisis +was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it works +itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was spinning +hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and he must +presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called his Patent, +or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In three +months—in two months—in one month—it might be too late, for war was +coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not fulfilled +now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever abandoned. +</P> + +<P> +This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she was +skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually discreet. She +had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia had paid her the +compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would not grieve him to +see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable yet adroit +diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, and who had +a passion for philandering—unlike Count Landrassy, who had no +inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct attack in +great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the dead years +when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his existence, +they understood each other without words. +</P> + +<P> +"It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding +her with almost painful intensity. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you trust me—now—again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and her +small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, whose +eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration. +</P> + +<P> +A mournful smile stole to his lips—and stayed. "Come where we can be +quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe." +</P> + +<P> +"I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room +again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think he ought to sleep now"; +and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger comfortable. +</P> + +<P> +When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear +the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says +she's a fair wonder." +</P> + +<P> +"We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is +just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed. +</P> + +<P> +"Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk +undisturbed." +</P> + +<P> +They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors +and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of +secret triumph. +</P> + +<P> +"We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they +entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between +her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her. +</P> + +<P> +"He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room +enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the +fire. +</P> + +<P> +Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing +into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful +enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened +with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on his +face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made dear by +the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low exclamation of +wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, turning to her as +though from some vision that had chained him, he saw the glow in her +eyes, the profound interest, which was like the passion of a spirit +moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as in the years gone +by—he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of himself he had now +given his very life into her hands, was making her privy to great +designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the chancelleries of +Europe. +</P> + +<P> +Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his +shoulder. "It is wonderful—wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help +you. Will let you let me win back your trust—Ian?" +</P> + +<P> +"I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last +turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally." +</P> + +<P> +"It shall be life," she said, softly. +</P> + +<P> +He turned slowly from her and went towards the door. +</P> + +<P> +"Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened—"before I drive to the +station for Al'mah?" +</P> + +<P> +He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the +corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought +Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said. +</P> + +<P> +"He did," was the reply. +</P> + +<P> +"Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his +glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of +wonder. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"I WILL NOT SING" +</H3> + +<P> +"I will not sing—it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid +with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in +determination. Her words came with low vehemence. +</P> + +<P> +Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing +and gentle. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred +people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear +you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement." +</P> + +<P> +"I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep—you understand!" +she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do what I please +with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the morning. I sang +before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," she added, with +bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng shall not be my +paying hostess." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with excitement. +"I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said helplessly and +with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do that kind of +thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a social +standpoint, it isn't well-bred." +</P> + +<P> +"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry +disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the +washer-woman—a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in +manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile +Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?" +</P> + +<P> +"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a +desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous mood. Only +once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air charged with +catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at nothing a +dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking indigestion." +</P> + +<P> +Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of +humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained. +</P> + +<P> +"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with +a jerk of her shoulders, turned away. +</P> + +<P> +"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What +has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; +now—" he threw up his hands in despair—"Ah, my dearest, my star—" +</P> + +<P> +She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of +passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up +close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly. +</P> + +<P> +His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her +inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" +he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady voice. "Nothing. +But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me suddenly, at dinner, +as I listened to you, as I saw you talk—I had never before seen you in +surroundings like these. But I realized you then: I had a revelation. +You need not ask me what it was. I do not know quite. I cannot tell. It +is all vague, but it is startling, and it has gone through my heart +like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell you quite calmly, that if you +prove to be what, for the first time, I have a vision you are, I shall +never look upon your face again if I can help it. If I come to know +that you are false in nature and in act, that all you have said to me +is not true, that you have degraded me—Oh," she fiercely added, +breaking off and speaking with infinite anger and scorn—"it was only +love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been +between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and +its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret +shame—only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But +suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only +selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man +who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be so, I tell you I +shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more—a +thousand times more." +</P> + +<P> +She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in +her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of +sullen fire. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this +later—not now—later. I will answer anything—everything. I can and I +will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that—" +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I +had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It +left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a +moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of +Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back. +Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers, +'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or +anybody.'" +</P> + +<P> +He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great +sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things +seriously—with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always +responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. +He essayed the old way now. +</P> + +<P> +"This is just absurd, old girl;"—she shrank—"you really are mad. Your +home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to +you—your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll +talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for +you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be +reasonable. I will see you—afterwards—late." +</P> + +<P> +A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther +away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards—late.' +No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, I +hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head in +the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make +no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false +with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I +deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you—oh, why, why is it I feel +now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it +comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"—she pressed her hand +tremblingly to her heart—"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. +I'm not of this world." +</P> + +<P> +She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that +lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and +lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others—all unreal, +unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in +our own lives, but to be true—real and true. For one's own life as +well as one's work to be all grease-paint—no, no, no. I have hid all +that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do +with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or +pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin—" +</P> + +<P> +"The sin of an angel—" +</P> + +<P> +She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more +from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before? +</P> + +<P> +"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued. +</P> + +<P> +"And you don't believe it now?" +</P> + +<P> +"To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I +shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds +or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing helplessness. "But +we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go back to London. I am +going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that I am not well enough +to sing—and indeed I am not well," she added, huskily. "I am sick at +heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched and angry and +dangerous—and bad." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is +Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?" +</P> + +<P> +He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He was +kept at the mine. There's trouble—a strike. He was needed. He has +great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard Mrs. Byng +say why he had not returned." +</P> + +<P> +"No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted—I want to see him. +When will he be back?" +</P> + +<P> +"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel +about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in +there, a hundred of the best people of the county—" +</P> + +<P> +"The best people of the county—such abject snobbery!" she retorted, +sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me +well enough—but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at +last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell +Mrs. Byng so." +</P> + +<P> +Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice, +a pleasant voice, which said: +</P> + +<P> +"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite right.... Fellowes, +won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be there in five minutes?" +</P> + +<P> +It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, +and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a +scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be +better arranged by a third disinterested person. +</P> + +<P> +After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes +disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition. +Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice. Did this +elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak, +and she would succumb to his blandishment? He should see. +</P> + +<P> +He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair. +</P> + +<P> +"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she +remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the +chair, nevertheless. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the +five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world." +</P> + +<P> +"I have some energy to spare—the overflow," she returned with a +protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself. +</P> + +<P> +"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that low, +soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one +chancellerie of Europe.... "What are you going to sing to-night?" he +added. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I +said to Mr. Fellowes." +</P> + +<P> +"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely +you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to +me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!" +</P> + +<P> +His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the +instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his assumption +of dominancy had its advantage. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing. +I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately. +</P> + +<P> +"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is +a dreadful thing—and there are only three minutes left out of the +five," he added, looking at his watch. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her +firm lips did not soften. +</P> + +<P> +He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be +final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. +</P> + +<P> +"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine +that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that +ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down +there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of—and this +is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life, +do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something quite +big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you had +let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give them +drink." +</P> + +<P> +"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution +slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her. +</P> + +<P> +"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between +ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as +it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on +humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a +service—" +</P> + +<P> +"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it +as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he +saved me from the flames, and since then—" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a +far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised some +one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he should +hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from +her face and leaving a strange softness behind it. +</P> + +<P> +"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's an +original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have done +for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to +disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his +disappointment—he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and +he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's +essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much pain +you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your little +voice oh, madame la cantatrice?" +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. +"I've been upset and angry and disturbed—and I don't know what," she +said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once +in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." ... She stopped +and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in her eyes. +"You are very understanding and gentle—and sensible," she added, with +brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for Rudyard Byng +and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever diplomatist." She +gave a spasmodic laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said you'd +sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way." +</P> + +<P> +He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he hurried +her to the ball-room. +</P> + +<P> +Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to +that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds and +curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang. +</P> + +<P> +Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well—with so much +feeling and an artist's genius—not even that night of all when she +made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour +had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling +power the story of a soul. +</P> + +<P> +Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there +came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, +enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned +towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the +light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, +after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's +memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the +audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone +before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great chamber. +Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the song, and the +soft night filled its soul with melody. +</P> + +<P> +A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly +of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were +those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide +of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now +flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the +strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World. +</P> + +<P> +Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of +Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child +lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the +misery of that time swept over her—its rebellion, its hideous fear, +its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, +now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her +then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her +own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound +save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke +back their tears. +</P> + +<P> +Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more +grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly up +the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were sunken +and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow voice: +</P> + +<P> +"At the mine—an accident. The Baas he go down to save—he not come up." +</P> + +<P> +With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her +in an instant. +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas—the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the +horses—come." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE BAAS +</H3> + +<P> +There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had +been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was +it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes all +men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful body, to +produce other men who will in due days return to the same great mother +to rest and be still? It mattered little whether malevolence had +planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident alone had been +responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, woebegone women wrung +their hands, and haggard, determined men stood by with bowed heads, +ready to offer their lives to save those other lives far down below, if +so be it were possible. +</P> + +<P> +The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars +and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night and +darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre was +travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made +beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities of +progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque +country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, +and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a +cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, fed +by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and level-headed +labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and threatening; +then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some foolishness on the +part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening the field, adding +bitterness profound to the discontent and strife. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the +struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its +dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in +South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be +the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to +the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had +given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had +been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had +afterwards sat and drunk beer with them—as much as any, and carrying +it better than any. +</P> + +<P> +If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a +settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had +it not been for a collision between a government official and a miners' +leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, when Byng +had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the quarrel. He had +laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest and threats of +violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking heavily—but +without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and there, mostly +among the men themselves, talking to them in little groups, arguing +simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and figures, quietly +showing them the economic injustice which lay behind their full +demands, and suggesting compromises. +</P> + +<P> +He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was +"class against class—labour against capital, the man against the +master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not +man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some were +disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort as that +sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained obstinate. The +most that he did during the long afternoon and evening was to prevent +the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a miner's kitchen, +there came the explosion: the accident or crime—which, like the lances +in an angry tumour, let out the fury, enmity, and rebellion, and gave +human nature its chance again. The shock of the explosion had been +heard at Glencader, but nothing was thought of it, as there had been +much blasting in the district for days. +</P> + +<P> +"There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the +news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups +running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as +curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on the +lower levels with life on the higher plateaux. +</P> + +<P> +Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against +the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade +him, he took his place with two miners with the words: +</P> + +<P> +"I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there knowing +the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so lower away, +lads." +</P> + +<P> +He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last +there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead +bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did not +come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the places +of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril of +falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men were +rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the surface +and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose husbands +or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without time to +strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left below, +and these were brothers who had married but three months before. They +were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just begun, and home +still welcome and alluring—warm-faced, bonny women to meet them at the +door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and cheer them away to +work in the morning. These four lovers had been the target for the +good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the whole field; for the +twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two peas, and their wives were +cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, and estate. These twin +toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng forcing his way to the place +where they had worked. With him was one other miner of great courage +and knowledge, who had gone with other rescue parties in other +catastrophes. +</P> + +<P> +It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small +explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the rescuer +of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and imprisoned near a +spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed. +</P> + +<P> +Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, +Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian +Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, +stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans +that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had +not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking miner, +called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in command. His +look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on whom you could +rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable expression. Behind him +were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their faces showing nothing of +that pity in their hearts which drove them to risk all to save the +lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity and humanity? Was there +also something of that perdurable cohesion of class against class; the +powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, the shoulder-to-shoulder +combination of war; the tribal fanaticism which makes brave men out of +unpromising material? Maybe something of this element entered into the +heroism which had been displayed; but whatever the impulse or the +motive, the act and the end were the same—men's lives were in peril, +and they were risking their own to rescue them. +</P> + +<P> +When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself to +the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing Brengyn +approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart miner a +leader of men. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose +white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with courage. +There was something akin in the expression of her face and that of +other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood apart, some +with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst with regnant +resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so much more +poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the weariness of +labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the same look in +them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this communion of suffering +and danger. +</P> + +<P> +"Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where +they are, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"You think they are—dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice. +</P> + +<P> +"I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring +them out. It's more lives to be wasted." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a +thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, Mr. +Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you." +</P> + +<P> +Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to +say?" he asked, gloomily. +</P> + +<P> +"I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I +was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you about +mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead—you've been +down, I know." +</P> + +<P> +Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," +he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, +and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is +taking it on?" +</P> + +<P> +"I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward. +</P> + +<P> +"I—I," answered three other men of the house-party. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on +Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart +almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer? +</P> + +<P> +Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes +dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to +himself that he had never been lucky—never in all his life. At games +of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a +weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been suddenly +emptied. +</P> + +<P> +Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his eyes. +"There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How many +gentlemen volunteer to go down—ay, there's five!" he added, as +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was happening. But +presently she understood that there was one near, owing everything to +her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save him—on the +thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian +Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame. +</P> + +<P> +Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who +sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty +shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he +asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?" +</P> + +<P> +Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's +back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which +filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men. +</P> + +<P> +"Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's only +one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a small, +wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height—"here, Jim Gawley, +you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no," he +added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no missis, +nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, +and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to Stafford +and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said to +Stafford—"if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a try. +You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set. +</P> + +<P> +"You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say." +</P> + +<P> +"My word goes?" +</P> + +<P> +"Right. Your word goes. Let's get on." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth +laid a hand on her arm. +</P> + +<P> +"He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to +Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside +Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth. +</P> + +<P> +Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the chances +are?" he asked in a low tone. +</P> + +<P> +"Go to—bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice +was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind. +Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to +Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white +feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of class his +own class had suffered. +</P> + +<P> +"Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em +comfortable. You've got a gift that way." +</P> + +<P> +Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit +and watched the preparations for the descent. +</P> + +<P> +Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so +bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on +the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though +wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of +ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley. +All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley +were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life—that +sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to +the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been +the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented +toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a +warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she +seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out +in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men's +hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return. +</P> + +<P> +The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the +men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to +those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were houses +of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth had gone +from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and had left +everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt to soften +the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended on the +weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark +corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly +grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at +Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on. +</P> + +<P> +Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by +Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved +living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men +near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried +to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy and +whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked at +her in wonder. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being of +a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which +Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich and +the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit and +great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? Yes, +there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her husband's +life was in infinite danger,—had not Brengyn said that his chances +were only one in a thousand?—death stared her savagely in the face; +yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not afford the +luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing indolence; to +whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them into action. How +well they all behaved, these society butterflies—Jasmine, Lady +Tynemouth, and the others! But what a wonderful motherliness and +impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense did Al'mah the +singing-woman show! +</P> + +<P> +Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people +felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every +motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work +of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the +valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming hair +and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the hills to +the deep woods, insane with grief and woe. +</P> + +<P> +Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the coverings +from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for in her +life she had loved two men who had trampled on her self-respect, had +shattered all her pride of life, had made her ashamed to look the world +in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been despicable and cruel, a +liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen the man to whom she had +given all that was left of her heart and faith disgrace himself and his +class before the world by a cowardice which no woman could forgive. +</P> + +<P> +Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to +prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the +respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the +moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken +him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in a +few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done. +</P> + +<P> +About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage +where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous operation, +she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, whose peace +had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that distracted waif of +the world, fleeing from the pain of life. +</P> + +<P> +An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees +against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light. +</P> + +<P> +"No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing +for me—nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast in +pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star caught +her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness stole +over her. +</P> + +<P> +"My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered. +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, +the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with +sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she +thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe +him—ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he +had only been a man to-night—" +</P> + +<P> +At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's +mouth—a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past her. One +was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering her cloak +around her Al'mah sped after them. +</P> + +<P> +A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward +it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way +for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild +murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from the +tower of a mosque—a resonant monotony, in which a dominant principle +cries. +</P> + +<P> +A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, +gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride. +</P> + +<P> +Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies +carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men whom +fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them were the +young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured endearments +grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried Rudyard Byng, +who could command the less certain concentration of a heart. The men +whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater wealth, a more +precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of the interests of +these workers were limited, but their souls were commingled with other +souls bound to them by the formalities; and every minute of their days, +every atom of their forces, were moving round one light, the light upon +the hearthstone. These men were carried ahead of Byng now, as though by +the ritual of nature taking their rightful place in life's procession +before him. +</P> + +<P> +Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was +an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the +tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in part, +the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there was, too, +a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her heart,—pity for +Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly even to her own +soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of inevitableness, of the +continuance of things which she was too weak to alter. +</P> + +<P> +Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as she +walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office near +by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a tall +figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two dark eyes +were turned towards her ever and anon. +</P> + +<P> +Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that +was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have saved +Rudyard—you, Ian," it said. +</P> + +<P> +With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the +manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my +life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you." +</P> + +<P> +"I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's emotions. +The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness in its +train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their eyes or +feeling a flush in their cheeks. +</P> + +<P> +To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were +restored to them. +</P> + +<P> +"Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast and +nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye." +</P> + +<P> +That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down +his life for his friend—and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two +rescued men were in one sense—young socialists—enemies to the present +social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the aristocrat +and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their hands in the +same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same sense of +elementary justice, pity, courage, and love. +</P> + +<P> +"Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own—to their +capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was +theirs, complete and paying large dividends. +</P> + +<P> +To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim Gawley, +he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it prime. We +couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng as had +sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; an' there +was Mr. Stafford—him—" pointing to Ian, who, with misty eyes, was +watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit better nor +any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank their stars +that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done my duty, I +hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done more—Mr. Byng and Mr. +Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads—no, this ain't a time for +cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands." +</P> + +<P> +His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as old +as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same. +</P> + +<P> +The strike was over—at a price too big for human calculation; but it +might have been bigger still. +</P> + +<P> +Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and +waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his feet +and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to the +darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep as in +that of the singing-woman. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap15"></A> +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BOOK III +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE WORLD WELL LOST +</H3> + +<P> +People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived +before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were in +the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, and +the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and +otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high +command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of +title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels +of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; +high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or +commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of +contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs +who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary +to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of +convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance +of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for +anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard +riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture, +that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going. +</P> + +<P> +Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation +and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he +was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there +almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see +Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see +M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia—not always at her own house, +but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable +restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been +difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the +lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman +and to diplomacy. +</P> + +<P> +Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the +ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as +to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so +constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to +Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less +dangerous than impressionable. +</P> + +<P> +In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for +beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost +unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked +preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from +Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, +however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking +pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became +possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in +London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that +stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by +dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was +in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the +material became alive, buoyant and magnetic. +</P> + +<P> +Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her +she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was +keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real +power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and +well-disciplined adroitness and evasions. +</P> + +<P> +Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to +intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of +rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he +allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery +inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its +ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international +relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which +might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of +international attachments not unlike treachery. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of M. +Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no +intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him +strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, but +the finest, truest chivalry was not his—that which carefully protects +a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away from it; +which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive women +into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if they +climb at all. +</P> + +<P> +He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a +great unrest in his heart and life—an unrest which the accident at the +Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude for +his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a passing +effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of making +light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their case an +evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it all. If they +had been less rich, if their house had been small, if their +acquaintances had been fewer, if ... +</P> + +<P> +It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with +the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his +success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been +obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got +beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life +itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged +her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had changed, +and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was now a +dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy circumstances, +might have transformed her life—and his. Now it all served to twist +her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she was engaged in a +game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the thread of +sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she started +aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the +deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home +life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of the +chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring kept +her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure. +</P> + +<P> +Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing +Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of +her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new +intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and thrived. Ian +scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between them. He only +realized that delight which comes from working with another for a +cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper +significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both +experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge +and a pact of mutual silence and purpose. +</P> + +<P> +"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been +able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had +turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with +him—almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose +influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there +still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the +removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would be +secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that case +Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office itself, +or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that splendid +sphere. +</P> + +<P> +"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near +reality as her own deceived soul could permit. +</P> + +<P> +With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in +which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and +you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of +youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of hope. I +feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood tree, +and—" +</P> + +<P> +"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a little +laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They +were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring +the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind. +</P> + +<P> +Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her +eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned +his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions +marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of +vultures—pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he +gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, +with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition +smothered him. +</P> + +<P> +But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the +end of the journey." +</P> + +<P> +"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered +her eyes, and then raised them again to his. +</P> + +<P> +The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her—before any +one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he +had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable +force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him +as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached +the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread, +the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the +worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted—for a brief +moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the +scene of beauty, passion, and madness. +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body +swayed slightly towards him. +</P> + +<P> +With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms +and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine—Jasmine, +my love!" he murmured. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no—oh no, Ian! The work is not done. +I can't take my pay before I have earned it—such pay—such pay." +</P> + +<P> +He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It +stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, +I—" +</P> + +<P> +He drew her closer. +</P> + +<P> +"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you—oh, Ian, tell +me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not +only because—" +</P> + +<P> +He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to +what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for good +or ill, was to be between you and me—the foreordained thing." +</P> + +<P> +She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting +joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter." +</P> + +<P> +He looked at her questioningly. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched +her arms up joyously, radiantly. +</P> + +<P> +"The world well lost!" she cried. +</P> + +<P> +Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which +intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole +being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment +in daring draughts of it. +</P> + +<P> +"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers. +</P> + +<P> +Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to +his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had won +back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its +millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and +skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers +again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for +this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her will +had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was possible +to mortal pleasure. +</P> + +<P> +Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a +new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon +the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no +abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those +joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and the +mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable. +</P> + +<P> +A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones +like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts +that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in +peace—or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical +change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a +servant now entered with a note. +</P> + +<P> +Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of +excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was +sufficient. +</P> + +<P> +"Moravia is ours—ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into his +hands. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The +Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be +ratified. May I dine with you to-night? +<BR><BR> +"Yours, M. +</P> + +<P> +"P.S.—You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our +young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.' +<BR><BR> +"M." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Thank God—thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater +thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can +do our work without interference." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was +clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during +the past few moments. +</P> + +<P> +Then he clasped her in his arms again. +</P> + +<P> +As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain +putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this +international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had +written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine +with you to-night? ... M." +</P> + +<P> +His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar—more in the +tone of the words than the words themselves—which irritated and +humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this +intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the philanderer. +His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns. +</P> + +<P> +A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He +carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We will +clinch it instantly. Let us have the code." +</P> + +<P> +As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, +dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger +may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, +for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I +wonder how Landrassy will take it." +</P> + +<P> +He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a better +one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," he +added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to clinch +it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap16"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE COMING OF THE BAAS +</H3> + +<P> +"The Baas—where the Baas?" +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the doorway. +"Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the faithful, loyal +offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of the Baas.... For +God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled with an oath, and, +snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw the contents at the +half-caste. +</P> + +<P> +Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the face. +Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his cheeks, his +eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry Whalen and the +scene before him. +</P> + +<P> +The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation +pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was +thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs +of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were everywhere. +Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct satisfied for +the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; and the tables +where they had sat were in a state of disorder more suggestive of a +"dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor Square. +</P> + +<P> +No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the +establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host +and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De +Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he +was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by +being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous +to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was +hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of +that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and +his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance—save when he had +his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of +murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it +was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within +these walls "between drinks." +</P> + +<P> +The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or +the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at +which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer +took away a pocketful of gold—partly fee. Only a few of all the group, +great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves against +possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward anxiety, +because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, for the +wise act and the manoevre that would win. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both +elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but +he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he had, +in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a +banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, +Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a +good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them—not without +some truth—valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the +early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to +most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their +general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose. +</P> + +<P> +Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any +real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a +doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health +fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, and +the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, from +his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the day +when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at +Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, and +Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the gallows +for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly resented the +change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had gripped the +situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, giving as much +help to the government of the day as to his colleagues and all British +folk on the Rand. +</P> + +<P> +But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this time. +The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng was not +the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour at the +Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain physical +degeneracy—he had been too slow in recovering from the few bad hours +spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still consulted +him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; but secret +as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not so secret +that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of Jasmine, +financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful of his +influence, did their best to present him in the worst light possible. +It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his wine, and that +his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times was not in keeping +with the English climate, but belonged to lands of drier weather and +more absorptive air. +</P> + +<P> +"What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool +dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his pocket. +The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own glasses, +and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle of +coins followed. +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas—where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the doorway. +</P> + +<P> +"Gone—went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What +is it, Krool?" +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas—" +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is +gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at +Lichtenburg." +</P> + +<P> +Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry +Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," he +said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom." +</P> + +<P> +He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his +body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his +teeth showing like those of a wolf. +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will have +your heart—and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved into +the darkness without, closing the door behind him. +</P> + +<P> +A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the weird +utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the gamblers +suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half furtively at +one another. +</P> + +<P> +The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered. +</P> + +<P> +"Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the +green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though by +common consent. +</P> + +<P> +"Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with irritation. +"What's the sense in saying things like that to a servant?" +</P> + +<P> +"How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I +didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you—to +any of you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen. +</P> + +<P> +"And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the Rand +had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but this +not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the +directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination +of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into the +hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him into—what +he was. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Byng thed good-night to me—deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so +damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to +me." +</P> + +<P> +"Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up +his arms and yawning. +</P> + +<P> +"Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning—much earlier," interposed +De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" growled out Barry Whalen. +</P> + +<P> +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was +the slow reply. +</P> + +<P> +For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though +some one had heard what had been said—some one who ought not to have +heard. +</P> + +<P> +That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had +started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at +twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the +cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into +a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw +himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South Africa +must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an ultimatum +before the British government was ready to act; and that preparations +must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and consequences. +Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from day to day, +and what had been arranged yesterday morning required modification this +evening. +</P> + +<P> +He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the +gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be alone. +Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged by +Jasmine, though he liked to be with her—liked so much to be with her, +and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside her. +This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with her, to +dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find that she had +arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh he had begged +her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual depression, he +had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De Lancy Scovel's house. +</P> + +<P> +Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were +walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden +his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet +inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked +excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell +like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment wrong. +Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his attitude +toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a warmth which +more than surprised them. It was as though he was subconsciously aware +of some great impending change. It may be there whispered through the +clouded space that lies between the dwelling-house of Fate and the +place where a man's soul lives the voice of that Other Self, which +every man has, warning him of darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak +coming on. +</P> + +<P> +However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had +drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly +heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had fallen +asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room. +</P> + +<P> +Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble or +our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy Scovel +said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning—much earlier." +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring—just a wide opening of +the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new sense +of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his friends +talked loudly in his very ears. +</P> + +<P> +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm." +</P> + +<P> +His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the +moment's silence following these suggestive words. +</P> + +<P> +"Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the +stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after ourselves, +and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us." +</P> + +<P> +"But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us but +'d put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature to +sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going right +for him in the place where things matter most. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't he see? Doesn't he see—anything?" asked a little wizened +lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of +three of their great companies. +</P> + +<P> +"See—of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell—at least," +replied Barry Whalen, scornfully. +</P> + +<P> +"He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming. +</P> + +<P> +"He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower—wrong for +him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name +is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism. +</P> + +<P> +"They they there's no doubt about it—she's throwing herself away. +Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed Clifford +Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen. "Diplomathy is all very well, +but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He laughed as +only one of his kidney can laugh. +</P> + +<P> +Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was +standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat +in every muscle. +</P> + +<P> +"Shut up—curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to +cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got +to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is +Byng—before the world. We've got to help him—got to help him, I say." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," +interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's +asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing." +</P> + +<P> +"And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, acidly. +"One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can put it +right." +</P> + +<P> +No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to +say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for +the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the +silence. +</P> + +<P> +De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards +the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all +stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little +room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared. +</P> + +<P> +For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did +not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make +way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway. +</P> + +<P> +At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, +impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips +opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of +their sight. +</P> + +<P> +No one followed. They knew their man. +</P> + +<P> +"My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at +the table, with his head between his hands. +</P> + +<P> +The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De +Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the night +remorsefully. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap17"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? +</H3> + +<P> +Slowly, heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through +the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some +engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and +lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his +humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was +not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been +essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized +surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to +come into his own—the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His +powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big +essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had little +intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the situation now +upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some +huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, +sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a +ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill +in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, +though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this +was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it +because something had gone from her—that freshness of mind and body, +that resilience of temper and spirit, without which all talk is travail +and weariness? He had never thought it out, though he was dimly +conscious of some great loss—of the light gone from the evening sky. +</P> + +<P> +Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his +girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial +stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and +turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had really +been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made +it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was the product +of her taste and design. It had been home because it was associated +with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to South Africa +without her the year before—there had come a change, at first almost +imperceptible, then broadening and deepening. +</P> + +<P> +At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a +feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which they +saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other people. His +primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not bitterly, but +confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it was; and he +thought that if he had patience he would come to understand it in time. +But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day +before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with +Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a +wild, aching protest against it all. Not against Jasmine—he did not +blame her; he only realized that she was different from what he had +thought she was; that they were both different from what they had been; +and that—the light had gone from the evening sky. +</P> + +<P> +But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed +his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking, +intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply +never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which he +had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the +universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had +married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, +except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as +Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to the +woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and +there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not +a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration. +</P> + +<P> +Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had +involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in the +distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And now, +as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,—so did +the weight of slander drag him down—his thoughts suddenly saw a +picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was +after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives +lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the +Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in +arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face +danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open road +together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where the +great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a stray +lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on alone +to a spot in the Matoppos, since made famous and sacred. +</P> + +<P> +Where John Cecil Rhodes sleeps on that high plateau of convex hollow +stone, with the great natural pillars standing round like sentinels, +and all the rugged unfinished hills tumbling away to an unpeopled +silence, he came that time to rest his sorrowing soul. The woods, the +wild animal life, had been left behind, and only a peaceful middle +world between God and man greeted his stern eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Now, here in London, at that corner where the lonely white statue +stands by Londonderry House, as he moved in a dream of pain, with vast +weights like giant manacles hampering every footstep, inwardly raging +that into his sweet garden of home the vile elements of slander had +been thrown, yet with a terrible and vague fear that something had gone +terribly wrong with him, that far-off day spent at the Matoppos flashed +upon his sight. +</P> + +<P> +Through streets upon streets he had walked, far, far out of his way, +subconsciously giving himself time to recover before he reached his +home; until the green quiet of Hyde Park, the soft depths of its empty +spaces, the companionable and commendable trees, greeted his senses. +Then, here, suddenly there swam before his eyes the bright sky over +those scarred and jagged hills beyond the Matoppos, purple and grey, +and red and amethyst and gold, and his soul's sight went out over the +interminable distance of loneliness and desolation which only ended +where the world began again, the world of fighting men. He saw once +more that tumbled waste of primeval creation, like a crazed sea +agitated by some Horror underneath, and suddenly transfixed in its +plunging turmoil—a frozen concrete sorrow, with all active pain gone. +He heard the loud echo of his feet upon that hollow plateau of rock, +with convex skin of stone laid upon convex skin, and then suddenly the +solid rock which gave no echo under his tread, where Rhodes lies +buried. He saw all at once, in the shining horizon at different points, +black, angry, marauding storms arise and roar and burst: while all the +time above his head there was nothing but sweet sunshine, into which +the mists of the distant storms drifted, and rainbows formed above him. +Upon those hollow rocks the bellow of the storms was like the rumbling +of the wheels of a million gun-carriages; and yet high overhead there +were only the bright sun and faint drops of rain falling like mystic +pearls. +</P> + +<P> +And then followed—he could hear it again, so plainly, as his eyes now +sought the friendly shades of the beeches and the elms yonder in Hyde +Park!—upon the air made denser by the storm, the call of a lonely bird +from one side of the valley. The note was deep and strong and clear, +like the bell-bird of the Australian salt-bush plains beyond the +Darling River, and it rang out across the valley, as though a soul +desired its mate; and then was still. A moment, and there came across +the valley from the other side, stealing deep sweetness from the hollow +rocks, the answer of the bird which had heard her master's call. +Answering, she called too, the viens ici of kindred things; and they +came nearer and nearer and nearer, until at last their two voices were +one. +</P> + +<P> +In that wild space there had been worked out one of the great wonders +of creation, and under the dim lamps of Park Lane, in his black, +shocked mood, Rudyard recalled it all by no will of his own. Upon his +eye and brain the picture had been registered, and in its appointed +time, with an automatic suggestion of which he was ignorant and +innocent, it came to play its part and to transform him. +</P> + +<P> +The thought of it all was like a cool hand laid upon his burning brow. +It gave him a glimpse of the morning of life. +</P> + +<P> +The light was gone from the evening sky: but was it gone forever? +</P> + +<P> +As he entered his house now he saw upon a Spanish table in the big hall +a solitary bunch of white roses—a touch of simplicity in an area of +fine artifice. Regarding it a moment, black thoughts receded, and +choosing a flower from the vase he went slowly up the stairs to +Jasmine's room. +</P> + +<P> +He would give her this rose as the symbol of his faith and belief in +her, and then tell her frankly what he had heard at De Lancy Scovel's +house. +</P> + +<P> +For the moment it did not occur to him that she might not be at home. +It gave him a shock when he opened the door and found her room empty. +On her bed, like a mesh of white clouds, lay the soft linen and lace +and the delicate clothes of the night; and by the bed were her tiny +blue slippers to match the blue dressing-gown. Some gracious things for +morning wear hung over a chair; an open book with a little cluster of +violets and a tiny mirror lay upon a table beside a sofa; a footstool +was placed at a considered angle for her well-known seat on the sofa +where the soft-blue lamp-shade threw the light upon her book; and a +little desk with dresden-china inkstand and penholder had little +pockets of ribbon-tied letters and bills—even business had an air of +taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a +large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward the +pillow where she would lay her head. +</P> + +<P> +How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the +room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first time. +There was another photograph of himself on her dressing-table. It had +no companion there; but on another table near were many photographs; +four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, old friends like Ian +Stafford—and M. Mennaval. +</P> + +<P> +His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his +veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers +clinched. +</P> + +<P> +Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, +Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, +but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held +in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over +to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid +the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to +the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged, +his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he +laid with the rose on her pillow. +</P> + +<P> +As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat +of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue slippers, +blue dressing-gown—all blue, the colour in which he had first seen her. +</P> + +<P> +Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the picture +followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face suddenly +darkened it. +</P> + +<P> +"You not ring, Baas," Krool said. +</P> + +<P> +Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury +in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so? +</P> + +<P> +"Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed. +</P> + +<P> +Krool returned. +</P> + +<P> +"Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at +midnight, as I told you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, Baas. +There the cable—two." He pointed to the dressing-table. +</P> + +<P> +Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them. +</P> + +<P> +One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The +code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words. +</P> + +<P> +They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and +that the worst must be faced. +</P> + +<P> +He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, +covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny. +</P> + +<P> +"That will do, Krool; wake me at seven," he said, quietly, but with +suppressed malice in his tone. +</P> + +<P> +Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by +the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he +had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool—without +reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had +whispered something to his mind about Krool—something terrible and +malign? +</P> + +<P> +In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine till +the morning. How late she was! It was one o'clock, and yet this was not +the season. She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the months of +late parties. +</P> + +<P> +As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, +Krool's face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, +ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep. +</P> + +<P> +Perhaps the most troubled moment of the night came an hour after he +went to bed. +</P> + +<P> +Then it was that a face bent over him for a minute, a fair face, with +little lines contracting the ripe lips, which were redder than usual, +with eyes full of a fevered brightness. But how harmonious and sweetly +ordered was the golden hair above! Nothing was gone from its lustre, +nothing robbed it of its splendour. It lay upon her forehead like a +crown. In its richness it seemed a little too heavy for the tired face +beneath, almost too imperial for so slight and delicate a figure. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard stirred in his sleep, murmuring as she leaned over him; and his +head fell away from her hand as she stretched out her fingers with a +sudden air of pity—of hopelessness, as it might seem from her look. +His face restlessly turned to the wall—a vexed, stormy, anxious face +and head, scarred by the whip of that overlord more cruel and tyrannous +than Time, the Miserable Mind. +</P> + +<P> +She drew back with a little shudder. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, as she had +said that evening when Ian Stafford came to her after the estranging +and scornful years, and she had watched Rudyard leave her—to her fate +and to her folly. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor Ruddy!" +</P> + +<P> +With a sudden frenzied motion of her hands she caught her breath, as +though some pain had seized her. Her eyes almost closed with the shame +that reached out from her heart, as though to draw the veil of her +eyelids over the murdered thing before her—murdered hope, slaughtered +peace: the peace of that home they had watched burn slowly before their +eyes in the years which the locust had eaten. +</P> + +<P> +Which the locust had eaten—yes, it was that. More than once she had +heard Rudyard tell of a day on the veld when the farmer surveyed his +abundant fields with joy, with the gay sun flaunting it above; and +suddenly there came a white cloud out of the west, which made a weird +humming, a sinister sound. It came with shining scales glistening in +the light and settled on the land acre upon acre, morgen upon morgen; +and when it rose again the fields, ready for the harvest, were like a +desert—the fields which the locust had eaten. So had the years been, +in which Fortune had poured gold and opportunity and unlimited choice +into her lap. She had used them all; but she had forgotten to look for +the Single Secret, which, like a key, unlocks all doors in the House of +Happiness. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor Ruddy!" she said, but even as she said it for the second time a +kind of anger seemed to seize her. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you fool—you fool!" she whispered, fiercely. "What did you know +of women! Why didn't you make me be good? Why didn't you master me—the +steel on the wrist—the steel on the wrist!" +</P> + +<P> +With a little burst of misery and futile rage she went from the room, +her footsteps uneven, her head bent. One of the open letters she +carried dropped from her hand onto the floor of the hall outside. She +did not notice it. But as she passed inside her door a shadowy figure +at the end of the hall watched her, saw the letter drop, and moved +stealthily forward towards it. It was Krool. +</P> + +<P> +How heavy her head was! Her worshipping maid, near dead with fatigue, +watched her furtively, but avoided the eyes in the mirror which had a +half-angry look, a look at once disturbed and elated, reckless and +pitiful. Lablanche was no reader of souls, but there was something here +beyond the usual, and she moved and worked with unusual circumspection +and lightness of touch. Presently she began to unloose the coils of +golden hair; but Jasmine stopped her with a gesture of weariness. +</P> + +<P> +"No, don't," she said. "I can't stand your touch tonight, Lablanche. +I'll do the rest myself. My head aches so. Good-night." +</P> + +<P> +"I will be so light with it, madame," Lablanche said, protestingly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no. Please go. But the morning, quite early." +</P> + +<P> +"The hour, madame?" +</P> + +<P> +"When the letters come, as soon as the letters come, Lablanche—the +first post. Wake me then." +</P> + +<P> +She watched the door close, then turned to the mirror in front of her +and looked at herself with eyes in which brooded a hundred thoughts and +feelings: thoughts contradictory, feelings opposed, imaginings +conflicting, reflections that changed with each moment; and all under +the spell of a passion which had become in the last few hours the most +powerful influence her life had ever known. Right or wrong, and it was +wrong, horribly wrong; wise or unwise, and how could the wrong be wise! +she knew she was under a spell more tyrannous than death, demanding +more sacrifices than the gods of Hellas. +</P> + +<P> +Self-indulgent she had been, reckless and wilful and terribly modern, +taking sweets where she found them. She had tried to squeeze the orange +dry, in the vain belief that Wealth and Beauty can take what they want, +when they want it, and that happiness will come by purchase; only to +find one day that the thing you have bought, like a slave that revolts, +stabs you in your sleep, and you wake with wide-eyed agony only to die, +or to live—with the light gone from the evening sky. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, with the letters in her hand with which she had entered the +room, she saw the white rose on her pillow. Slowly she got up from the +dressing-table and went over to the bed in a hushed kind of way. With a +strange, inquiring, half-shrinking look she regarded the flower. One +white rose. It was not there when she left. It had been brought from +the hall below, from the great bunch on the Spanish table. Those white +roses, this white rose, had come from one who, selfish as he was, knew +how to flatter a woman's vanity. From that delicate tribute of flattery +and knowledge Rudyard had taken this flowering stem and brought it to +her pillow. +</P> + +<P> +It was all too malevolently cynical. Her face contracted in pain and +shame. She had a soul to which she had never given its chance. It had +never bloomed. Her abnormal wilfulness, her insane love of pleasure, +her hereditary impulses, had been exercised at the expense of the great +thing in her, the soul so capable of memorable and beautiful deeds. +</P> + +<P> +As she looked at the flower, a sense of the path by which she had come, +of what she had left behind, of what was yet to chance, shuddered into +her heart. +</P> + +<P> +That a flower given by Adrian Fellowes should be laid upon her pillow +by her husband, by Rudyard Byng, was too ghastly or too devilishly +humorous for words; and both aspects of the thing came to her. Her face +became white, and almost mechanically she put the letters she held on a +writing-table near; then coming to the bed again she looked at the rose +with a kind of horror. Suddenly, however, she caught it up, and +bursting into a laugh which was shrill and bitter she threw it across +the room. Still laughing hysterically, with her golden hair streaming +about her head, folding her round like a veil which reached almost to +her ankles, she came back to the chair at the dressing-table and sat +down. +</P> + +<P> +Slowly drawing the wonderful soft web of hair over her shoulders, she +began to weave it into one wide strand, which grew and grew in length +till it was like a great rope of spun gold. Inch by inch, foot by foot +it grew, until at last it lay coiled in her lap like a golden serpent, +with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must +have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is—or was—in +Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her +hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her +horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as +she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon +with which she had tied the shining rope. +</P> + +<P> +With the mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she +held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that +it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her +fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again—a low and +discordant laugh it was now. +</P> + +<P> +"Such imaginings—I think I must be mad," she murmured. +</P> + +<P> +Then she leaned her elbows on the dressing-table and looked at herself +in the glass. +</P> + +<P> +"Am I not mad?" she asked herself again. Then there stole across her +face a strange, far-away look, bringing a fresh touch of beauty to it, +and flooding it for a moment with that imaginative look which had been +her charm as a girl, a look of far-seeing and wonder and strange light. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder—if I had had a mother!" she said, wistfully, her chin in her +hand. "If my mother had lived, what would I have been?" +</P> + +<P> +She reached out to a small table near, and took from it a miniature at +which she looked with painful longing. "My dear, my very dear, you were +so sweet, so good," she said. "Am I your daughter, your own +daughter—me? Ah, sweetheart mother, come back to me! For God's sake +come—now. Speak to me if you can. Are you so very far away? +Whisper—only whisper, and I shall hear. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, she would, she would, if she could!" her voice wailed, softly. +"She would if she could, I know. I was her youngest child, her only +little girl. But there is no coming back. And maybe there is no going +forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops—all stops, for +ever and ever and ever, amen! ...Amen—so be it. Ah, I even can't +believe in that! I can't even believe in God and Heaven and the +hereafter. I am a pagan, with a pagan's heart and a pagan's ways." +</P> + +<P> +She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment. "Ruddy had a +glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back. Ruddy said +to me that day, 'If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers.' ... And it is true—by all the gods of all the +worlds, it is true. Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared +for—pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower. And Ian—and Ian, yes, +Ian! I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not +true." +</P> + +<P> +She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a +great burning. +</P> + +<P> +"But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even! I wonder.... Not then, +not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now—now? Do—do +I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, or is it +only beauty and pleasure and—me? ... Are they really happy who believe +in God and live like—like her?" She gazed at her mother's portrait +again. "Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then she was +gone—so soon. And I shall never see her, I who never saw her with eyes +that recall.... And if I could see her, would I? I am a pagan—would I +try to be like her, if I could? I never really prayed, because I never +truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and that was all +soul and understanding. And what is to come of it, or what will become +of me? ... I can't go back, and going on is madness. Yes, yes, it is +madness, I know—madness and badness—and dust at the end of it all. +Beauty gone, pleasure gone.... I do not even love pleasure now as I +did. It has lost its flavour; and I do not even love beauty as I did. +How well I know it! I used to climb hills to see a sunset; I used to +walk miles to find the wood anemones and the wild violets; I used to +worship a pretty child ... a pretty child!" +</P> + +<P> +She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly. "A pretty child.... +Other people's pretty children, and music and art and trees and the +sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild animals ... and +a pretty child. I wonder, I wonder if—" +</P> + +<P> +But she got no farther with that thought. "I shall hate everything on +earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is +going. The freshness of sense has gone, somehow. I am not stirred as I +used to be, not by the same things. If I lose that sense I shall kill +myself. Perhaps that would be the easiest way now. Just the overdose +of—" +</P> + +<P> +She took a little phial from the drawer of the dressing-table. "Just +the tiny overdose and 'good-bye, my lover, good-bye.'" Again that hard +little laugh of bitterness broke from her. "Or that needle Mr. Mappin +had at Glencader. A thrust of the point, and in an instant gone, and no +one to know, no one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to pile +shame upon shame. Just blackness—blackness all at once, and no light +or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the garden all +withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead—the pretty +children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were born, +that never lived in Jasmine's garden." +</P> + +<P> +As there had come to Rudyard premonition of evil, so to-night, in the +hour of triumph, when, beyond peradventure, she had got for Ian +Stafford what would make his career great, what through him gave +England security in her hour of truth, there came now to her something +of the real significance of it all. +</P> + +<P> +She had got what she wanted. Her pride had been appeased, her vanity +satisfied, her intellect flattered, her skill approved, and Ian was +hers. But the cost? +</P> + +<P> +Words from Swinburne's threnody on Baudelaire came to her mind. How +often she had quoted them for their sheer pagan beauty! It was the kind +of beauty which most appealed to her, which responded to the element of +fatalism in her, the sense of doom always with her since she was a +child, in spite of her gaiety, her wit, and her native eloquence. She +had never been happy, she had never had a real illusion, never aught +save the passion of living, the desire to conquer unrest: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "And now, no sacred staff shall break in blossom,<BR> + No choral salutation lure to light<BR> + The spirit sick with perfume and sweet night,<BR> + And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.<BR> + There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar<BR> + Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make Death clear or make Life durable<BR> + But still with rose and ivy and wild vine,<BR> + And with wild song about this dust of thine,<BR> + At least I fill a place where white dreams dwell,<BR> + And wreathe an unseen shrine."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +"'And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.... There is no help +for these things, none to mend and none to mar....'" A sob rose in her +throat. "Oh, the beauty of it, the beauty and the misery and the +despair of it!" she murmured. +</P> + +<P> +Slowly she wound and wound the coil of golden hair about her neck, +drawing it tighter, fold on fold, tighter and tighter. +</P> + +<P> +"This would be the easiest way—this," she whispered. "By my own hair! +Beauty would have its victim then. No one would kiss it any more, +because it killed a woman.... No one would kiss it any more." +</P> + +<P> +She felt the touch of Ian Stafford's lips upon it, she felt his face +buried in it. Her own face suffused, then Adrian Fellowes' white rose, +which Rudyard had laid upon her pillow, caught her eye where it lay on +the floor. With a cry as of a hurt animal she ran to her bed, crawled +into it, and huddled down in the darkness, shivering and afraid. +</P> + +<P> +Something had discovered her to herself for the first time. Was it her +own soul? Had her Other Self, waking from sleep in the eternal spaces, +bethought itself and come to whisper and warn and help? Or was it +Penalty, or Nemesis, or that Destiny which will have its toll for all +it gives of beauty, or pleasure, or pride, or place, or pageantry? +</P> + +<P> +"Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom"— +</P> + +<P> +The words kept ringing in her ears. They soothed her at last into a +sleep which brought no peace, no rest or repose. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap18"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE +</H3> + +<P> +Midnight—one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Big Ben boomed the +hours, and from St. James's Palace came the stroke of the quarters, +lighter, quicker, almost pensive in tone. From St. James's Street below +came no sounds at last. The clatter of the hoofs of horses had ceased, +the rumble of drays carrying their night freights, the shouts of the +newsboys making sensation out of rumours made in a newspaper office, +had died away. Peace came, and a silver moon gave forth a soft light, +which embalmed the old thoroughfare, and added a tenderness to its +workaday dignity. In only one window was there a light at three +o'clock. It was the window of Ian Stafford's sitting-room. +</P> + +<P> +He had not left the Foreign Office till nearly ten o'clock, then had +had a light supper at his club, had written letters there, and after a +long walk up and down the Mall had, with reluctant feet, gone to his +chambers. +</P> + +<P> +The work which for years he had striven to do for England had been +accomplished. The Great Understanding was complete. In the words of the +secretary of the American Embassy, "Mennaval had delivered the goods," +and an arrangement had been arrived at, completed this very night, +which would leave England free to face her coming trial in South Africa +without fear of trouble on the flank or in the rear. +</P> + +<P> +The key was turned in the lock, and that lock had been the original +device and design of Ian Stafford. He had done a great work for +civilization and humanity; he had made improbable, if not impossible, a +European war. The Kaiser knew it, Franz Joseph knew it, the Czar knew +it; the White House knew it, and its master nodded with satisfaction, +for John Bull was waking up—"getting a move on." America might have +her own family quarrel with John Bull, but when it was John Bull versus +the world, not even James G. Blaine would have been prepared to see the +old lion too deeply wounded. Even Landrassy, ambassador of Slavonia, +had smiled grimly when he met Ian Stafford on the steps of the Moravian +Embassy. He was artist enough to appreciate a well-played game, and, in +any case, he had had done all that mortal man could in the way of +intrigue and tact and device. He had worked the international press as +well as it had ever been worked; he had distilled poison here and +rosewater there; he had again and again baffled the British Foreign +Office, again and again cut the ground from under Ian Stafford's feet; +and if he could have staved off the pact, the secret international +pact, by one more day, he would have gained the victory for himself, +for his country, for the alliance behind him. +</P> + +<P> +One day, but one day, and the world would never have heard of Ian +Stafford. England would then have approached her conflict with the cup +of trembling at her lips, and there would be a new disposition of power +in Europe, a new dominating force in the diplomacy and the relations of +the peoples of the world. It was Landrassy's own last battle-field of +wit and scheming, of intellect and ambition. If he failed in this, his +sun would set soon. He was too old to carry on much longer. He could +not afford to wait. He was at the end of his career, and he had meant +this victory to be the crown of his long services to Slavonia and the +world. +</P> + +<P> +But to him was opposed a man who was at the beginning of his career, +who needed this victory to give him such a start as few men get in that +field of retarded rewards, diplomacy. It had been a man at the end of +the journey, and a man at the beginning, measuring skill, playing as +desperate a game as was ever played. If Landrassy won—Europe a red +battle-field, England at bay; if Ian Stafford won—Europe at peace, +England secure. Ambition and patriotism intermingled, and only He who +made human nature knew how much was pure patriotism and how much pure +ambition. It was a great stake. On this day of days to Stafford destiny +hung shivering, each hour that passed was throbbing with unparalleled +anxiety, each minute of it was to be the drum-beat of a funeral march +or the note of a Te Deum. +</P> + +<P> +Not more uncertain was the roulette-wheel spinning in De Lancy Scovel's +house than the wheel of diplomacy which Ian Stafford had set spinning. +Rouge et noire—it was no more, no less. But Ian had won; England had +won. Black had been beaten. +</P> + +<P> +Landrassy bowed suavely to Ian as they met outside Mennaval's door in +the early evening of this day when the business was accomplished, the +former coming out, the latter going in. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, Stafford," Landrassy said in smooth tones and with a jerk of the +head backward, "the tables are deserted, the croupier is going home. +But perhaps you have not come to play?" +</P> + +<P> +Ian smiled lightly. "I've come to get my winnings—as you say," he +retorted. +</P> + +<P> +Landrassy seemed to meditate pensively. "Ah yes, ah yes, but I'm not +sure that Mennaval hasn't bolted with the bank and your winnings, too!" +</P> + +<P> +His meaning was clear—and hateful. Before Ian had a chance to reply, +Landrassy added in a low, confidential voice, saturated with sardonic +suggestion, "To tell you the truth, I had ceased to reckon with women +in diplomacy. I thought it was dropped with the Second Empire; but you +have started a new dispensation—evidemment, evidemment. Still Mennaval +goes home with your winnings. Eh bien, we have to pay for our game! +Allons gai!" +</P> + +<P> +Before Ian could reply—and what was there to say to insult couched in +such highly diplomatic language?—Landrassy had stepped sedately away, +swinging his gold-headed cane and humming to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Duelling had its merits," Ian said to himself, as soon as he had +recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence. "There +is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have +done, in the business of life." +</P> + +<P> +He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to +soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the +arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; +and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his +club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his +pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign +Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force. +</P> + +<P> +Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in +his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so long +ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from the +first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, shouting to +the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on air, finding the +world a good, kind place made especially for him—his oyster to open, +his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh from the applause +of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, a gloom upon his +mind. +</P> + +<P> +Victory in his great fight—and love; he had them both and so he said +to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their +comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had +helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and +so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of water, +however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success and its +value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the love +was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, in +some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing +could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at +this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could +be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while +she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean +a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a +rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just +in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must +beat in his veins till the end of all things. +</P> + +<P> +Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her +wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the +instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and +himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and +Nemesis might demand—any price save one. +</P> + +<P> +As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, +his eyes half closed with shame. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard Byng was his friend, whose bread he had eaten, whom he had +known since they were boys at school. He remembered acutely Rudyard's +words to him that fateful night when he had dined with Jasmine +alone—"You will have much to talk about, to say to each other, such +old friends as you are." He recalled how Rudyard had left them, +trusting them, happy in the thought that Jasmine would have a pleasant +evening with the old friend who had first introduced him to her, and +that the old friend would enjoy his eager hospitality. Rudyard had +blown his friend's trumpet wherever men would listen to him; had +proclaimed Stafford as the coming man: and this was what he had done to +Rudyard! +</P> + +<P> +This was what he had done; but what did he propose to do? What of the +future? To go on in miserable intrigue, twisting the nature, making +demands upon life out of all those usual ways in which walk love and +companionship—paths that lead through gardens of poppies, maybe, but +finding grey wilderness at the end? Never, never the right to take the +loved one by the hand before all the world and say: "We two are one, +and the reckoning of the world must be made with both." Never to have +the right to stand together in pride before the wide-eyed many and say: +"See what you choose to see, say what you choose to say, do what you +choose to do, we do not care." The open sharing of worldly success; the +inner joys which the world may not see—these things could not be for +Jasmine and for him. +</P> + +<P> +Yet he loved her. Every fibre in his being thrilled to the thought of +her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness +suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened +the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing +into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with +dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented +quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, +feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a +single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable in the vast +proportions of eternity. It had only little sips of happiness to give, +not long draughts of joy. Who drank deep, long draughts—who of all the +men and women he had ever known? Who had had the primrose path without +the rain of fire, the cinders beneath the feet, the gins and the nets +spread for them? +</P> + +<P> +Yet might it not be that here and there people were permanently happy? +And had things been different, might not he and Jasmine have been of +the radiant few? He desired her above all things; he was willing to +sacrifice all—all for her, if need be; and yet there was that which he +could not, would not face. All or nothing—all or nothing. If he must +drink of the cup of sorrow and passion mixed, then it would be from the +full cup. +</P> + +<P> +With a stifled exclamation he sat down and began to write. Again and +again he stopped to think, his face lined and worn and old; then he +wrote on and on. Ambition, hope, youth, the Foreign Office, the +chancelleries of Europe, the perils of impending war, were all +forgotten, or sunk into the dusky streams of subconsciousness. One +thought dominated him. He was playing the game that has baffled all +men, the game of eluding destiny; and, like all men, he must break his +heart in the playing. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Jasmine," he wrote, "this letter, this first real letter of love which +I have ever written you, will tell you how great that love is. It will +tell you, too, what it means to me, and what I see before us. To-day I +surrendered to you all of me that would be worth your keeping, if it +was so that you might take and keep it. When I kissed you, I set the +seal upon my eternal offering to you. You have given me success. It is +for that I thank you with all my soul, but it is not for that I love +you. Love flows from other fountains than gratitude. It rises from the +well which has its springs at the beginning of the world, where those +beings lived who loved before there were any gods at all, or any +faiths, or any truths save the truth of being. +</P> + +<P> +"But it is because what I feel belongs to something in me deeper than I +have ever known that, since we parted a few hours ago, I see all in a +new light. You have brought to me what perhaps could only have come as +it did—through fire and cloud and storm. I did not will it so, indeed, +I did not wish it so, as you know; but it came in spite of all. And I +shall speak to you of it as to my own soul. I want no illusions, no +self-deception, no pretense to be added to my debt to you. With +wide-open eyes I want to look at it. I know that this love of mine for +you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my soul. And to have +known it with all its misery,—for misery there must be; misery, +Jasmine, there is—to have known it, to have felt it, the great +overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it so +terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's ambition. +With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came that which +gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to open doors +which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for me, but what +have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon me, which I must +do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to understand. +</P> + +<P> +"I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and give +myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, I +could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will be +paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable as it +would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small enough to +be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices of +intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a thousand +times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the stress and +meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you smiled; you +would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my hungry heart. +You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me help you. Yet, +Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine long ago, even +when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity to do what, +with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by it; but it has +not proved what it promised. You have not made the best of the power +into which you came, and you could not do so, because the spring from +which all the enriching waters of married life flow was dry. Poor +Jasmine—poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached out for the +golden city of the mirage! +</P> + +<P> +"But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I +must take—for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take +it—for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already +my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke +and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and +gather up the chances that are left. +</P> + +<P> +"You must come with me away—away, to start life afresh, somewhere, +somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not +return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the +world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing +that we had been at least true to each other, true at the last to the +thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because we +had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean that I +should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has possessed +me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have done the +one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the field. I have +made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It may be I have +done all I was meant to do in doing that—it may be. In any case, the +thing I did would stand as an accomplished work—it would represent one +definite and original thing; one piece of work in design all my own, in +accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go then—together—with +only the one big violence to the conventions of the world, and take the +law into our own hands? Rudyard, who understands Life's violence, would +understand that; what he could never understand would be perpetual +artifice, unseemly secretiveness. He himself would have been a great +filibuster in the olden days; he would have carried off the wives and +daughters of the chiefs and kings he conquered; but he would never have +stolen into the secret garden at night and filched with the hand of the +sneak-thief—never. +</P> + +<P> +"To go with me—away, and start afresh. There will be always work to +do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we +would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake +you made in not coming to me and so fulfilling the old promise. To set +that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great +stroke—that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease of +that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I seem +to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone forever, +saying that you had given me gifts—success and love; and now to go and +leave you in peace. +</P> + +<P> +"Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens +for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the +strife of the soul for peace, for fruition. +</P> + +<P> +"That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now, +before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in +chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, +binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something +accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last +effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and be +lost forever—do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to see +it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton—you know him. He +is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the necessary +thing so far as the knowledge of the world is concerned. With him, +then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces to find +peace—forever. +</P> + +<P> +"You? ... Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not fixed, +and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then the +comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things right. +Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to you, the +kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of a great +love ended—yours and mine—would help you to give what you can give +with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the last! +Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing pulse of +being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to you in +the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no more: to +some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a great +deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over long +years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may be, in +what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the business of +life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have had my +share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and peace I +can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was not +accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to save you +from the worst. But it must be the one or the other. +</P> + +<P> +"The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it +willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all that +makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and your +friend. I give you love and I give you friendship—whatever comes; +always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est. +</P> + +<P> +"In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; +but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in +life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow. +<BR><BR> +"Your Man, +<BR> +"IAN. +<BR><BR> +"P.S.—I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow. +<BR> +"IAN." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was +lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the +Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post. When he had put the letter +inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one +carrying the mark of the Club. By accident he had brought it with the +letters written there. He hesitated a moment, then refrained from +opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and +posted all his letters. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap19"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TO-MORROW ... PREPARE! +</H3> + +<P> +Krool did not sleep. What he read in a letter he had found in a +hallway, what he knew of those dark events in South Africa, now to +culminate in a bitter war, and what, with the mysterious psychic +instinct of race, he divined darkly and powerfully, all kept his eyes +unsleeping and his mind disordered. More than any one, he knew of the +inner story of the Baas' vrouw during the past week and years; also he +had knowledge of what was soon to empty out upon the groaning earth the +entrails of South Africa; but how he knew was not to be discovered. +Even Rudyard, who thought he read him like a book, only lived on the +outer boundaries of his character. Their alliance was only the durable +alliance of those who have seen Death at their door, and together have +driven him back. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen had regarded Krool as a spy; all Britishers who came and +went in the path to Rudyard's door had their doubts or their dislike of +him; and to every servant of the household he was a dark and isolated +figure. He never interfered with the acts of his fellow-servants, +except in so far as those acts affected his master's comfort; and he +paid no attention to their words except where they affected himself. +</P> + +<P> +"When you think it's a ghost, it's only Krool wanderin' w'ere he ain't +got no business," was the angry remark of the upper-housemaid, whom his +sudden appearance had startled in a dim passage one day. +</P> + +<P> +"Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where there's +no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs she had +enlarged upon his enormities greatly. +</P> + +<P> +"And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of +Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass—that is what Madame +think." +</P> + +<P> +Slowly the night passed for Krool. His disturbed brain was like some +dark wood through which flew songless birds with wings of night; +through which sped the furtive dwellers of the grass and the +earth-covert. The real and the imaginative crowded the dark purlieus. +He was the victim of his blood, his beginnings off there beyond the +Vaal, where the veld was swept by the lightning and the storm, the home +of wild dreams, and of a loneliness terrible and strange, to which the +man who once had tasted its awful pleasures returned and returned +again, until he was, at the last, part of its loneliness, its woeful +agitations and its reposeless quiet. +</P> + +<P> +It was not possible for him to think or be like pure white people, to +do as they did. He was a child of the kopje, the spruit, and the dun +veld, where men dwelt with weird beings which were not men—presences +that whispered, telling them of things to come, blowing the warnings of +Destiny across the waste, over thousands and thousands of miles. Such +as he always became apart and lonely because of this companionship of +silence and the unseen. More and more they withdrew themselves, +unwittingly and painfully, from the understanding and companionship of +the usual matter-of-fact, commonplace, sensible people—the settler, +the emigrant, and the British man. Sinister they became, but with the +helplessness of those in whom the under-spirit of life has been +working, estranging them, even against their will, from the rest of the +world. +</P> + +<P> +So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, +jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to him, +not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused utterances +and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion for him to +know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be in the +midst of them, an instrument of Fate. All night strange shapes trooped +past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he called +out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when that +master rescued him from death. +</P> + +<P> +Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither +and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy +himself with his master's clothes, boots, and belongings. At last he +stole into Byng's room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; then +reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, and +thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room. His face had a sombre +and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light the +discarded messages with their thunderous warnings—"To-morrow... +Prepare!" +</P> + +<P> +He knew their meaning well enough. "To-morrow" was here, and it would +bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against +the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of +sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek. +</P> + +<P> +"Prepare!" He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position +or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more. He +knew so much that was useful—to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not +himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and +grimly. All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and +knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing. +</P> + +<P> +Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the +reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be +the means and the messenger of betrayal. So he soothed his conscience. +</P> + +<P> +A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had +discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart +of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the +worst passions of an outcast mind. Since then there had been no +trafficking with the traitor—the double traitor, whom he was now +plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but +because he was a traitor to the Baas. In his evil way, he loved his +master as a Caliban might love an Apollo. That his devotion took forms +abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his +blood. That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas' country and +the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the +Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul. +</P> + +<P> +He had one obsession now—to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for +Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of +the Partners, as it were. But how should it be done? What should be the +means? On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, the +means came to his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Prepare!" the cable to the Baas had read. The Baas would be prepared +for the thunderbolt to be hurled from Pretoria; but he would have no +preparation for the thunderbolt which would fall at his feet this day +in this house, where white roses welcomed the visitor at the door-way +and the beauty of Titians and Botticellis and Rubens' and Goyas greeted +him in the luxuriant chambers. There would be no preparation for that +war which rages most violently at a fireside and in the human heart. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap20"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FURNACE DOOR +</H3> + +<P> +It was past nine o'clock when Rudyard wakened. It was nearly ten before +he turned to leave his room for breakfast. As he did so he stooped and +picked up an open letter lying on the floor near the door. +</P> + +<P> +His brain was dazed and still surging with the terrible thoughts which +had agonized him the night before. He was as in a dream, and was only +vaguely conscious of the fugitive letter. He was wondering whether he +would go at once to Jasmine or wait until he had finished breakfast. +Opening the door of his room, he saw the maid entering to Jasmine with +a gown over her arm. +</P> + +<P> +No, he would not go to her till she was alone, till she was dressed and +alone. Then he would tell her all, and take her in his arms, and talk +with her—talk as he had never talked before. Slowly, heavily, he went +to his study, where his breakfast was always eaten. As he sat down he +opened, with uninterested inquiry, the letter he had picked up inside +the door of his room. As he did so he vaguely wondered why Krool had +overlooked it as he passed in and out. Perhaps Krool had dropped it. +His eyes fell on the opening words... His face turned ashen white. A +harsh cry broke from him. +</P> + +<P> +At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion and +was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared on the +staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant away. Ian +was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's appearance. +His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place to a strange +blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor—the deathly look to +be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal disease. All +strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, leaving it tragic +with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was uppermost, while +desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The balance was gone +from the general character and his natural force was like some great +gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a sea-stricken ship. He +was no longer the stalwart Outlander who had done such great work in +South Africa and had such power in political London and in +international finance. The demoralization which had stealthily gone on +for a number of years was now suddenly a debacle of will and body. Of +the superb physical coolness and intrepid mind with which he had sprung +upon the stage of Covent Garden Opera House to rescue Al'mah nothing +seemed left; or, if it did remain, it was shocked out of its bearings. +His eyes were almost glassy as he looked at Ian Stafford, and +animal-like hatred was the dominating note of his face and carriage. +</P> + +<P> +"Come with me, Stafford: I want to speak to you," he said, hoarsely. +"You've arrived when I wanted you—at the exact time." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I said I would come at eleven," responded Stafford, mechanically. +"Jasmine expects me at eleven." +</P> + +<P> +"In here," Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room. +</P> + +<P> +As Stafford entered, he saw Krool's face, malign and sombre, show in a +doorway of the hall. Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a +look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning? Warning? There was +trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought +had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was +to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings. +</P> + +<P> +He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the +room—of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the +adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only +by Indian bead-curtains. He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, as +he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him. He was also +subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there with +such pleasant skill. Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, he +would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a love-song +from the light opera "A Lady of London," which had just caught the ears +of the people in the street. +</P> + +<P> +Of one thing he was sure: the end of things had come—the end of all +things that life meant to him had come. Rudyard knew! Rudyard, sitting +there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a face +where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion—he knew. +</P> + +<P> +The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching. As Ian +waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of the +silly, futile love-song: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "Not like the roses shall our love be, dear<BR> + Never shall its lovely petals fade,<BR> + Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year<BR> + Happy as the song-birds in the glade."<BR> +</P> + +<P> +Through it all now came Rudyard's voice. +</P> + +<P> +"I have a letter here," the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take +it from his pocket. "I want you to read it, and when you have read it, +I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it." +</P> + +<P> +He threw a letter down on the table—a square white envelope with the +crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it. It lay face downward, waiting for +his hand. +</P> + +<P> +So it had come. His letter to Jasmine which told all—Rudyard had read +it. And here was the end of everything—the roses faded before they had +bloomed an hour. It was not for them to flourish "till the world's last +year." +</P> + +<P> +His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised +it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the +envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a +devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time—he must have +time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he +had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its +mists. +</P> + +<P> +So this was the end of it all—friendship gone with the man before him; +shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a home-life +shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished for +evermore. +</P> + +<P> +He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, +while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically. +Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness +stole through the burdened air: +</P> + +<P> +"Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year—" +</P> + +<P> +He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted +of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for +this handwriting was not his—this letter was not his; these wild, +passionate phrases—this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these +references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love together, +this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear one of his +white roses when he saw her the next day—would she not see him between +eleven and twelve o'clock?—all these words were not his. +</P> + +<P> +They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next +room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had +the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; +who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the +innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the +master of it. +</P> + +<P> +The letter was signed, Adrian. +</P> + +<P> +His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had +braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman +he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another +man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He was +face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, Jasmine, +to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give up +all—career, fame, existence—was true to none, unfaithful to all, +caring for none, but pretending to care for all three—and for how many +others? He choked back a cry. +</P> + +<P> +"Well—well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one +thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the +music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him—to kill +him—now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old +friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!" +</P> + +<P> +His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were +ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He +was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea +of disorder. +</P> + +<P> +"Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give +that to me." +</P> + +<P> +He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were +suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so +strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not +have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which +followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, +with exasperating insistence: +</P> + +<P> +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear—" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held +Rudyard's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter," +he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining +his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you think—all +you think; but I would not do what you want to do." +</P> + +<P> +As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon +him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and +that was to be understood—to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A +woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes +before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance +which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, +with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate +life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition +from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet +unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the +revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It +was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was +merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been +wronged—terribly wronged—by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved +Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came—in truth, he all +but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if +no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was +monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that +overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and +whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed +deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might make +up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To do—what? +Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for +Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married +Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal? +His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far +beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence. +</P> + +<P> +What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but +one thing to do—only one thing to do—save her at any cost, somehow +save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had +spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had +betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an +animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her +shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust +which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity—even as it +sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest +depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the +thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, +deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring +all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing—the +indestructible thing. +</P> + +<P> +He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw that +Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any moment. There was +in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, unseeing thing which +disregards consequences, which would rush blindly on the throne of God +itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: and just in time. +</P> + +<P> +"I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to do. +I would do something else." +</P> + +<P> +His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which +caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just left. +Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not pursue, all +would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense anger and +indignation. +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down, Byng," he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over +the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched hand. +"Kill him—," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came +the maddening iteration of the jingling song—"you would kill him for +his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife +astray, but what good will it do to kill him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not him alone, but her too," came the savage, uncontrolled voice from +the uncontrolled savagery of the soul. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford's heart. His breath came in +sharp, breaking gasps. Had he—had he killed Jasmine? +</P> + +<P> +"You have not—not her?" +</P> + +<P> +"No—not yet." The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and +they shut with ominous certainty. +</P> + +<P> +An iron look came into Stafford's face. He had his chance now. One +word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost—sunk in +a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face +and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater +than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and +scornful surprise. +</P> + +<P> +"You think—you dare to think that she—that Jasmine—" +</P> + +<P> +"Think, you say! The letter—that letter—" +</P> + +<P> +"This letter—this letter, Byng—are you a fool? This letter, this +preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate +erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine—you know her. +Indiscreet—yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and +always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; she +cannot help it. She doesn't even know it. She led him on from sheer +wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! She +led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and better +men—like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want to master +us? She has coquetted since—ah, you do not know as I do, her old +friend! She has coquetted since she was a little child. Coquetted, and +no more. We have all been her slaves—yes, long before you came—all of +us. Look at Mennaval! She—" +</P> + +<P> +With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. "The world believes the +worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel's house that +she and Mennaval—and now this—!" +</P> + +<P> +But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping +an eager look—not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that +were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in +the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the +strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing +castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day—this!" Stafford held up +the letter. "This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, and +indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been what +he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has +dared—!" +</P> + +<P> +"He has dared, by God—!" +</P> + +<P> +All Byng's rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, +the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the +cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends—of De Lancy +Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the +rest. The pity of these for him—for Rudyard Byng, because the flower +in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! +He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath. +</P> + +<P> +But Stafford stepped in front of him. "Sit down, Byng, or damn yourself +forever. If she is innocent—and she is—do you think she would ever +live with you again, after you had dragged her name into the dust of +the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha'penny press? Do you +think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? If you want to +drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and tell her that you +suspect her. I know her—I have known her all her life, long before you +came. I care what becomes of her. She has many who care what becomes of +her—her father, her brother, many men, and many women who have seen +her grow up without a mother. They understand her, they believe in her, +because they have known her over all the years. They know her better +than you. Perhaps they care for her—perhaps any one of them cares for +her far more than you do." +</P> + +<P> +Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one +fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, +his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face. +</P> + +<P> +"She was more to me than all the world—than twenty worlds. She—" +</P> + +<P> +He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook +violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried to +reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward hands. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went on +quickly. "You have neglected her "—Rudyard's head came up in angry +protest—"not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too +easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All +women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; +but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according +to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are +concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, +'This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and +come now.' She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while +you did not have her on the leash she went playing—playing. That is +it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her +to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult +this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you +suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She has +bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather—" +</P> + +<P> +"I know—I know." The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope stole +into the distorted face. +</P> + +<P> +"She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, +not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she +would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, +that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who +would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in +there, to Al'mah's lover—" +</P> + +<P> +"Good God, Stafford—wait!" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the rest. +They are not her old friends, and they weren't yours once—that breed; +but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there in +Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people +lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, Byng. +Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter—" +</P> + +<P> +Byng reached out his hand for it. +</P> + +<P> +"No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your hands, +you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish thing, for +you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for such +stuff—an outburst of sensuality!" +</P> + +<P> +He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet +as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw Stafford +push it farther into the coals. +</P> + +<P> +Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and +women in courts of law. +</P> + +<P> +"Leave the whole thing—leave Fellowes to me," Stafford said, after a +slight pause. "I will deal with him. He shall leave the country +to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do +not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of +happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all +now." +</P> + +<P> +"He has keys, papers—" +</P> + +<P> +"I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There +is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul's war, will be on us to day. +Do you hear, Byng—to-day! And you have work to do for this your native +country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and the +Transvaal will be at each other's throat before night. You have work to +do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched business in my +hands. I will deal with Fellowes—adequately." +</P> + +<P> +The rage had faded from Byng's fevered eyes, and now there was a +moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in Jasmine, +that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not since he left +the white rose on her pillow last night—Adrian Fellowes' tribute; and +after he had read the letter, he had had no wish to see her till he had +had his will and done away with Fellowes forever. Then he would see +her—for the last time: and she should die, too,—with himself. That +had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He would not see her now, +not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he would come again, and say +no word which would let her think he knew what Fellowes had written. +Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, and they must start again, +begin life again together, a new understanding in his heart, new +purposes in their existence. In these few minutes Stafford had taught +him much, had showed him where he had been wrong, had revealed to him +Jasmine's nature as he never really understood it. +</P> + +<P> +At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took a +revolver from his pocket. +</P> + +<P> +"That's the proof of what I meant to do," he said; "and this is proof +of what I mean to do," he added, as he handed over the revolver and +Stafford's fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he +misinterpreted. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah yes," he exclaimed, sadly, "you don't quite trust me yet—not +quite, Stafford; and I don't wonder; but it's all right.... You've been +a good, good friend to us both," he added. "I wish Jasmine might know +how good a friend you've been. But never mind. We'll pay the debt +sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?" +</P> + +<P> +At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the distance. +"Rudyard—where are you, Ruddy?" it called. +</P> + +<P> +A light broke over Byng's haggard face. "Not yet?" he asked Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"No, not yet," was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open door +into the street. +</P> + +<P> +"Ruddy—where are you, Ruddy?" sang the voice like a morning song. +</P> + +<P> +Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the +little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago. +</P> + +<P> +The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was +"Pagliacci"—that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours out +his soul in agony. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had sat, +and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the +passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of +the character of the man who played—sensuous emotion, sensual delight. +There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the night, primary +prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a sensuous +organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the life is +never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy. +</P> + +<P> +In Stafford's pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He took +it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every nerve +of his body tingled. +</P> + +<P> +"That way out?" he thought. "How easy—and how selfish.... If one's +life only concerned oneself.... But it's only partly one's own from +first to last." ... Then his thoughts turned again to the man who was +playing "Pagliacci." "I have a greater right to do it than Byng, and +I'd have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not all +his fault." Again he shuddered. "No man makes love like that to a woman +unless she lets him, ... until she lets him." Then he looked at the +fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. "If it had +been read to a jury ... Ah, my God! How many he must have written her +like that ... How often...." +</P> + +<P> +With an effort he pulled himself together. "What does it matter now! +All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My letter +to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see her for +the last time, to make her understand...." +</P> + +<P> +He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood of +warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over him. +Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a stream +which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford remarked, +cynically, to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"A moment—Fellowes," he said, sharply. +</P> + +<P> +The music frayed into a discord and stopped. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap21"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE +</H3> + +<P> +There was that in Stafford's tone which made Fellowes turn with a +start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come +this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for his +master to find, after having read it himself with minute scrutiny. It +was in this room they had met so often in those days when Rudyard was +in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an intimacy +which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and curiosity, +the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that Krool's +antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been nurtured. +Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but he had been +disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine's part, which shook his +purpose again and again. +</P> + +<P> +It had all been a problem which Krool's furtive mind failed to master. +If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was that he +would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if he +warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had at +last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had +challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the +hated English. +</P> + +<P> +Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine's and Rudyard's +rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes' letter; and he +had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of +importance, for he had seen Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among +those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had +waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, +without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to +the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. +</P> + +<P> +He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he rose +in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, with his +ear against the door which led from the music-room, he strained to hear +what passed between Stafford and Fellowes. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what is it?" asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, +though there was that in Stafford's face which gave him anxiety, he +knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was Stafford, +who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, had occupied +so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, and, when she +did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from intimate +consideration. +</P> + +<P> +His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark +intensity of Stafford's. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks faded +and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the +leather-trimming of the piano-stool. +</P> + +<P> +"Anything I can do for you, Stafford?" he added, with attempted +nonchalance. +</P> + +<P> +"There is nothing you can do for me," was the meaning reply, "but there +is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will think +it worth while." +</P> + +<P> +"Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?" +</P> + +<P> +"You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn in +not avoiding it." +</P> + +<P> +"Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles—cryptic, they call it, +don't they?" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford's chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed +over his face. +</P> + +<P> +"It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you to +do yourself a good turn." +</P> + +<P> +Now Fellowes' face turned white. "What letter?" he asked, in a sharp, +querulous voice. +</P> + +<P> +"The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. "What business is it of +yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng's letters?" +</P> + +<P> +"Only what I get from a higher authority." +</P> + +<P> +"Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?" +</P> + +<P> +"The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with +words, you fool." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession. +</P> + +<P> +"What the devil ... why should I listen to you?" There was a peevish +stubbornness in the tone. +</P> + +<P> +"Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your life. +That should be sufficient reason for you to listen." +</P> + +<P> +"Damnation—speak out, if you've got anything to say! I don't see what +you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it—damned +officious." The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness. +</P> + +<P> +Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given +him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back +against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford's lips curled with contempt. "Don't squirm so, Fellowes. I'm +not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use it. +He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him ... I will +tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was absolutely +innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, +presumptuous, and lecherous cad—which is true. I said that, though you +deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's +honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the +would-be betrayer of an honest girl—of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you +may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and +body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in +your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! +... I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do +to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"—he handled the little steel +weapon with an eager fondness—"I think I'd do it. You are a pest." +</P> + +<P> +Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body +crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous discord. +Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made gestures of +appeal. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't—don't! Can't you see I'm willing! What is it you want me to do? +I'll do it. Put it away.... Oh, my God—Oh!" His bloodless lips were +drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror. +</P> + +<P> +With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his +pocket again. "Pull yourself together," he said. "Your life is safe for +the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved the +lady's innocence—you understand, after I had proved the lady's +innocence to him—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I understand," came the hoarse reply. +</P> + +<P> +"After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be trusted +to do so. I said that you would leave England within twenty-four hours, +and that you would not return within three years. That was my pledge. +You are prepared to fulfil it?" +</P> + +<P> +"To leave England! It is impossible—" +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, +either, might be worse," was the cold, savage reply. "Mr. Byng made his +terms." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes shivered. "What am I to do out of England—but, yes, I'll go, +I'll go," he added, as he saw the look in Stafford's face and thought +of the revolver so near to Stafford's hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, of course you will go," was the stern retort. "You will go, just +as I say." +</P> + +<P> +"What shall I do abroad?" wailed the weak voice. +</P> + +<P> +"What you have always done here, I suppose—live on others," was the +crushing reply. "The venue will be changed, but you won't change, not +you. If I were you, I'd try and not meet Jigger before you go. He +doesn't know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him +reckless." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. "I have +some things up-stairs," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the +desk in the secretary's room." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll go myself, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after +you—everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your +letters and private papers will not be read.... You feel you can rely +on me for that—eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes ... I'll go now ... abroad ... where?" +</P> + +<P> +"Where you please outside the United Kingdom." +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter +had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on +his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford came up to him again. "You understand, there must be no +attempt to communicate here.... You will observe this?" +</P> + +<P> +Fellowes nodded. "Yes, I will.... Good-night," he added, absently. +</P> + +<P> +"Good-day," answered Stafford, mechanically. +</P> + +<P> +The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room where +so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so many +tears, divert so many streams of life. +</P> + +<P> +How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and +homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming +through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains shine +like gold. +</P> + +<P> +As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with +bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come—his +meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of a +truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep +behind him. It was Krool. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; +but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool's impassive look. The +eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they +seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say—" +</P> + +<P> +Krool, with a gesture, stopped him. +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Byng is come now," he said, making a gesture towards the +staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants' quarters of the +house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now await +consequences. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford turned to the staircase and saw—in blue, in the old +sentimental blue—Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of +apprehension in her face. +</P> + +<P> +Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she +had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes' letter. Hours before this +she had read and re-read Ian's letter, that document of pain and +purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly +conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it +that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes' +letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it +was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it—if Rudyard had found +it...! +</P> + +<P> +Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten the +breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? Where +was Rudyard? +</P> + +<P> +Ian's eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, +and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort +to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul. +</P> + +<P> +"Good-morning. Am I so very late?" she said, gaily, to him, though +there was a hollow note in her voice. +</P> + +<P> +"You are just in time," he answered in an even tone which told nothing. +</P> + +<P> +"Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There +seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place—and so early in the +day, too." +</P> + +<P> +"It is full noon—and past," he said, with acute meaning, as her +daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards him. +How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet! +</P> + +<P> +As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder +of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the +modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange +tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by +Greuze. All last night's agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose +lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there +as she looked at Ian now. +</P> + +<P> +She beat a foot nervously on the floor. "What is it—why this +Euripidean air in my simple home? There's something wrong, I see. What +is it? Come, what is it, Ian?" +</P> + +<P> +Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no +loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday—only +yesterday—had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now +hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you come in here," he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the +door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of +the future and closed the book of the past. +</P> + +<P> +She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an +accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with +Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, and +looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing over +her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, giving +her eyes a staring and solicitous look. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what is it? Can't you speak and have it over?" she asked, with +desperate impatience. +</P> + +<P> +"Fellowes' letter to you—Rudyard found it," he said, abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered herself. +"You read it?" she gasped. +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill +Fellowes." +</P> + +<P> +She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her +fingers stopped. +</P> + +<P> +"Kill him—why?" she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her +trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her. +</P> + +<P> +"The letter—Fellowes' letter to you." +</P> + +<P> +"I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely +impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I suppose." +</P> + +<P> +She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but to +be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, though +her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed the +lifeblood. +</P> + +<P> +Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. "He read it—Rudyard read a +letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to +me—he read my letter.... It gave me no chance." +</P> + +<P> +"No chance—?" +</P> + +<P> +A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her tones. +"Yes, I had a chance, a last chance—if he had not read the letter. But +now, there is no chance.... You read it, too. You read the letter which +was addressed to me. No matter what it was—my letter, you read it." +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, 'Read that letter, and +then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.' ... I thought it +was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last night. I +thought it was my letter to you." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking +in a trance. "I answered that letter—your letter. I answered it this +morning. Here is the answer ... here." She laid a letter on the table +before him, then drew it back again into her lap. "Now it does not +matter. But it gives me no chance...." +</P> + +<P> +There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was wan +and strained. "No chance, no chance," she whispered. +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard did not kill him?" she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a +moment, as though repeating a lesson. "Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"I stopped him. I prevented him." +</P> + +<P> +"You prevented him—why?" Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion +and trouble. "Why did you prevent it—you?" +</P> + +<P> +"That would have hurt you—the scandal, the grimy press, the world." +</P> + +<P> +Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous poignancy. +"It would have hurt me—yes. Why did you not want to hurt me?" +</P> + +<P> +He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to +steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon of +steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, malignant +effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he was +suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same region +where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In it one +moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward things, +numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one's own agony, which seems +to neutralize the universe and reduce all life's problems to one +formula of solution. +</P> + +<P> +"What did you say to him that stopped him?" she asked in a whisper of +awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would +speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions. +</P> + +<P> +"I said the one thing to say," he answered after a moment, +involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him—doing it, as +it were, without conscious knowledge. +</P> + +<P> +It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of oblivion. Her +eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it transfixed; then +she recovered herself and spoke again. +</P> + +<P> +"What was the one thing to say?" she whispered. +</P> + +<P> +"That you were innocent—absolutely, that—" +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she burst into wild laughter—shrill, acrid, cheerless, +hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, +her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying +agitation of a broken organism. +</P> + +<P> +He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his +words. +</P> + +<P> +"I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes' letter was +the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been +wilful and indiscreet, and that—" +</P> + +<P> +In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told +her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to him. Every +word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word was now +repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped on the +table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went from the +house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst again into +laughter, mocking, wilful, painful. +</P> + +<P> +"You were left to set things right, to be the lord high +executioner—you, Ian!" +</P> + +<P> +How strange his name sounded on her lips now—foreign, distant, +revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words +which had been said, than all that had been done. +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose," she went on, +presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note +creeping into the voice. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I thought of that," he answered, quietly, "as you know." His eyes +sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. "That would have been +easy enough," he added. "I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, +but only of you—and Rudyard." +</P> + +<P> +"Only of me—and Rudyard," she repeated with drooping eyes, which +suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and wildness. +"Wasn't it rather late for that?" +</P> + +<P> +The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the +table towards her. +</P> + +<P> +"At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried +to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But +nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you—ever. I loved +you—ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! ... But you, you +might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the mistake +once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely more. I was +ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the winds, and +prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I was willing to +eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing to pay the +price—any price—just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my +life. But you were true to nothing—to nothing—to nobody." +</P> + +<P> +"If one is untrue—once, why be true at all ever?" she said with an +aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her +eyes. "If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?" +</P> + +<P> +Again a mocking laugh burst from her. "Don't you see? One kiss, a +wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment +that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the thousand +after." +</P> + +<P> +There came to her mind again—and now with what sardonic +force—Rudyard's words that day before they went to Glencader: "If you +had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers." +</P> + +<P> +"And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard," she added, +mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me—that I go on +living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him anything +has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, and to be +repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been arranged, has it, +that Rudyard is to believe in me?" +</P> + +<P> +"That has not been arranged." +</P> + +<P> +"It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that he +is to pretend to love me as before, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, +was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter—" +</P> + +<P> +"Where is the letter?" +</P> + +<P> +He pointed to the fire. +</P> + +<P> +"Who put it in the fire?" she asked. "You?" +</P> + +<P> +He inclined his head. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to +suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the +evidence. Here is yours—your letter. Would you like to put it into the +fire also?" she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her dress. +</P> + +<P> +"But, no, no, no—" She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had a +look of agonized agitation. "When I have learned every word by heart, I +will burn it myself—for your sake." Her voice grew softer, something +less discordant came into it. "You will never understand. You could +never understand me, or that letter of Adrian Fellowes to me, and that +he could dare to write me such a letter. You could never understand it. +But I understand you. I understand your letter. It came while I +was—while I was broken. It healed me, Ian. Last night I wanted to kill +myself. Never mind why. You would not understand. You are too good to +understand. All night I was in torture, and then this letter of +yours—it was a revelation. I did not think that a man lived like you, +so true, so kind, so mad. And so I wrote you a letter, ah, a letter +from my soul! and then came down to this—the end of all. The end of +everything—forever." +</P> + +<P> +"No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you ..." +</P> + +<P> +She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake—oh, for God's sake, hush! ... +You think that now I could ..." +</P> + +<P> +"Begin again with new purpose." +</P> + +<P> +"Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool—you who are so wise +sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not want +me to begin again—with you?" +</P> + +<P> +He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily. +</P> + +<P> +"You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe +me—because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian +Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not +believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and +that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has +done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have +spoken to me about it if you had not warned him." +</P> + +<P> +"Then begin again—" +</P> + +<P> +"You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry of +the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted +yesterday—for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? You +hate me." +</P> + +<P> +His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment. +</P> + +<P> +In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she +caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it from +her hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in +his heart for her. "That would only hurt those who have been hurt +enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give others +a chance." +</P> + +<P> +"You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. "You +were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in that? +Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in me, of +course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was magnanimous—when +you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in order to cure her? +Oh, how little you know! ... But you do not want me now. You do not +believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter had not fallen into +Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on our way to begin life +again together. Does that look as though there was some one else that +mattered—that mattered?" +</P> + +<P> +He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one +way, and only one way," he said, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin +again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of +your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay +your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It would +bind you. A child ..." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday—and now... +No, no, no," she added, "I will not, cannot live with Rudyard. I cannot +wrench myself from one world into another like that. I will not live +with him any more.... There—listen." +</P> + +<P> +Outside the newsboys were calling: +</P> + +<P> +"Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra +speshul!" +</P> + +<P> +"War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard +and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way +of escape—the war." +</P> + +<P> +"The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of +determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight pause. +"There is nothing more to say." +</P> + +<P> +He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian +Fellowes—did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend me?" +</P> + +<P> +"He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly. +</P> + +<P> +Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last +half-hour, and they deepened still more. +</P> + +<P> +"He did not say one word to put me right?" +</P> + +<P> +Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said. +</P> + +<P> +She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, +something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of +her pain-worn, exquisite face. +</P> + +<P> +So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent +over her. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I—in +different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the +road—peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, +Jasmine." +</P> + +<P> +"He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying +to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her. +</P> + +<P> +He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and +me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard—you must help +him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy +Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all the +lie.... Good-bye." +</P> + +<P> +In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her feet. +"Ian—Ian—come back," she cried. "Ian, one word—one word." +</P> + +<P> +But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one +transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a +moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one +demented. +</P> + +<P> +Once the door opened quietly, and Krool's face showed, sinister and +furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly. +</P> + +<P> +At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the +world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery. +</P> + +<P> +"He did not defend me—the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a +sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the +mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But +before he leaves ... before he leaves England..." +</P> + +<P> +As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard's portrait on the wall met +her eyes. "I can't go on, Rudyard," she said to it. "I know that now." +</P> + +<P> +Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the +newsboys were calling: +</P> + +<P> +"War declared! All about the war!" +</P> + +<P> +"That is the way out for me," Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened on. +"That opens up the road.... I'm still an artillery officer." +</P> + +<P> +He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap22"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY +</H3> + +<P> +Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing +had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national +excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination. +</P> + +<P> +An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that +strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, +the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which +had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money +which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized +by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; +who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the principal +feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public objects. Men +who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or wool or silver +or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported schemes for the +public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely because the ladies +were fine; and they gave substantial sums—upon occasion—for these +fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed rich men, whose wives +never appeared, who were kept in secluded quarters in Bloomsbury or +Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the Carlton which the +scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these gave no dinners in +return. +</P> + +<P> +To get money to do things, no matter how,—or little matter how; to be +in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real +people—that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real +people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into +the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the +disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were +folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle-class, the labouring-man. Of +these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of responsibility +cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the one hand; the +professional man of all professions, the little merchant, the sailor, +the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on the other; and, in +between, those people in the shires who had not yet come to be material +and gross, who had old-fashioned ideas of the duty of the citizen and +the Christian. In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had +at the foot of the altar of sacrifice. +</P> + +<P> +This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, and +it served as the solvent of many a life-problem. +</P> + +<P> +Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered "the way out," who +went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he +stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed +into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, +"War declared!" had told him the path he must tread. +</P> + +<P> +He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the Front +with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished by the +instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he was on +his way to do two things—to see whether Adrian Fellowes was keeping +his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister. +</P> + +<P> +There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not +gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to +hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days +before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at +the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled +forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be +settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be +cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start +in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his +life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought +of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle it. +Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot. +</P> + +<P> +When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it +was a question as to what he—Jigger—should now do, in what sphere of +life his abnormally "cute" mind must run, he answered, instantly. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce," he said. "That's it—stryght. I'm goin' out +there wiv you." +</P> + +<P> +Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not for you, +Jigger. No, think again." +</P> + +<P> +"Ain't there work in Souf Afriker—maybe not in the army itself, y'r +gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I bet; +an' I could go as easy as can be." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Lou will be all right now," remarked Stafford, with a reflective +irony. +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, +ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, or +cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about—couldn't I, y'r gryce? I'm +only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I was run +over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?" +</P> + +<P> +With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you +are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and artillery. +There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, or—" +</P> + +<P> +"Or bust, y'r gryce?" +</P> + +<P> +So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the +difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe +and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a +comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, +clever waif who had drifted across his path. +</P> + +<P> +To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed +him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life—of life +that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his life +before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind +him, all mile-stones passed except one. +</P> + +<P> +So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and +there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little distance +away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and +with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the +station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the +crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing +along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes. Presently the +sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did not occur to him that +perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but +the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts. +</P> + +<P> +The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on +a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also—derelicts +of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of +life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon +women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish +and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the +thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their +way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, +looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, the crowd +were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their +purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, +moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; +and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them +seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill +voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, +nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational +rags. +</P> + +<P> +Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing +word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his +head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led +nowhere—nowhere. +</P> + +<P> +"Coming home with me, darling?" she added in response to his meditative +look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted +sense. "Coming home with me—?" +</P> + +<P> +Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through +Stafford's brain. Home—where the business of this poor wayfarer's +existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the +inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and +hastened on. +</P> + +<P> +Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not +moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word +Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a +corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years +ago,—his mother had died when he was very young—and his eldest +brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in +the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in +her place at table. +</P> + +<P> +He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he +could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the +interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had +longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of +interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be. +</P> + +<P> +The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all +possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in +blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like +Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the +picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would read +the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in +which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, +influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard—he loved orchards—the +hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey and chestnut +horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; the smell of +the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of the bracing +January wind across the moors or where the woodcock awaited its +spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had +seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone. +</P> + +<P> +A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of marching +men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, forced +him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, were +alongside of him—a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to see +"Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"—a six months' excursion, as they +thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the wall of +the shops, and presently he found himself forced down Buckingham +Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach Adrian Fellowes' +apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically thrown into the +street, that Krool was almost beside him. +</P> + +<P> +The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor +left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, if, +and when, he saw him. +</P> + +<P> +But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker +shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure +followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment +where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were; then it fell behind a little, for +here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way and +watched him as he approached the door of the big building where Adrian +Fellowes lived. +</P> + +<P> +Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before the +door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the pause, +the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got into +the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the man did +who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round and +rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far from the +entrance, however, another cab—a four-wheeler—discharged its occupant +at a point nearer to the building than where he waited. It was a woman. +She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with quick and grateful +emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, clattered away. The woman +glanced along the empty street swiftly, and then hurried to the doorway +which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers. +</P> + +<P> +Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black and +heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure—there was none other +like it; or the turn of her head—there was only one such head in all +England. She entered the building quickly. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion +stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why she +had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had said no +word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let the worst +be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she thought of +him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, and they +must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when the crisis +of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all. +</P> + +<P> +One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know—the intimacy between +Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in +their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The +ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond her +endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the nature of +the interview which she must have, at the thought of the meeting at all. +</P> + +<P> +He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in +the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had used. +He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the cigars +for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not soothe +him. He had passed beyond the artificial. +</P> + +<P> +His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after +Jasmine's entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after a +hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she could, +and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her movements +had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her head down +into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain. +</P> + +<P> +The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone +abroad. He would soon find out. +</P> + +<P> +He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes' +door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked +again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It +turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked +at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the room. +He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and looked +round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of things +gathered together hastily. +</P> + +<P> +Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked +round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and +on it lay a figure—Adrian Fellowes, straight and still—and sleeping. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford went over. "Fellowes," he said, sharply. +</P> + +<P> +There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" +he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely at +the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew. +</P> + +<P> +Adrian Fellowes was dead. +</P> + +<P> +Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once more +and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There was no +sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, only a +look of sleep—a pale, motionless sleep. +</P> + +<P> +But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched the +shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while. +</P> + +<P> +Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the +house with agitated footsteps. +</P> + +<P> +"He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud. +</P> + +<P> +He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and +then a lazy porter came. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap23"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" +</H3> + +<P> +Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this +October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered +the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten +the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed +preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She +was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her +footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the +butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave +with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, +when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at +the corner of Piccadilly. +</P> + +<P> +When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, +the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being laid +down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came up +the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the staircase +with marked deliberation. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an airin' +on shanks' hosses." +</P> + +<P> +"And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara," sniggered the +second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." +</P> + +<P> +"Swells, the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an Emperor—'struth!" +</P> + +<P> +"I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares +on the Rand, me boy." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come—not forgetting th' +grub and the fizz." +</P> + +<P> +"What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like tips +down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard—and a lot of +hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political grease does. +But what price a title—Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!" +</P> + +<P> +"Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a +coronet 'ers! W'y—" +</P> + +<P> +But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of +imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of the +household. +</P> + +<P> +Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of +the British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning +family, honouring her table—though the ladies of neither were to be +present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been +unaware of the gossip there had been of late,—though it was unlikely +the great ladies would have known of it—and she would have been slow +to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly +of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful +nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about +her. People came—almost "everybody" came—to her house, and would +come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband +intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not +found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very +much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for +dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at +all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come +and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of +nights. +</P> + +<P> +In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing, +though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and +with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her +face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the +place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in +its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most delicate +film—the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain +gives. +</P> + +<P> +Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her +husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted +sharply—something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was +uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did +now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which +came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not +the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of +Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in +broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her +marriage—that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a +cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two +would meet, and she knew how it would be—an outward semblance, a +superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of +intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; +only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit. +</P> + +<P> +Yet when she was dressed—in pure white, with only a string of pearls, +the smallest she had, round her neck—she was like that white flower +which had been placed on her pillow last night. +</P> + +<P> +Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure +again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other +woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that +transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone +slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did +not belong to her. +</P> + +<P> +As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a +knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a +pencilled note in Rudyard's handwriting. +</P> + +<P> +White violets—white violets! +</P> + +<P> +The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine." +</P> + +<P> +White violets—how strange that he should send them! These they send +for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to +her—from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet +he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was concerned. +</P> + +<P> +She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few +others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could +separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the past. +She had realized that the night before, when still that chance of which +she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the coil of her +wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that self-destruction +which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than herself. It was +melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the emotional, the +theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her tragedy, which is just +as real as that which comes to those of more spiritual vein, just as +real as that which comes to the more classical victim of fate. Jasmine +had the deep defects of her qualities. Her suffering was not the less +acute because it found its way out with impassioned demonstration. +</P> + +<P> +There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she +took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure that +Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that did +not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep for +tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb +endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little +routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of +convention are so powerful that life's great issues are often obscured +by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last +careful touch to her hair—the mechanical obedience to long habit. It +is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler +irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to +her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and +fastened it in her gown—the tyranny of habit. +</P> + +<P> +Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the +closed door of Rudyard's room. Only a step—and yet she was kept apart +from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not +penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could +not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be bridged. +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the +surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said +through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no +response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make +believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank within +herself at the idea of being alone with him. +</P> + +<P> +As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, +from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It +was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must +stay there forever. +</P> + +<P> +When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on +the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would +ask how he died—the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask how +he died. +</P> + +<P> +How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had +Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, +the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? +She shuddered. They might say that she killed him. +</P> + +<P> +She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had +dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and +there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all. +</P> + +<P> +Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as +though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment—her own +bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned +to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice +speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the +wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence which +grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will.... And +then—music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from somewhere +inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song she had heard +once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, "More Was Lost at +Mohacksfield." It was a tale of love and loss and tragedy and despair. +</P> + +<P> +Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that +with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved +herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy +through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very softly +as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down the +staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music. +</P> + +<P> +It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized +exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a +music-box which could be timed to play at will—even days ahead, and he +had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, +grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as +though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before +Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he +said over the dead body, "He did not die by his own hand." +</P> + +<P> +Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first +guest, Jasmine said to herself: "No, no, he had not the courage to kill +himself." +</P> + +<P> +Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed him—Rudyard—Ian—who? +But how? There was no sign of violence. That much she had seen. He lay +like one asleep. Who was it killed him? +</P> + +<P> +"Lady Tynemouth." +</P> + +<P> +Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler's voice broke the +spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her. +</P> + +<P> +"So handsome you look, my darling—and all in white. White violets, +too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it's +chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny +string of pearls, like a young under-secretary's wife, to show what she +might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful Jasmine!" +</P> + +<P> +"My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I compromised," +was Jasmine's reply, with a really good imitation of a smile. +</P> + +<P> +As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with swift +inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did to-night, so +ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under the eyes, the +curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish brightness and +far-awayness of the look. She was about to say something in comment, +but other guests entered, and it was impossible. She watched, however, +from a little distance, while talking gaily to other guests; she +watched at the dinner-table, as Jasmine, seated between her two +royalties, talked with gaiety, with pretty irony, with respectful +badinage; and no one could be so daring with such ceremonious respect +at the same time as she. Yet through it all Lady Tynemouth saw her +glance many times with a strange, strained inquiry at Rudyard, seated +far away opposite her; at another big, round table. +</P> + +<P> +"There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and +wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly +seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and +apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising. +Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed to herself, and +presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them. +</P> + +<P> +"What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng +doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval." +</P> + +<P> +"Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added, +with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: +"Where is the great man—where's Stafford to-night?" +</P> + +<P> +"Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew soft. +"He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he has +gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi +Falls!" +</P> + +<P> +Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite +happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying +herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to +spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by +her frank platonic affection. +</P> + +<P> +"Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion +after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still +might do. +</P> + +<P> +"The war—it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had +seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was +happening in this household. +</P> + +<P> +The other demurred. +</P> + +<P> +"But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He +didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed +upset too, so pale and anxious-looking." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is +anything," said Lady Tynemouth to herself. "I'll ask myself to stay +with her for a couple of days." +</P> + +<P> +Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, +and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much +as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at +Jasmine's face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an +undertone of misery: +</P> + +<P> +"She looks as if she needed a friend." +</P> + +<P> +After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, +and gave it an endearing pressure. "May I come to you for a few days, +Jasmine?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I was going to ask if you would have me," answered Jasmine, with a +queer little smile. "Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, and +that's a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other +things together, isn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from +Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be +arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go on +in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what he +knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but that +was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was that +which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a complete +revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of things. +Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of Fellowes' +death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be temporary +expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had its great +advantages. +</P> + +<P> +She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of +hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; +but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to +have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to get +his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, +magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable +reaction, which would be the real test and trial. +</P> + +<P> +Love and forgiveness—what had she to do with either! She did not wish +forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in +that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved +another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, +the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his +own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might +the next few days bring forth? +</P> + +<P> +Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own +life—who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said to +Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of revenge +and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from one moment +to another. +</P> + +<P> +The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, +one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had +kissed their wives and then killed them—fondled them, and then +strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to +kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now might +come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the first +flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers of life +and love. +</P> + +<P> +If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to +everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand +of steel to clutch him—what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean +finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing! +</P> + +<P> +And she would have been the cause of everything. +</P> + +<P> +The thought scorched her soul. +</P> + +<P> +Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from their +cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the range of +her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the handcuffs +on Rudyard's—or Ian's—wrists. +</P> + +<P> +Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and +Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they +spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal +relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a +matter-of-fact voice said: "I suppose Al'mah will be here. You haven't +heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical." +</P> + +<P> +There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far +entrances of the drawing-room Al'mah entered. Her manner was +composed—if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around +her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It contained +only a few words, and it ran: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"DEAR BYNG,—Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An +inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; neither +of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my rooms +after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours ever, +<BR><BR> +"IAN STAFFORD." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over +his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his pocket. She +then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward to greet her. +</P> + +<P> +On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear +that Al'mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be +here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told Jasmine. +Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al'mah would not be where she +was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the letter for +which he had paid with his life. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both +Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think I am in good voice," she said to Jasmine, presently. Then +Rudyard went, giving his wife's arm a little familiar touch as he +passed, and said: +</P> + +<P> +"Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I'm sure Al'mah +will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall +need it—yes we shall need cheering very badly before we've done. We're +not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up is what we +want, and we must have it." +</P> + +<P> +Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al'mah, to which he got no +response, and to himself he said, grimly: "Well, it's better she should +not know it—here." +</P> + +<P> +His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he had +an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he +righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at +his neighbour. +</P> + +<P> +"It's true, then, what we hear about him," the neighbour said, and +suggestively raised fingers to his mouth. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an +abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which +captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she +sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of +country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to every +patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal to the +spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an invocation. Men's +eyes grew moist. +</P> + +<P> +And now another, a final song, a combination of all—of love, and loss +and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the +first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a +dream, and stood staring blindly at Al'mah. The great voice swelled out +in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that +gripped the heart. +</P> + +<P> +"But more was lost at Mohacksfield—" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as +the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though +she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, she +gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell +heavily on the polished floor. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was +beside him in an instant. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's right—you come," he said to her, and he carried the limp +body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his +breast. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor child—the war, of course; it means so much to them." +</P> + +<P> +Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap24"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING +</H3> + +<P> +"A lady to see you, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm sure I have no use for them, sir," replied Gleg, sourly. He was in +no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master was +going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but that +he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of +receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner +which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not +even offered thanks. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know about that, sir. It's her ladyship, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"It's what 'ladyship,' Gleg?" +</P> + +<P> +"Her ladyship, sir—Lady Tynemouth." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said +quietly: +</P> + +<P> +"Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've +forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten +yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a +small pension. Show her ladyship in." +</P> + +<P> +Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room. +</P> + +<P> +"Seven-and-six a week, I suppose," he said to himself as he went down +the stairs. "Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy." +</P> + +<P> +With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the +door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its +antipodes. +</P> + +<P> +Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I +ought to be." +</P> + +<P> +"I am sure you are," answered Stafford, drily. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the lion's +mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped once," she +rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair. +"Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn't think +that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would +pay for the candle without burning it." +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them." +</P> + +<P> +She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as +ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after +Gleg's icy welcome." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of +Swinburne, alive with cynicism: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "And the worst and the best of this is,<BR> + That neither is most to blame<BR> + If she has forgotten my kisses,<BR> + And I have forgotten her name."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able to +endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny +past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our +friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent +flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a +needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian +Stafford—not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle." +</P> + +<P> +"'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went +over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it +meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor +impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a +little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth. +</P> + +<P> +"The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal," +he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember Mr. +Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng +won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs +and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was +awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by—guess +whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to +find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as +he called it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to +make a needle-point dipped in it deadly." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe it a bit, but—" +</P> + +<P> +Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress—she was all +in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But +tell me," she added, presently—"for it's one of the reasons why I'm +here now—what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are +not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose. +Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've never seen you look so +pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don't mind that from an old +friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so +well." +</P> + +<P> +"Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any +glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, +and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had +sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at +Mohacksfield." +</P> + +<P> +"Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say. +It makes me so proud to be your friend—even your neglected, if not +quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid +work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball +is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and +not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction +after all you've done?" +</P> + +<P> +"No doubt it's the reaction," he replied. +</P> + +<P> +"I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching +him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine +affair—shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and +taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that +all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the +verdict?" +</P> + +<P> +"Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut +short, and sympathy with the relatives." +</P> + +<P> +"I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative response. +"But—well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart stops +beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!" +</P> + +<P> +"It sounded rather worse than silly," was Ian's comment. +</P> + +<P> +"Did—did they cut him up, to see if he'd taken morphia, or an overdose +of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died of taking +quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long—a South American, +she was." +</P> + +<P> +He nodded. "It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, +they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been +what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not sufficient +strength for recovery." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn't present?" she asked, curiously. "I know it +is silly in a way, but don't you remember how interested Mr. Fellowes +was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?" +</P> + +<P> +"There was no reason why he should be there." +</P> + +<P> +"What witnesses were called?" +</P> + +<P> +"Myself and the porter of Fellowes' apartments, his banker, his +doctor—" +</P> + +<P> +"And Al'mah?" she asked, obliquely. +</P> + +<P> +He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly. +</P> + +<P> +"You needn't be afraid to speak about Al'mah," she continued. "I saw +something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me +that—well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al'mah there? Did +she give evidence?" +</P> + +<P> +"She was there to be called, if necessary," he responded, "but the +coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said +evidence was unnecessary, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"You arranged that, probably?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid—and so kind." +</P> + +<P> +She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as if +with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale now, +and her eyes were greatly troubled. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian," she said, in a low voice, "I don't believe that Adrian Fellowes +died a natural death, and I don't believe that he killed himself. He +would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never +go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do so. +He—did—not—kill—himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did not die +a natural death, either." +</P> + +<P> +"Who killed him?" Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his eyes +remaining steady and quiet. +</P> + +<P> +She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. "Oh, it all seems so +horrible! I've tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, and +I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your face I +knew I couldn't have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not by the +same thoughts, but through the same people." +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank," he said, heavily. "I +will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly +frank with me." +</P> + +<P> +"As I have always been. I can't be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so +much that you have the right to ask me what you will.... There it is, +the fatal thing," she added. +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her +over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls. +</P> + +<P> +"No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt," he responded, +gallantly. "I was merely selfish in saving you." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want +me, while I didn't want you. That's the woman, and that's all women, +and there's no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had +saved me than any one else who wasn't bound, like Tynie, to do so." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a +sixpenny umbrella," he rejoined, drily. +</P> + +<P> +"How we play on the surface while there's so much that is wearing our +hearts out underneath," she responded, wearily. "Listen, Ian, you know +what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn't, I am sure that +Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill to +bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside hers. +The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or three +times she half waked, and—and it was very painful. It made my heart +ache, for I knew it wasn't all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian +Fellowes lying dead in his room.... Ian, it is awful, but for some +reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the +truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you—no, no, don't mind my saying +it. She didn't care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she +does care for you—cares for you. She oughtn't to, but she does, and +she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please +don't think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better +friend than I am. But there's something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is +looking like a giant that's had blood-letting, and he never goes near +Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It's a bad sign when two +people must have some third person about to insulate their +self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to be +just their own selves, and have it out." +</P> + +<P> +"You think there's been trouble between them?" His voice was quite +steady, his manner composed. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think quite that. But there is trouble in that palace. Rudyard +is going to South Africa." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that is not unnatural. I should expect him to do so. I am going +to South Africa also." +</P> + +<P> +For a moment she looked at him without speaking, and her face slowly +paled. "You are going to the Front—you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—'Back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again.' I was +a gunner, you know, and not a bad one, either, if I do say it." +</P> + +<P> +"You are going to throw up a great career to go to the Front? When you +have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her voice +was choking a little. +</P> + +<P> +He made a little whimsical gesture. "There's another ladder to climb. +I'll have a try at it, and do my duty to my country, too. I'll have a +double-barrelled claim on her, if possible." +</P> + +<P> +"I know that you are going because you will not stay when Rudyard +goes," she rejoined, almost irritably. +</P> + +<P> +"What a quixotic idea! Really you are too impossible and wrong-headed." +</P> + +<P> +He turned an earnest look upon her. "No, I give you my word, I am not +going because Rudyard is going. I didn't know he was going till you +told me. I got permission to go three hours after Kruger's message +came." +</P> + +<P> +"You are only feckless—only feckless, as the Scotch say," she rejoined +with testy sadness. "Well, since everybody is going, I am going too. I +am going with a hospital-ship." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that would pay off a lot of old debts to the Almighty," he +replied, in kindly taunt. +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't been worse than most women, Ian," she replied. "Women +haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up +bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them +off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so +few, and so uninteresting." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she took from her pocket a letter. "Here is a letter for you," +she said. "It was lying on Jasmine's table the night she was taken ill. +I don't know why I did it, but I suppose I took it up so that Rudyard +should not see it; and then I didn't say anything to Jasmine about it +at once. She said nothing, either; but to-day I told her I'd seen the +letter addressed to you, and had posted it. I said it to see how she +would take it. She only nodded, and said nothing at first. Then after a +while she whispered, 'Thank you, my dear,' but in such a queer tone. +Ian, she meant you to have the letter, and here it is." +</P> + +<P> +She put it into his hands. He remembered it. It was the letter which +Jasmine had laid on the table before him at that last interview when +the world stood still. After a moment's hesitation he put it in his +pocket. +</P> + +<P> +"If she wished me to have it—" he said in a low voice. +</P> + +<P> +"If not, why, then, did she write it? Didn't she say she was glad I +posted it?" +</P> + +<P> +A moment followed, in which neither spoke. Lady Tynemouth's eyes were +turned to the window; Stafford stood looking into the fire. +</P> + +<P> +"Tynie is sure to go to South Africa with his Yeomanry," she continued +at last. "He'll be back in England next week. I can be of use out +there, too. I suppose you think I'm useless because I've never had to +do anything, but you are quite wrong. It's in me. If I'd been driven to +work when I was a girl, if I'd been a labourer's daughter, I'd have +made hats—or cream-cheeses. I'm not really such a fool as you've +always thought me, Ian; at any rate, not in the way you've thought me." +</P> + +<P> +His look was gentle, as he gazed into her eyes. "I've never thought you +anything but a very sensible and alluring woman, who is only wilfully +foolish at times," he said. "You do dangerous things." +</P> + +<P> +"But you never knew me to do a really wrong thing, and if you haven't, +no one has." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly her face clouded and her lips trembled. "But I am a good +friend, and I love my friends. So it all hurts. Ian, I'm most upset. +There's something behind Adrian Fellowes' death that I don't +understand. I'm sure he didn't kill himself; but I'm also sure that +some one did kill him." Her eyes sought his with an effort and with +apprehension, but with persistency too. "I don't care what the jury +said—I know I'm right." +</P> + +<P> +"But it doesn't matter now," he answered, calmly. "He will be buried +to-morrow, and there's an end of it all. It will not even be the usual +nine days' wonder. I'd forget it, if I were you." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't easily forget it while you remember it," she rejoined, +meaningly. "I don't know why or how it affects you, but it does affect +you, and that's why I feel it; that's why it haunts me." +</P> + +<P> +Gleg appeared. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said, and handed Ian a +card. +</P> + +<P> +"Where is he?" +</P> + +<P> +"In the dining-room, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Very good. I will see him in a moment." +</P> + +<P> +When they were alone again, Lady Tynemouth held out her hand. "When do +you start for South Africa?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"In three days. I join my battery in Natal." +</P> + +<P> +"You will hear from me when I get to Durban," she said, with a shy, +inquiring glance. +</P> + +<P> +"You are really going?" +</P> + +<P> +"I mean to organize a hospital-ship and go." +</P> + +<P> +"Where will you get the money?" +</P> + +<P> +"From some social climber," she replied, cynically. His hand was on the +door-knob, and she laid her own on it gently. "You are ill, Ian," she +said. "I have never seen you look as you do now." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall be better before long," he answered. "I never saw you look so +well." +</P> + +<P> +"That's because I am going to do some work at last," she rejoined. +"Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great deal, and +perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you if you get +fever or anything," she added, laughing nervously—"you and Tynie." +</P> + +<P> +When she was gone he stood looking at the card in his hand, with his +mind seeing something far beyond. Presently he rang for Gleg. +</P> + +<P> +"Show Mr. Mappin in," he said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap25"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND +</H3> + +<P> +In a moment the great surgeon was seated, looking reflectively round +him. Soon, however, he said brusquely, "I hope your friend Jigger is +going on all right?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, yes, thanks to you." +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, Mr. Stafford, thanks to you and Mrs. Byng chiefly. It was care +and nursing that did it. If I could have hospitals like Glencader and +hospital nurses like Mrs. Byng and Al'mah and yourself, I'd have few +regrets at the end of the year. That was an exciting time at Glencader." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford nodded, but said nothing. Presently, after some reference to +the disaster at the mine at Glencader and to Stafford's and Byng's +bravery, Mr. Mappin said. "I was shocked to hear of Mr. Fellowes' +death. I was out of town when it happened—a bad case at Leeds; but I +returned early this morning." He paused, inquiringly but Ian said +nothing, and he continued, "I have seen the body." +</P> + +<P> +"You were not at the inquest, I think," Ian remarked, casually. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I was not in time for that, but I got permission to view the body." +</P> + +<P> +"And the verdict—you approve?" +</P> + +<P> +"Heart failure—yes." Mr. Mappin's lip curled. "Of course. But he had +no heart trouble. His heart wasn't even weak. His life showed that." +</P> + +<P> +"His life showed—?" Ian's eyebrows went up. +</P> + +<P> +"He was very much in society, and there's nothing more strenuous than +that. His heart was all right. Something made it fail, and I have been +considering what it was." +</P> + +<P> +"Are you suggesting that his death was not natural?" +</P> + +<P> +"Quite artificial, quite artificial, I should say." +</P> + +<P> +Ian took a cigarette, and lighted it slowly. "According to your theory, +he must have committed suicide. But how? Not by an effort of the will, +as they do in the East, I suppose?" +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Mappin sat up stiffly in his chair. "Do you remember my showing you +all at Glencader a needle which had on its point enough poison to kill +a man?" +</P> + +<P> +"And leave no trace—yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you remember that you all looked at it with interest, and that Mr. +Fellowes examined it more attentively than any one else?" +</P> + +<P> +"I remember." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I was going to kill a collie with it next day." +</P> + +<P> +"A favourite collie grown old, rheumatic—yes, I remember." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, the experiment failed." +</P> + +<P> +"The collie wasn't killed by the poison?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, not by the poison, Mr. Stafford." +</P> + +<P> +"So your theory didn't work except on paper." +</P> + +<P> +"I think it worked, but not with the collie." +</P> + +<P> +There was a pause, while Stafford looked composedly at his visitor, and +then he said: "Why didn't it work with the collie?" +</P> + +<P> +"It never had its chance." +</P> + +<P> +"Some mistake, some hitch?" +</P> + +<P> +"No mistake, no hitch; but the wrong needle." +</P> + +<P> +"The wrong needle! I should not say that carelessness was a habit with +you." Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. +</P> + +<P> +"Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. +</P> + +<P> +"You were over-confident then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." +</P> + +<P> +There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some +cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of +reproach do you apply to Glencader?" +</P> + +<P> +"Thieving." +</P> + +<P> +"That sounds reprehensible—and rude." +</P> + +<P> +"If you were not beyond reproach, it would be rude, Mr. Stafford." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford chafed at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit +of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; +but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was +hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from +making mischief. The compliment had been smug, and smugness irritated +Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, thanks for your testimonial," he said, presently, and then he +determined to cut short the tardy revelation, and prick the bubble of +mystery which the great man was so slowly blowing. +</P> + +<P> +"I take it that you think some one at Glencader stole your needle, and +so saved your collie's life," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"That is what I mean," responded Mr. Mappin, a little discomposed that +his elaborate synthesis should be so sharply brought to an end. +</P> + +<P> +There was almost a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the +collie—were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you +prepare another needle, or do it in the humdrum way?" +</P> + +<P> +"I let the collie live." +</P> + +<P> +"Hoping to find the needle again?" asked Stafford, with a smile. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps to hear of it again." +</P> + +<P> +"Hello, that is rather startling! And you have done so? +</P> + +<P> +"I think so. Yes, I may say that." +</P> + +<P> +"Now how do you suppose you lost that needle?" +</P> + +<P> +"It was taken from my pocket-case, and another substituted. +</P> + +<P> +"Returning good for evil. Could you not see the difference in the +needles?" +</P> + +<P> +"There is not, necessarily, difference in needles. The substitute was +the same size and shape, and I was not suspicious." +</P> + +<P> +"And what form does your suspicion take now?" +</P> + +<P> +The great man became rather portentously solemn—he himself would have +said "becomingly grave." "My conviction is that Mr. Fellowes took my +needle." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford fixed the other with his gaze. "And killed himself with it?" +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Mappin frowned. "Of that I cannot be sure, of course." +</P> + +<P> +"Could you not tell by examining the body?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not absolutely from a superficial examination." +</P> + +<P> +"You did not think a scientific examination necessary?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, perhaps; but the official inquest is over, the expert analysis or +examination is finished by the authorities, and the superficial proofs, +while convincing enough to me, are not complete and final; and so, +there you are." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford got and held his visitor's eyes, and with slow emphasis said: +"You think that Fellowes committed suicide with your needle?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I didn't say that." +</P> + +<P> +"Then I fear my intelligence must be failing rapidly. You said—" +</P> + +<P> +"I said I was not sure that he killed himself. I am sure that he was +killed by my needle; but I am not sure that he killed himself. Motive +and all that kind of thing would come in there." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah—and all that kind of thing! Why should you discard motive for his +killing himself?" +</P> + +<P> +"I did not say I discarded motive, but I think Mr. Fellowes the last +man in the world likely to kill himself." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, then, do you think he stole the needle?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not to kill himself." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford turned his head away a little. "Come now; this is too tall. +You are going pretty far in suggesting that Fellowes took your needle +to kill some one else." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps. But motive might not be so far to seek." +</P> + +<P> +"What motive in this case?" Stafford's eyes narrowed a little with the +inquiry. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, a woman, perhaps." +</P> + +<P> +"You know of some one, who—" +</P> + +<P> +"No. I am only assuming from Mr. Fellowes' somewhat material nature +that there must be a woman or so." +</P> + +<P> +"Or so—why 'or so?'" Stafford pressed him into a corner. +</P> + +<P> +"There comes the motive—one too many, when one may be suspicious, or +jealous, or revengeful, or impossible." +</P> + +<P> +"Did you see any mark of the needle on the body?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think so. But that would not do more than suggest further delicate, +detailed, and final examination." +</P> + +<P> +"You have no trace of the needle itself?" +</P> + +<P> +"None. But surely that isn't strange. If he had killed himself, the +needle would probably have been found. If he did not kill himself, but +yet was killed by it, there is nothing strange in its not being +recovered." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford took on the gravity of a dry-as-dust judge. "I suppose that to +prove the case it would be necessary to produce the needle, as your +theory and your invention are rather new." +</P> + +<P> +"For complete proof the needle would be necessary, though not +indispensable." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford was silent for an instant, then he said: "You have had a look +for the little instrument of passage?" +</P> + +<P> +"I was rather late for that, I fear." +</P> + +<P> +"Still, by chance, the needle might have been picked up. However, it +would look foolish to advertise for a needle which had traces of atric +acid on it, wouldn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Mappin looked at Stafford quite coolly, and then, ignoring the +question, said, deliberately: "You discovered the body, I hear. You +didn't by any chance find the needle, I suppose?" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford returned his look with a cool stare. "Not by any chance," he +said, enigmatically. +</P> + +<P> +He had suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this +astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of +Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry +could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin had +surmised, there was more than one woman,—there may have been a dozen, +of course—but chance might just pitch on the one whom investigation +would injure most. +</P> + +<P> +If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his +grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general +excitement and agitation of the nation. The war-drum would drown any +small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence. Suppose some one +did kill Adrian Fellowes? He deserved to die, and justice was +satisfied, even if the law was marauded. There were at least four +people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse. There was +Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile +flower-girl—and himself. It was necessary that Mappin, however, should +be silenced, and sent about his business. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with +an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural +irritability behind all, said "Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not +gone elsewhere with your suspicions?" +</P> + +<P> +The other shook his head in negation. +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as an +expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche +occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes. Your suspicions may have +some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, tact, and +knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive clues and, +when finding them, making them fit in with fact—only a man like +yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it. You are +not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in causing +pain and annoyance beyond calculation. Just imagine a Scotland Yard +detective with such a delicate business to do. We have no Hamards here, +no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of special +sense. Can you not see the average detective blundering about with his +ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never traced a +motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue? Well, it is the +business of the Law to detect and punish crime. Let the Law do it in +its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to solve. +Why should you complicate things? The official fellows could never do +what you could do, if you were a detective. They haven't the brains or +initiative or knowledge. And since you are not a detective, and can't +devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be any problem +at all, I would suggest—I imitate your own rudeness—that you mind +your own business." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes. +</P> + +<P> +At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but +under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of +Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke made +by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended dignity +and feebly returned the smile. +</P> + +<P> +"You are at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; +"but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is beneath +contempt. I know of cases—but I will not detain you with them now. +They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective should be +a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of human nature. +In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find motives, to +construct them and put them into play, as though they were real—work +till a clue was found. Then, if none is found, find another motive and +work on that. The French do it. They are marvels. Hamard is a genius, +as you say. He imagines, he constructs, he pursues, he squeezes out +every drop of juice in the orange.... You see, I agree with you on the +whole, but this tragedy disturbed me, and I thought that I had a real +clue. I still believe I have, but cui bono?" +</P> + +<P> +"Cui bono indeed, if it is bungled. If you could do it all yourself, +good. But that is impossible. The world wants your skill to save life, +not to destroy it. Fellowes is dead—does it matter so infinitely, +whether by his own hand or that of another?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, I frankly say I don't think it does matter infinitely. His type is +no addition to the happiness of the world." +</P> + +<P> +They looked at each other meaningly, and Mappin responded once again to +Stafford's winning smile. +</P> + +<P> +It pleased him prodigiously to feel Stafford lay a firm hand on his arm +and say: "Can you, perhaps, dine with me to-night at the Travellers' +Club? It makes life worth while to talk to men like you who do really +big things." +</P> + +<P> +"I shall be delighted to come for your own reasons," answered the great +man, beaming, and adjusting his cuffs carefully. +</P> + +<P> +"Good, good. It is capital to find you free." Again Stafford caught the +surgeon's arm with a friendly little grip. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, however, Mr. Mappin became aware that Stafford had turned +desperately white and worn. He had noticed this spent condition when he +first came in, but his eyes now rediscovered it. He regarded Stafford +with concern. +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Stafford," he said, "I am sure you do not realize how much below +par you are.... You have been under great strain—I know, we all know, +how hard you have worked lately. Through you, England launches her ship +of war without fear of complications; but it has told on you heavily. +Nothing is got without paying for it. You need rest, and you need +change." +</P> + +<P> +"Quite so—rest and change. I am going to have both now," said Stafford +with a smile, which was forced and wan. +</P> + +<P> +"You need a tonic also, and you must allow me to give you one," was the +brusque professional response. +</P> + +<P> +With quick movement he went over to Stafford's writing-table, and threw +open the cover of the blotter. +</P> + +<P> +In a flash Stafford was beside him, and laid a hand upon the blotter, +saying with a smile, of the kind which had so far done its work— +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, my friend, I will not take a tonic. It's only a good sleep I +want; and I'll get that to-night. But I give my word, if I'm not all +right to-morrow, if I don't sleep, I'll send to you and take your tonic +gladly." +</P> + +<P> +"You promise?" +</P> + +<P> +"I promise, my dear Mappin." +</P> + +<P> +The great man beamed again: and he really was solicitous for his +new-found friend. +</P> + +<P> +"Very well, very well—Stafford," he replied. "It shall be as you say. +Good-bye, or, rather, au revoir!" +</P> + +<P> +"A la bonne heure!" was the hearty response, as the door opened for the +great surgeon's exit. +</P> + +<P> +When the door was shut again, and Stafford was alone, he staggered over +to the writing-desk. Opening the blotter, he took something up +carefully and looked at it with a sardonic smile. +</P> + +<P> +"You did your work quite well," he said, reflectively. +</P> + +<P> +It was such a needle as he had seen at Glencader in Mr. Mappin's hand. +He had picked it up in Adrian Fellowes' room. +</P> + +<P> +"I wonder who used you," he said in a hard voice. "I wonder who used +you so well. Was it—was it Jasmine?" +</P> + +<P> +With a trembling gesture he sat down, put the needle in a drawer, +locked it, and turned round to the fire again. +</P> + +<P> +"Was it Jasmine?" he repeated, and he took from his pocket the letter +which Lady Tynemouth had given him. For a moment he looked at it +unopened—at the beautiful, smooth handwriting so familiar to his eyes; +then he slowly broke the seal, and took out the closely written pages. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap26"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +JASMINE'S LETTER +</H3> + +<P> +"Ian, oh, Ian, what strange and dreadful things you have written to +me!" Jasmine's letter ran—the letter which she told him she had +written on that morning when all was lost. "Do you realize what you +have said, and, saying it, have you thought of all it means to me? You +have tried to think of what is best, I know, but have you thought of +me? When I read your letter first, a flood of fire seemed to run +through my veins; then I became as though I had been dipped in ether, +and all the winds of an arctic sea were blowing over me. +</P> + +<P> +"To go with you now, far away from the world in which we live and in +which you work, to begin life again, as you say—how sweet and terrible +and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I know you! I +am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am not foolish, +I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that visionary world +where you and I could live and work and wander, and be content with all +that would be given us—joy, seeing, understanding, revealing, doing. +</P> + +<P> +"But Ian, it is only a visionary world, that world of which you speak. +It does not exist. The overmastering love, the desire for you that is +in me, makes for me the picture as it is in your mind; but down beneath +all, the woman in me, the everlasting woman, is sure there is no such +world. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen, dear child—I call you that, for though I am only twenty-five +I seem as aged as the Sphinx, and, like the Sphinx that begets mockery, +so my soul, which seems to have looked out over unnumbered centuries, +mocks at this world which you would make for you and me. Listen, Ian. +It is not a real world, and I should not—and that is the pitiful, +miserable part of it—I should not make you happy, if I were in that +world with you. To my dire regret I know it. Suddenly you have roused +in me what I can honestly say I have never felt before—strange, +reckless, hungry feelings. I am like some young dweller of the jungle +which, cut off from its kind tries, with a passion that eats and eats +and eats away his very flesh to get back to its kind, to his mate, to +that other wild child of nature which waits for the one appeasement of +primeval desire. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian, I must tell you the whole truth about myself as I understand it. +I am a hopeless, painful contradiction; I have always been so. I have +always wanted to be good, but something has always driven me where the +flowers have a poisonous sweetness, where the heart grows bad. I want +to cry to you, Ian, to help me to be good; and yet something drives me +on to want to share with you the fruit which turns to dust and ashes in +the long end. And behind all that again, some tiny little grain of +honour in me says that I must not ask you to help me; says that I ought +never to look into your eyes again, never touch your hand, nor see you +any more; and from the little grain of honour comes the solemn whisper, +'Do not ruin him; do not spoil his life.' +</P> + +<P> +"Your letter has torn my heart, so that it can never again be as it was +before, and because there is some big, noble thing in you, some little, +not ignoble thing is born in me. Ian, you could never know the +anguished desire I have to be with you always, but, if I keep sane at +all, I will not go—no, I will not go with you, unless the madness +carries me away. It would kill you. I know, because I have lived so +many thousands of years. My spirit and my body might be satisfied, the +glory in having you all my own would be so great; but there would be no +joy for you. To men like you, work is as the breath of life. You must +always be fighting for something, always climbing higher, because you +see some big thing to do which is so far above you. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, men like you get their chance sooner or later, because you work, +and are ready to take the gifts of Fate when they appear and before +they pass. You will be always for climbing, if some woman does not drag +you back. That woman may be a wife, or it may be a loving and living +ghost of a wife like me. Ian, I could not bear to see what would come +at last—the disappointment in your face the look of hope gone from +your eyes; your struggle to climb, and the struggle of no avail. +Sisyphus had never such a task as you would have on the hill of life, +if I left all behind here and went with you. You would try to hide it; +but I would see you growing older hourly before my eyes. You would +smile—I wonder if you know what sort of wonderful, alluring thing your +smile is, Ian?—and that smile would drive me to kill myself, and so +hurt you still more. And so it is always an everlasting circle of +penalty and pain when you take the laws of life you get in the +mountains in your hands and break them in pieces on the rocks in the +valleys, and make new individual laws out of harmony with the general +necessity. +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't it strange, Ian, that I who can do wrong so easily still know so +well and value so well what is right? It is my mother in me and my +grandfather in me, both of them fighting for possession. Let me empty +out my heart before you, because I know—I do not know why, but I do +know, as I write—that some dark cloud lowers, gathers round us, in +which we shall be lost, shall miss the touch of hand and never see each +other's face again. I know it, oh so surely! I did not really love you +years ago, before I married Rudyard; I did not love you when I married +him; I did not love him, I could not really love any one. My heart was +broken up in a thousand pieces to give away in little bits to all who +came. But I cared for you more than I cared for any one else—so much +more; because you were so able and powerful, and were meant to do such +big things; and I had just enough intelligence to want to understand +you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its meaning, however +dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick and rather +clever—sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, too. I have +made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I think and talk +and write, I only give out in a new light what others like you have +taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; blow a drop of +water into a bushel of bubbles. No, I did not love you, in the big way, +in those old days, and maybe it is not love I feel for you now; but it +is a great and wonderful thing, so different from the feeling I once +had. It is very powerful, and it is also very cruel, because it +smothers me in one moment, and in the next it makes me want to fly to +you, heedless of consequences. +</P> + +<P> +"And what might those consequences be, Ian, and shall I let you face +them? The real world, your world, England, Europe, would have no more +use for all your skill and knowledge and power, because there would be +a woman in the way. People who would want to be your helpers, and to +follow you, would turn away when they saw you coming; or else they +would say the superficial things which are worse than blows in the face +to a man who wants to feel that men look to him to help solve the +problems perplexing the world. While it may not be love I feel for you, +whatever it is, it makes me a little just and unselfish now. I will +not—unless a spring-time madness drives me to it to-day—I will not go +with you. +</P> + +<P> +"As for the other solution you offer, deceiving the world as to your +purposes, to go far away upon some wild mission, and to die! +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, no, you must not cheat the world so; you must not cheat yourself +so! And how cruel it would be to me! Whatever I deserve—and in leaving +you to marry Rudyard I deserved heavy punishment—still I do not +deserve the torture which would follow me to the last day of my life +if, because of me, you sacrificed that which is not yours alone, but +which belongs to all the world. I loathe myself when I think of the old +wrong that I did you; but no leper woman could look upon herself with +such horror as I should upon myself, if, for the new wrong I have done +you, you were to take your own life. +</P> + +<P> +"These are so many words, and perhaps they will not read to you as +real. That is perhaps because I am only shallow at the best; am only, +as you once called me, 'a little burst of eloquence.' But even I can +suffer, and I believe that even I can love. You say you cannot go on as +things are; that I must go with you or you must die; and yet you do not +wish me to go with you. You have said that, too. But do you not wonder +what would become of me, if either of these alternatives is followed? A +little while ago I could deceive Rudyard, and put myself in pretty +clothes with a smile, and enjoy my breakfast with him and look in his +face boldly, and enjoy the clothes, and the world and the gay things +that are in it, perhaps because I had no real moral sense. Isn't it +strange that out of the thing which the world would condemn as most +immoral, as the very degradation of the heart and soul and body, there +should spring up a new sense that is moral—perhaps the first true +glimmering of it? Oh, dear love of my life, comrade of my soul, +something has come to me which I never had before, and for that, +whatever comes, my lifelong gratitude must be yours! What I now feel +could never have come except through fire and tears, as you yourself +say, and I know so well that the fire is at my feet, and the tears—I +wept them all last night, when I too wanted to die. +</P> + +<P> +"You are coming at eleven to-day, Ian—at eleven. It is now eight. I +will try and send this letter to reach you before you leave your rooms. +If not, I will give it to you when you come—at eleven. Why did you not +say noon—noon—twelve of the clock? The end and the beginning! Why did +you not say noon, Ian? The light is at its zenith at noon, at twelve; +and the world is dark at twelve—at midnight. Twelve at noon; twelve at +night; the light and the dark—which will it be for us, Ian? Night or +noon? I wonder, oh, I wonder if, when I see you I shall have the +strength to say, 'Yes, go, and come again no more.' Or whether, in +spite of everything, I shall wildly say, 'Let us go away together.' +Such is the kind of woman that I am. And you—dear lover, tell me truly +what kind of man are you? +<BR><BR> +"Your JASMINE." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +He read the letter slowly, and he stopped again and again as though to +steady himself. His face became strained and white, and once he poured +brandy and drank it off as though it were water. When he had finished +the letter he went heavily over to the fire and dropped it in. He +watched it burn, until only the flimsy carbon was left. +</P> + +<P> +"If I had not gone till noon," he said aloud, in a nerveless voice—"if +I had not gone till noon ... Fellowes—did she—or was it Byng?" +</P> + +<P> +He was so occupied with his thoughts that he was not at first conscious +that some one was knocking. +</P> + +<P> +"Come in," he called out at last. +</P> + +<P> +The door opened and Rudyard Byng entered. +</P> + +<P> +"I am going to South Africa, Stafford," he said, heavily. "I hear that +you are going, too; and I have come to see whether we cannot go out +together." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap27"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +KROOL +</H3> + +<P> +"A message from Mr. Byng to say that he may be a little late, but he +says will you go on without him? He will come as soon as possible." +</P> + +<P> +The footman, having delivered himself, turned to withdraw, but Barry +Whalen called him back, saying, "Is Mr. Krool in the house?" +</P> + +<P> +The footman replied in the affirmative. "Did you wish to see him, sir?" +he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Not at present. A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a glance +round the group, who eyed him curiously. +</P> + +<P> +At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily +Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr.' Krool +to be called into consultation?" +</P> + +<P> +"Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask the +question for nothing." +</P> + +<P> +"These aren't days when anybody guesses much," remarked Fleming. "And +I'd like to know from Mr. Kruger, who knows a lot of things, and +doesn't gas, whether he means the mines to be safe." +</P> + +<P> +They all looked inquiringly at Wallstein, who in the storms which +rocked them all kept his nerve and his countenance with a power almost +benign. His large, limpid eye looked little like that belonging to an +eagle of finance, as he had been called. +</P> + +<P> +"It looked for a while as though they'd be left alone," said Wallstein, +leaning heavily on the table, "but I'm not so sure now." He glanced at +Barry Whalen significantly, and the latter surveyed the group +enigmatically. +</P> + +<P> +"There's something evidently waiting to be said," remarked Wolff, the +silent Partner in more senses than one. "What's the use of waiting?" +</P> + +<P> +Two or three of those present looked at Ian Stafford, who, standing by +the window, seemed oblivious of them all. Byng had requested him to be +present, with a view to asking his advice concerning some international +aspect of the situation, and especially in regard to Holland and +Germany. The group had welcomed the suggestion eagerly, for on this +side of the question they were not so well equipped as on others. But +when it came to the discussion of inner local policy there seemed +hesitation in speaking freely before him. Wallstein, however, gave a +reassuring nod and said, meaningly: +</P> + +<P> +"We took up careful strategical positions, but our camp has been +overlooked from a kopje higher than ours." +</P> + +<P> +"We have been the victims of treachery for years," burst out Fleming, +with anger. "Nearly everything we've done here, nearly everything the +Government has done here, has been known to Kruger—ever since the +Raid." +</P> + +<P> +"I think it could have been stopped," said the once Sobieski, with an +ugly grimace, and an attempt at an accent which would suit his new +name. "Byng's to blame. We ought to have put down our feet from the +start. We're Byng-ridden." +</P> + +<P> +"Keep a civil tongue, Israel," snarled Barry Whalen. "You know nothing +about it, and that is the state in which you most shine—in your +natural state of ignorance, like the heathen in his blindness. But +before Byng comes I'd better give you all some information I've got." +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't it for Byng to hear?" asked Fleming. +</P> + +<P> +"Very much so; but it's for you all to decide what's to be done. +Perhaps Mr. Stafford can help us in the matter, as he has been with +Byng very lately." Wallstein looked inquiringly towards Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +The group nodded appreciatively, and Stafford came forward to the +table, but without seating himself. "Certainly you may command me," he +said. "What is the mystery?" +</P> + +<P> +In short and abrupt sentences Barry Whalen, with an occasional +interjection and explanation from Wallstein, told of the years of +leakage in regard to their plans, of moves circumvented by information +which could only have been got by treacherous means either in South +Africa or in London. +</P> + +<P> +"We didn't know for sure which it was," said Barry, "but the proof has +come at last. One of Kruger's understrappers from Holland was +successfully tapped, and we've got proof that the trouble was here in +London, here in this house where we sit—Byng's home." +</P> + +<P> +There was a stark silence, in which more than one nodded significantly, +and looked round furtively to see how the others took the news. +</P> + +<P> +"Here is absolute proof. There were two in it here—Adrian Fellowes and +Krool." +</P> + +<P> +"Adrian Fellowes!" +</P> + +<P> +It was Ian Stafford's voice, insistent and inquiring. +</P> + +<P> +"Here is the proof, as I say." Barry Whalen leaned forward and pushed a +paper over on the table, to which were attached two or three smaller +papers and some cablegrams. "Look at them. Take a good look at them and +see how we've been done—done brown. The hand that dipped in the same +dish, as it were, has handed out misfortune to us by the bucketful. +We've been carted in the house of a friend." +</P> + +<P> +The group, all standing, leaned over, as Barry Whalen showed them the +papers, one by one, then passed them round for examination. +</P> + +<P> +"It's deadly," said Fleming. "Men have had their throats cut or been +hanged for less. I wouldn't mind a hand in it myself." +</P> + +<P> +"We warned Byng years ago," interposed Barry, "but it was no use. And +we've paid for it par and premium." +</P> + +<P> +"What can be done to Krool?" asked Fleming. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing particular—here," said Barry Whalen, ominously. +</P> + +<P> +"Let's have the dog in," urged one of the group. +</P> + +<P> +"Without Byng's permission?" interjected Wallstein. +</P> + +<P> +There was a silence. The last time any of them, except Wallstein, had +seen Byng, was on the evening when he had overheard the slanders +concerning Jasmine, and none had pleasant anticipation of this meeting +with him now. They recalled his departure when Barry Whalen had said, +"God, how he hates us." He was not likely to hate them less, when they +proved that Fellowes and Krool had betrayed him and them all. They had +a wholesome fear of him in more senses than one, because, during the +past few years, while Wallstein's health was bad, Byng's position had +become more powerful financially, and he could ruin any one of them, if +he chose. A man like Byng in "going large" might do the Samson +business. Besides, he had grown strangely uncertain in his temper of +late, and, as Barry Whalen had said, "It isn't good to trouble a +wounded bull in the ring." +</P> + +<P> +They had him on the hip in one way through the exposure of Krool, but +they were all more or less dependent on his financial movements. They +were all enraged at Byng because he had disregarded all warnings +regarding Krool; but what could they do? Instinctively they turned now +to Stafford, whose reputation for brains and diplomacy was so great and +whose friendship with Byng was so close. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford had come to-day for two reasons: to do what he could to help +Byng—for the last time; and to say to Byng that they could not travel +together to South Africa. To make the long journey with him was beyond +his endurance. He must put the world between Rudyard and himself; he +must efface all companionship. With this last act, begotten of the +blind confidence Rudyard had in him, their intercourse must cease +forever. This would be easy enough in South Africa. Once at the Front, +it was as sure as anything on earth that they would never meet again. +It was torture to meet him, and the day of the inquest, when Byng had +come to his rooms after his interview with Lady Tynemouth and Mr. +Mappin, he had been tried beyond endurance. +</P> + +<P> +"Shall we have Krool in without Byng's permission? Is it wise?" asked +Wallstein again. He looked at Stafford, and Stafford instantly replied: +</P> + +<P> +"It would be well to see Krool, I think. Your action could then be +decided by Krool's attitude and what he says." +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen rang the bell, and the footman came. After a brief waiting +Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed the door +behind him. +</P> + +<P> +He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure +which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage. +</P> + +<P> +"Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so +Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel. +</P> + +<P> +Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and +inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as +Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry voice. +"You've been too long without the sjambok." +</P> + +<P> +"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The +Law—here!" +</P> + +<P> +"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you—eh?" asked Sobieski, +with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, +motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't move, +here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders again, +or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing." +</P> + +<P> +He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a +rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here," +he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for +he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the whip. +Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and melancholy +interest. +</P> + +<P> +While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched +like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became venomous +and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and +the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear crept +over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir with fear +the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the sjambok. He had +native tendencies and predispositions out of proportion to the native +blood in him—maybe because he had ever been treated more like a native +than a white man by his Boer masters in the past. +</P> + +<P> +As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange +was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some +land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these +men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how +much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of +war. +</P> + +<P> +To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the dulled +noises of London there came to their ears the click of the wheels of a +cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of the +disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in the +East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying +across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a +cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. +Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the +wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native +kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the +karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild herbs. Through the +drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild thunderbolt tear the +trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was the livid lightning that +searched in spasms of anger for its prey, while there swept over the +brown, aching veld the flood which filled the spruits, which made the +rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels through the soil. The luxury +of this room, with its shining mahogany tables, its tapestried walls, +its rare fireplace and massive overmantel brought from Italy, its +exquisite stained-glass windows, was only part of a play they were +acting; it was not their real life. +</P> + +<P> +And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the +whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry +Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme +naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol +of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in the +wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the long +train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, would +never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot would +have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, it +punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the derringer +of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was the lock to +the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the territories where +native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing tyrant to the commune. +It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of barbarism. It was the +sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate human flesh, it secured +order where there was no law, and it did the work of prison and +penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the wilderness. +</P> + +<P> +It was race. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the +scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and +Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise +and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of the +veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between a +krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly +transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, though +the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into by-paths +for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence and the +knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed—the sjambok his +scimitar. +</P> + +<P> +In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He understood. +This was not London; the scene had shifted to Potchefstroom or +Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The sjambok had, like a +wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from England to spaces where +he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for the glint of an assegai or +the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had done both in his day. +</P> + +<P> +"We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some time +at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have you—" +</P> + +<P> +"Like that—like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and +shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession. +</P> + +<P> +"What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his head. +"What?" +</P> + +<P> +"You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the papers. +"We have here the proof at last." +</P> + +<P> +"You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the +English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, +harshly, handling the sjambok. +</P> + +<P> +"What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?" +</P> + +<P> +With great deliberation Wallstein explained. +</P> + +<P> +"Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly. +</P> + +<P> +"We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted +and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought. +</P> + +<P> +An insolent smile crossed Krool's face. +</P> + +<P> +"You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but the +work is done. It not matter now. It is all done—altogether. Oom Paul +speaks now, and everything is his—from the Cape to the Zambesi, +everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity +showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English both +sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea with +Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and Christ. +The God of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks." +</P> + +<P> +In spite of the fierce passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed a +side of his nature hitherto hidden—the savage piety of the copper Boer +impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford almost +laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so +droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and +link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as +partners in triumph. +</P> + +<P> +In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a +place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at +once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his class, had +acted as a pagan. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the situation, +while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of the +traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian +Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, +serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's +anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety. +</P> + +<P> +There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the +silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry Whalen. +He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, as he +would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One +minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If +Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him go. +Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get out. Is +it agreed?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth showed +glassily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not want." +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas—you have forgotten him," said Wallstein. +</P> + +<P> +A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, +but he said, morosely: +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas—I will do what I like." +</P> + +<P> +There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment +seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with fury. +Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's ear, and +then said: +</P> + +<P> +"Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool +before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course +to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my +business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, +if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in +his tone. +</P> + +<P> +"For Byng's sake—his wife—you understand," was all Stafford had said +under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who +whispered to Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now." +</P> + +<P> +By his glance and by his word of assent, Wallstein set the cue for the +rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry +Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon +it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding. +</P> + +<P> +"Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to +Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's worth +in Krool's eyes." +</P> + +<P> +When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his +fingers played idly with the sjambok. +</P> + +<P> +"You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, in +a low, even tone. +</P> + +<P> +"If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt." +</P> + +<P> +"You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the +Limpopo." +</P> + +<P> +A flush stole across Krool's face, and when it passed again he was +paler than before. "I have save the Baas," he answered, sullenly. +</P> + +<P> +"From what?" +</P> + +<P> +"From you." +</P> + +<P> +With a powerful effort, Stafford controlled himself. He dreaded what +was now to be said, but he felt inevitably what it was. +</P> + +<P> +"How—from me?" +</P> + +<P> +"If that Fellowes' letter come into his hands first, yours would not +matter. She would not go with you." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford had far greater difficulty in staying his hand than had Barry +Whalen, for the sjambok seemed the only reply to the dark suggestion. +He realized how, like the ostrich, he had thrust his head into the +sand, imagining that no one knew what was between himself and Jasmine. +Yet here was one who knew, here was one who had, for whatever purpose, +precipitated a crisis with Fellowes to prevent a crisis with himself. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Stafford thought of an awful possibility. He fastened the +gloomy eyes of the man before him, that he might be able to see any +stir of emotion, and said: "It did not come out as you expected?" +</P> + +<P> +"Altogether—yes." +</P> + +<P> +"You wished to part Mr. and Mrs. Byng. That did not happen." +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas is going to South Africa." +</P> + +<P> +"And Mr. Fellowes?" +</P> + +<P> +"He went like I expec'." +</P> + +<P> +"He died—heart failure, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into +Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Who killed him?" +</P> + +<P> +Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the +sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers. "There was +yourself. He had hurt you—you went to him.... Good! There was the +Baas, he went to him. The dead man had hurt him.... Good!" +</P> + +<P> +Stafford interrupted him by an exclamation. "What's that you say—the +Baas went to Mr. Fellowes?" +</P> + +<P> +"As I tell the vrouw, Mrs. Byng, when she say me go from the house +to-day—I say I will go when the Baas send me." +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas went to Mr. Fellowes—when?" +</P> + +<P> +"Two hours before you go, and one hour before the vrouw, she go." +</P> + +<P> +Like some animal looking out of a jungle, so Krool's eyes glowed from +beneath his heavy eyebrows, as he drawled out the words. +</P> + +<P> +"The Baas went—you saw him?" +</P> + +<P> +"With my own eyes." +</P> + +<P> +"How long was he there?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ten minutes." +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Byng—you saw her go in?" +</P> + +<P> +"And also come out." +</P> + +<P> +"And me—you followed me—you saw me, also?" +</P> + +<P> +"I saw all that come, all that go in to him." +</P> + +<P> +With a swift mind Stafford saw his advantage—the one chance, the one +card he could play, the one move he could make in checkmate, if, and +when, necessary. "So you saw all that came and went. And you came and +went yourself!" +</P> + +<P> +His eyes were hard and bright as he held Krool's, and there was a +sinister smile on his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"You know I come and go—you say me that?" said Krool, with a sudden +look of vague fear and surprise. He had not foreseen this. +</P> + +<P> +"You accuse yourself. You saw this person and that go out, and you +think to hold them in your dirty clutches; but you had more reason than +any for killing Mr. Fellowes." +</P> + +<P> +"What?" asked Krool, furtively. +</P> + +<P> +"You hated him because he was a traitor like yourself. You hated him +because he had hurt the Baas." +</P> + +<P> +"That is true altogether, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"You need not explain. If any one killed Mr. Fellowes, why not you? You +came and went from his rooms, too." +</P> + +<P> +Krool's face was now yellowish pale. "Not me ... it was not me." +</P> + +<P> +"You would run a worse chance than any one. Your character would damn +you—a partner with him in crime. What jury in the world but would +convict you on your own evidence? Besides, you knew—" +</P> + +<P> +He paused to deliver a blow on the barest chance. It was an insidious +challenge which, if it failed, might do more harm to others, might do +great harm, but he plunged. "You knew about the needle." +</P> + +<P> +Krool was cowed and silent. On a venture Stafford had struck straight +home. +</P> + +<P> +"You knew that Mr. Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at +Glencader," he added. +</P> + +<P> +"How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. +</P> + +<P> +"I saw him steal it—and you?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. He tell me." +</P> + +<P> +"What did he mean to do with it?" +</P> + +<P> +A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. +</P> + +<P> +"Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man or +a woman want kill." +</P> + +<P> +There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill to +Stafford's heart. +</P> + +<P> +"No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, Krool. +You think you've got a hold over me—over Mrs. Byng. You threaten. +Well, I have passed through the fire of the coroner's inquest. I have +nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as you watched. You +came behind me—" +</P> + +<P> +He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure +behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from +Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more. +</P> + +<P> +"I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did +not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had spoken, +you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances were worse +than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends in there, +or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are the vile +scum of the earth,"—he determined to take a strong line now, since he +had made a powerful impression on the creature before him—"and you +will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved your life. Bad +as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, and what he wants +to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into yours, you will +think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he hates you, you +will die; if he curses you, you will wither." +</P> + +<P> +He played upon the superstitious element, the native strain again. It +was deeper in Krool than anything else. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think you can defy them?" Stafford went on, jerking a finger +towards the other room. "They are from the veld. They will have you as +sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the +veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak +against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas' +vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?" +</P> + +<P> +There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul +struggling in the dark, as it were—a struggle as of black spirits in +the grey dawn. +</P> + +<P> +"I wait the Baas speak," Krool said at last, with a shiver. +</P> + +<P> +There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room +hurriedly. "Byng has come. He has been told about him," he said in +French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford rose. "It's all right," he answered in the same language. "I +think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas." +</P> + +<P> +He turned to Krool. "If you say to the Baas what you have said to me +about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad time. +You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If you have +sense, you will do what I tell you." +</P> + +<P> +Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His +gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some +strange superstitious element. He was like a creature of a lower order +awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the +door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and +terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent +forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes +almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long +eyelashes touch the grey cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no fight in him now," he said to Byng in French. "He was +getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember +that, Byng." +</P> + +<P> +Byng's look was as that of a man who had passed through some chamber of +torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and even +from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth and +scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there was a +look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there—a new look of +deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability and +force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with the +hidden things—the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of +human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge +without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses +and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their +character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective +in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive +organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still +only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to +races such as those of which Krool had come. +</P> + +<P> +A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had +rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; +these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage kind, +a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer purpose. +In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at his lips +was iron resolution. +</P> + +<P> +In reply to Stafford he said quietly: "All right, I understand. I know +how to deal with Krool." +</P> + +<P> +As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at +the end of the table opposite to Krool. +</P> + +<P> +Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I know all, Krool," he said. "You sold me and my country—you tried to +sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I snatched from the +tiger death, not once but twice." +</P> + +<P> +"It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I +would have die for you, but—" +</P> + +<P> +"But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I +would twenty lives—my country—you tried to sell me and all who worked +with me." +</P> + +<P> +"It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal," said the +half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. "But it +matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for +himself. I am half Boer. That is why." +</P> + +<P> +"You defend it—tell me, you defend it?" +</P> + +<P> +There was that in the voice, some terrible thing, which drew Krool's +eyes in spite of himself, and he met a look of fire and wrath. +</P> + +<P> +"I tell why. If it was bad, it was bad. But I tell why, that is all. If +it is not good, it is bad, and hell is for the bad; but I tell why." +</P> + +<P> +"You got money from Oom Paul for the man—Fellowes?" It was hard for +him to utter the name. +</P> + +<P> +Krool nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"Every year—much?" +</P> + +<P> +Again Krool nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"And for yourself—how much?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +"Only Oom Paul's love!" +</P> + +<P> +Krool nodded again. +</P> + +<P> +"But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you +with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving him. +I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life twice. I +gave you good money. I kept you in luxury—you that fed in the +cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong when +you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you were +so wild for meat ... I took you out of that, and gave you this." +</P> + +<P> +He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out of +my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the same +dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim—god of gods, how +slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native in +you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul did. It's +the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you straight and +true, my sweet Krool." +</P> + +<P> +Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and +slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through +his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before laying +on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept which never +had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul had flayed +him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the veld-dweller with +skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and endurance. And this +was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, whose wife he had +sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into a traitor. Oom +Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a master whose very +tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; whom, at bottom, he +loved in his way as he had never loved anything; whom he had betrayed, +not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; having argued that it was +against England his treachery was directed, and that was a virtue in +his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could come to Byng through it. +He had not seen, he had not understood, he was still uncivilized; he +had only in his veins the morality of the native, and he had tried to +ruin his master's wife for his master's sake; and when he had finished +with Fellowes as a traitor, he was ready to ruin his confederate—to +kill him—perhaps did kill him! +</P> + +<P> +"It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!" +</P> + +<P> +The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of punishment. What +else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there was no other way +to punish the traitor, but if there had been another way he would still +have done this. This Krool understood; behind every command the Baas +had ever given him this thing lay—the sjambok, the natural engine of +authority. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped +that letter on my bedroom floor—that letter, you understand?... Speak." +</P> + +<P> +"I did it, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly +took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched +man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again. +</P> + +<P> +"You know what I am going to do with you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to +Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was +the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do—to obey. +</P> + +<P> +"You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go." +</P> + +<P> +"She was not my Baas." +</P> + +<P> +"You would have done her harm, if you could?" +</P> + +<P> +"So, Baas." +</P> + +<P> +With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, and +the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste. +</P> + +<P> +Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to +resist. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open. +</P> + +<P> +"You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a +passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?" +</P> + +<P> +Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no +heart for that enterprise—thirty feet to the pavement below. +</P> + +<P> +"The sjambok, Baas," he said. +</P> + +<P> +Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang +out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture. +</P> + +<P> +In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and +understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank away +to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed pleasure in +the sound of the whip and the moaning. +</P> + +<P> +It went on and on. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently +his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might kill +the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to him. +</P> + +<P> +"You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't, +I will. Listen...." +</P> + +<P> +It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It +belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law, +where every pioneer was his own cadi. +</P> + +<P> +With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an instant +and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely realized him. +</P> + +<P> +"Open that door," he said, presently, and Barry Whalen opened the door +which led into the big hall. +</P> + +<P> +"Open all down to the street," Byng said, and Barry Whalen went forward +quickly. +</P> + +<P> +Like some wild beast Krool crouched and stumbled and moaned as he ran +down the staircase, through the outer hall, while a servant with scared +face saw Byng rain savage blows upon the hated figure. +</P> + +<P> +On the pavement outside the house, Krool staggered, stumbled, and fell +down; but he slowly gathered himself up, and turned to the doorway, +where Byng stood panting with the sjambok in his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Baas!—Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully +away along the street wall. +</P> + +<P> +A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent +purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and +told him to call that evening and he would hear all about it. Meanwhile +a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of good faith. +</P> + +<P> +Presently a half-dozen people began to gather near the door, but the +benevolent policeman moved them on. +</P> + +<P> +At the top of the staircase Jasmine met her husband. She shivered as he +came up towards her. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you come to me when you have finished your business?" she said, +and she took the sjambok gently from his hand. +</P> + +<P> +He scarcely realized her. He was in a dream; but he smiled at her, and +nodded, and passed on to where the others awaited him. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap28"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXVIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" +</H3> + +<P> +Slowly Jasmine returned to her boudoir. Laying the sjambok on the table +among the books in delicate bindings and the bowls of flowers, she +stood and looked at it with confused senses for a long time. At last a +wan smile stole to her lips, but it did not reach her eyes. They +remained absorbed and searching, and were made painfully sad by the +wide, dark lines under them. Her fair skin was fairer than ever, but it +was delicately faded, giving her a look of pensiveness, while yet there +was that in her carriage and at her mouth which suggested strength and +will and new forces at work in her. She carried her head, weighted by +its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern woman carries a goulah of +water. There was something pathetic yet self-reliant in the whole +figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, however, might at any +moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment of control and +self-restraint. +</P> + +<P> +"He did what I should have liked to do," she said aloud. "We are not so +different, after all. He is primitive at bottom, and so am I. He gets +carried away by his emotions, and so do I." +</P> + +<P> +She took up the whip, examined it, felt its weight, and drew it with a +swift jerk through the air. +</P> + +<P> +"I did not even shrink when Krool came stumbling down the stairs, with +this cutting his flesh," she said to herself. "Somehow it all seemed +natural and right. What has come to me? Are all my finer senses dead? +Am I just one of the crude human things who lived a million years ago, +and who lives again as crude as those; with only the outer things +changed? Then I wore the skins of wild animals, and now I do the same, +just the same; with what we call more taste perhaps, because we have +ceased to see the beauty in the natural thing." +</P> + +<P> +She touched the little band of grey fur at the sleeve of her clinging +velvet gown. "Just a little distance away—that is all." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly a light flashed up in her eyes, and her face flushed as though +some one had angered her. She seized the whip again. "Yes, I could have +seen him whipped to death before my eyes—the coward, the abject +coward. He did not speak for me; he did not defend me; he did not deny. +He let Ian think—death was too kind to him. How dared he hurt me so! +... Death is so easy a way out, but he would not have taken it. No, no, +no, it was not suicide; some one killed him. He could never have taken +his own life—never. He had not the courage.... No; he died of poison +or was strangled. Who did it? Who did it? Was it Rudyard? Was it...? +Oh, it wears me out—thinking, thinking, thinking!" +</P> + +<P> +She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "I am doomed—doomed," +she moaned. "I was doomed from the start. It must always have been so, +whatever I did. I would do it again, whatever I did; I know I would do +it again, being what I was. It was in my veins, in my blood from the +start, from the very first days of my life." +</P> + +<P> +All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so +many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as it +was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: +</P> + +<P> +"There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not +all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life +durable...." +</P> + +<P> +"'There is no help for these things,'" she repeated with a sigh which +seemed to tear her heart in twain. "All gone—all. What is there left +to do? If death could make it better for any one, how easy! But +everything would be known—somehow the world would know, and every one +would suffer more. Not now—no, not now. I must live on, but not here. +I must go away. I must find a place to go where Rudyard will not come. +There is no place so far but it is not far enough. I am twenty-five, +and all is over—all is done for me. I have nothing that I want to +keep, there is nothing that I want to do except to go—to go and to be +alone. Alone, always alone now. It is either that, or be Jezebel, or—" +</P> + +<P> +The door opened, and the servant brought a card to her. "His +Excellency, the Moravian ambassador," the footman said. +</P> + +<P> +"Monsieur Mennaval?" she asked, mechanically, as though scarcely +realizing what he had said. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, ma'am, Mr. Mennaval." +</P> + +<P> +"Please say I am indisposed, and am sorry I cannot receive him to-day," +she said. +</P> + +<P> +"Very good, ma'am." The footman turned to go, then came back. +</P> + +<P> +"Shall I tell the maid you want her?" he asked, respectfully. +</P> + +<P> +"No, why should you?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought you looked a bit queer, ma'am," he responded, hastily. "I +beg your pardon, ma'am." +</P> + +<P> +She rewarded him with a smile. "Thank you, James, I think I should like +her after all. Ask her to come at once." +</P> + +<P> +When he had gone she leaned back and shut her eyes. For a moment she +was perfectly motionless, then she sat up again and looked at the card +in her hand. +</P> + +<P> +"M. Mennaval—M. Mennaval," she said, with a note so cynical that it +betrayed more than her previous emotion, to such a point of despair her +mind had come. +</P> + +<P> +M. Mennaval had played his part, had done his service, had called out +from her every resource of coquetry and lure; and with wonderful art +she had cajoled him till he had yielded to influence, and Ian had +turned the key in the international lock. M. Mennaval had been used +with great skill to help the man who was now gone from her forever, +whom perhaps she would never see again; and who wanted never to see her +again, never in all time or space. M. Mennaval had played his game for +his own desire, and he had lost; but what had she gained where M. +Mennaval had lost? She had gained that which now Ian despised, which he +would willingly, so far as she was concerned, reject with contempt.... +And yet, and yet, while Ian lived he must still be grateful to her +that, by whatever means, she had helped him to do what meant so much to +England. Yes, he could not wholly dismiss her from his mind; he must +still say, "This she did for me—this thing, in itself not commendable, +she did for me; and I took it for my country." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes were open, and her garden had been invaded by those +revolutionaries of life and time, Nemesis, Penalty, Remorse. They +marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They came +with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self now. +Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on her, +blocking her path. +</P> + +<P> +M. Mennaval—what did she care for him! Yet here he was at her door +asking payment for the merchandise he had sold to her: his judgment, +his reputation as a diplomatist, his freedom, the respect of the +world—for how could the world respect a man at whom it laughed, a man +who had hoped to be given the key to a secret door in a secret garden! +</P> + +<P> +As Jasmine sat looking at the card, the footman entered again with a +note. +</P> + +<P> +"His Excellency's compliments," he said, and withdrew. +</P> + +<P> +She opened the letter hesitatingly, held it in her hand for a moment +without reading it, then, with an impulsive effort, did so. When she +had finished, she gave a cry of anger and struck her tiny clinched hand +upon her knee. +</P> + +<P> +The note ran: +</P> + +<P> +"Chere amie, you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all +too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a +migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world +understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. +Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not +be upset so easily—no, it cannot be the war; so I must try and think +what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five o'clock, I will call +again to ask you. Perhaps the migraine will be better. But, if you will +that migraine to be far away, it will fly, and then I shall be near. Is +it not so? You will tell me to-morrow at five, will you not, belle amie? +<BR><BR> +"A toi, M. M." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The words scorched her eyes. They angered her, scourged her. One of +life's Revolutionaries was insolently ravaging the secret place where +her pride dwelt. Pride—what pride had she now? Where was the room for +pride or vanity? ... And all the time she saw the face of a dead man +down by the river—a face now beneath the sod. It flashed before her +eyes at moments when she least could bear it, to agitate her soul. +</P> + +<P> +M. Mennaval—how dare he write to her so! "Chere amie" and "A toi"—how +strange the words looked now, how repulsive and strange! It did not +seem possible that once before he had written such words to her. But +never before had these epithets or others been accompanied by such +meaning as his other words conveyed. +</P> + +<P> +"I will not see him to-morrow. I will not see him ever again, if I can +help it," she said bitterly, and trembling with agitation. "I shall go +where I shall not be found. I will go to-night." +</P> + +<P> +The door opened. Her maid entered. "You wanted me, madame?" asked the +girl, in some excitement and very pale. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, what is the matter? Why so agitated?" Jasmine asked. +</P> + +<P> +The maid's eyes were on the sjambok. She pointed to it. "It was that, +madame. We are all agitated. It was terrible. One had never seen +anything like that before in one's life, madame—never. It was like the +days—yes, of slavery. It was like the galleys of Toulon in the old +days. It was—" +</P> + +<P> +"There, don't be so eloquent, Lablanche. What do you know of the +galleys of Toulon or the days of slavery?" +</P> + +<P> +"Madame, I have heard, I have read, I—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, but did you love Krool so?" +</P> + +<P> +The girl straightened herself with dramatic indignation. "Madame, that +man, that creature, that toad—!" +</P> + +<P> +"Then why so exercised? Were you so pained at his punishment? Were all +the household so pained?" +</P> + +<P> +"Every one hated him, madame," said the girl, with energy. +</P> + +<P> +"Then let me hear no more of this impudent nonsense," Jasmine said, +with decision. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, madame, to speak to me like this!" Tears were ready to do needful +service. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you wish to remain with me, Lablanche?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, madame, but yes—" +</P> + +<P> +"Then my head aches, and I don't want you to make it worse.... And, +see, Lablanche, there is that grey walking-suit; also the mauve +dressing-gown, made by Loison; take them, if you can make them fit you; +and be good." +</P> + +<P> +"Madame, how kind—ah, no one is like you, madame—!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we shall see about that quite soon. Put out at once every gown +of mine for me to see, and have trunks ready to pack immediately; but +only three trunks, not more." +</P> + +<P> +"Madame is going away?" +</P> + +<P> +"Do as I say, Lablanche. We go to-night. The grey gown and the mauve +dressing-gown that Loison made, you will look well in them. Quick, now, +please." +</P> + +<P> +In a flutter Lablanche left the room, her eyes gleaming. +</P> + +<P> +She had had her mind on the grey suit for some time, but the mauve +dressing-gown as well—it was too good to be true. +</P> + +<P> +She almost ran into Lady Tynemouth's arms as the door opened. With a +swift apology she sped away, after closing the door upon the visitor. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine rose and embraced her friend, and Lady Tynemouth subsided into +a chair with a sigh. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear Jasmine, you look so frail," she said. "A short time ago I +feared you were going to blossom into too ripe fruit, now you look +almost a little pinched. But it quite becomes you, mignonne—quite. You +have dark lines under your eyes, and that transparency of skin—it is +quite too fetching. Are you glad to see me?" +</P> + +<P> +"I would have seen no one to-day, no one, except you or Rudyard." +</P> + +<P> +"Love and duty," said Lady Tynemouth, laughing, yet acutely alive to +the something so terribly wrong, of which she had spoken to Ian +Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"Why is it my duty to see you, Alice?" asked Jasmine, with the dry +glint in her tone which had made her conversation so pleasing to men. +</P> + +<P> +"You clever girl, how you turn the tables on me," her friend replied, +and then, seeing the sjambok on the table, took it up. "What is this +formidable instrument? Are you flagellating the saints?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not the saints, Alice." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't mean to say you are going to scourge yourself?" +</P> + +<P> +Then they both smiled—and both immediately sighed. Lady Tynemouth's +sympathy was deeply roused for Jasmine, and she meant to try and win +her confidence and to help her in her trouble, if she could; but she +was full of something else at this particular moment, and she was not +completely conscious of the agony before her. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you been using this sjambok on Mennaval?" she asked with an +attempt at lightness. "I saw him leaving as I came in. He looked rather +dejected—or stormy, I don't quite know which." +</P> + +<P> +"Does it matter which? I didn't see Mennaval today." +</P> + +<P> +"Then no wonder he looked dejected and stormy. But what is the history +of this instrument of torture?" she asked, holding up the sjambok again. +</P> + +<P> +"Krool." +</P> + +<P> +"Krool! Jasmine, you surely don't mean to say that you—" +</P> + +<P> +"Not I—it was Rudyard. Krool was insolent—a half-caste, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"Krool—why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a +policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that Rudyard—" +</P> + +<P> +She pushed the sjambok away from her. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—terribly." +</P> + +<P> +"Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." +</P> + +<P> +"Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. +</P> + +<P> +"But of course it is not usual—in these parts." +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either. It was a touch +of the Vaal." +</P> + +<P> +Lady Tynemouth gave a little shudder. "I hope it won't become +fashionable. We are altogether too sensational nowadays. But, +seriously, Jasmine, you are not well. You must do something. You must +have a change." +</P> + +<P> +"I am going to do something—to have a change." +</P> + +<P> +"That's good. Where are you going, dear?" +</P> + +<P> +"South.... And how are you getting on with your hospital-ship?" +</P> + +<P> +Lady Tynemouth threw up her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set +my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done +it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now +Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding a +wife to come to him." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, perhaps it's better than a husband forbidding his wife to leave +him." +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine, I believe you would joke if you were dying." +</P> + +<P> +"I am dying." +</P> + +<P> +There was that in the tone of Jasmine's voice which gave her friend a +start. She eyed her suddenly with a great anxiety. +</P> + +<P> +"And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell me +what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what Tynemouth +says. Of course you will do as you like." +</P> + +<P> +"Of course; but still Tynie has never 'issued instructions' before, and +if there was any time I ought to humour him it is now. He's so intense +about the war! But I can't explain everything on paper to him, so I've +written to say I'm going to South Africa to explain, and that I'll come +back by the next boat, if my reasons are not convincing." +</P> + +<P> +In other circumstances Jasmine would have laughed. "He will find you +convincing," she said, meaningly. +</P> + +<P> +"I said if he found my reasons convincing." +</P> + +<P> +"You will be the only reason to him." +</P> + +<P> +"My dear Jasmine, you are really becoming sentimental. Tynie would +blush to discover himself being silly over me. We get on so well +because we left our emotions behind us when we married." +</P> + +<P> +"Yours, I know, you left on the Zambesi," said Jasmine, deliberately. +</P> + +<P> +A dull fire came into Lady Tynemouth's eyes, and for an instant there +was danger of Jasmine losing a friend she much needed; but Lady +Tynemouth had a big heart, and she knew that her friend was in a mood +when anything was possible, or everything impossible. +</P> + +<P> +So she only smiled, and said, easily: "Dearest Jasmine, that umbrella +episode which made me love Ian Stafford for ever and ever without even +amen came after I was married, and so your pin doesn't prick, not a +weeny bit. No, it isn't Tynie that makes me sad. It's the Climbers who +won't pay." +</P> + +<P> +"The Climbers? You want money for—" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, the hospital-ship; and I thought they'd jump at it; but they've +all been jumping in other directions. I asked the Steuvenfeldts, the +Boulters, the Felix Fowles, the Brutons, the Sheltons, and that fellow +Mackerel, who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it and +twenty others; and Mackerel was the only one who would give me anything +at all large. He gave me ten thousand pounds. But I want fifty—fifty, +my beloved. I'm simply broken-hearted. It would do so much good, and I +could manage the thing so well, and I could get other splendid people +to help me to manage it—there's Effie Lyndhall and Mary Meacham. The +Mackerel wanted to come along, too, but I told him he could come out +and fetch us back—that there mustn't be any scandal while the war was +on. I laugh, my dear, but I could cry my eyes out. I want something to +do—I've always wanted something to do. I've always been sick of an +idle life, but I wouldn't do a hundred things I might have done. This +thing I can do, however, and, if I did it, some of my debt to the world +would be paid. It seems to me that these last fifteen years in England +have been awful. We are all restless; we all have been going, +going—nowhere; we have all been doing, doing—nothing; we have all +been thinking, thinking, thinking—of ourselves. And I've been a +playbody like the rest; I've gone with the Climbers because they could +do things for me; I've wanted more and more of everything—more +gadding, more pleasure, more excitement. It's been like a brass-band +playing all the time, my life this past ten years. I'm sick of it. It's +only some big thing that can take me out of it. I've got to make some +great plunge, or in a few years more I'll be a middle-aged peeress with +nothing left but a double chin, a tongue for gossip, and a string of +pearls. There must be a bouleversement of things as they are, or +good-bye to everything except emptiness. Don't you see, Jasmine, +dearest?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes yes, I see." Jasmine got up, went to her desk, opened a drawer, +took out a book, and began to write hastily. "Go on," she said as she +wrote; "I can hear what you are saying." +</P> + +<P> +"But are you really interested?" +</P> + +<P> +"Even Tynemouth would find you interesting and convincing. Go on." +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't anything more to say, except that nothing lies between me +and flagellation and the sack cloth,"—she toyed with the +sjambok—"except the Climbers; and they have failed me. They won't +play—or pay." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine rose from the desk and came forward with a paper in her hand. +"No, they have not failed you, Alice," she said, gently. "The Climbers +seldom really disappoint you. The thing is, you must know how to talk +to them, to say the right thing, the flattering, the tactful, and the +nice sentimental thing,—they mostly have middle-class +sentimentality—and then you get what you want. As you do now. +There...." +</P> + +<P> +She placed in her friend's hand a long, narrow slip of paper. Lady +Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to +her feet, pale and agitated. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine—you—this—sixty thousand pounds!" she cried. "A cheque for +sixty thousand pounds—Jasmine!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine's eyes, a hectic flush on her +cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money +will be there." +</P> + +<P> +Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine's shoulders in her trembling yet strong +fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and +solicitude. +</P> + +<P> +"But, Jasmine, it isn't possible. Will Rudyard—can you afford it?" +</P> + +<P> +"That will not be Rudyard's money which you will get. It will be all my +own." +</P> + +<P> +"But you yourself are not rich. Sixty thousand pounds—why?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is my +own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess. And if all is needed +before we have finished, then all shall go." +</P> + +<P> +Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes +which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into some +world of the soul or imagination. "Jasmine, you are not crazy, are +you?" she asked, excitedly. "You will not repent of this? It is not a +sudden impulse?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once. But when it +came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I will not +repent of it. Have no fear. It is final. It is sure. It means that, +like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which +sweeps me on to the rapids." +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine, do you mean that you will—that you are coming, too?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I am going with you. We will do it together. You shall lead, and +I shall help. I have a gift for organization. My grandfather? he—" +</P> + +<P> +"All the world knows that. If you have anything of his gift, we shall +not fail. We shall feel that we are doing something for our +country—and, oh, so much for ourselves! And we shall be near our men. +Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for +anything if necessary. But Rudyard, will he approve?" She held up the +cheque. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine made a passionate gesture. "There are times when we must do +what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the consequences. I +am myself. I am not a slave. If I take my own way in the pleasures of +life, why should I not take it in the duties and the business of life?" +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on +the large, capable hand of her friend. "Isn't work the secret of life? +My grandfather used to say it was. Always, always, he used to say to +me, 'Do something, Jasmine. Find a work to do, and do it. Make the +world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you do. +Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble'—that is what +he said. And I must work or go mad. I tell you I must work, Alice. We +will work together out there where great battles will be fought." +</P> + +<P> +A sob caught her in the throat, and Alice Tynemouth wrapped her round +with tender arms. "It will do you good, darling," she said, softly. "It +will help you through—through it all, whatever it is." +</P> + +<P> +For an instant Jasmine felt that she must empty out her heart; tell the +inner tale of her struggle; but the instant of weakness passed as +suddenly as it came, and she only said—repeating Alice Tynemouth's +words: "Yes, through it all, through it all, whatever it is." Then she +added: "I want to do something big. I can, I can. I want to get out of +this into the open world. I want to fight. I want to balance things +somehow—inside myself...." +</P> + +<P> +All at once she became very quiet. "But we must do business like +business people. This money: there must be a small committee of +business men, who—" +</P> + +<P> +Alice Tynemouth finished the sentence for her. "Who are not Climbers?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. But the whole organization must be done by ourselves—all the +practical, unfinancial work. The committee will only be like careful +trustees." +</P> + +<P> +There was a new light in Jasmine's eyes. She felt for the moment that +life did not end in a cul de sac. She knew that now she had found a way +for Rudyard and herself to separate without disgrace, without +humiliation to him. She could see a few steps ahead. When she gave +Lablanche instructions to put out her clothes a little while before, +she did not know what she was going to do; but now she knew. She knew +how she could make it easier for Rudyard when the inevitable hour +came,—and it was here—which should see the end of their life +together. He need not now sacrifice himself so much for her sake. +</P> + +<P> +She wanted to be alone, and, as if divining her thought, Lady Tynemouth +embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the room save +the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. +</P> + +<P> +How silent it was! The world seemed very far away. Peace seemed to have +taken possession of the place, and Jasmine's stillness as she sat by +the fire staring into the embers was a part of it. So lost was she that +she was not conscious of an opening door and of a footstep. She was +roused by a low voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine!" +</P> + +<P> +She did not start. It was as though there had come a call, for which +she had waited long, and she appeared to respond slowly to it, as one +would to a summons to the scaffold. There was no outward agitation now, +there was only a cold stillness which seemed little to belong to the +dainty figure which had ever been more like a decoration than a living +utility in the scheme of things. The crisis had come which she had +dreaded yet invited—that talk which they two must have before they +went their different ways. She had never looked Rudyard in the eyes +direct since the day when Adrian Fellowes died. They had met, but never +quite alone; always with some one present, either the servants or some +other. Now they were face to face. +</P> + +<P> +On Rudyard's lips was a faint smile, but it lacked the old bonhomie +which was part of his natural equipment; and there were still sharp, +haggard traces of the agitation which had accompanied the expulsion of +Krool. +</P> + +<P> +For an instant the idea possessed her that she would tell him +everything there was to tell, and face the consequences, no matter what +they might be. It was not in her nature to do things by halves, and +since catastrophe was come, her will was to drink the whole cup to the +dregs. She did not want to spare herself. Behind it all lay something +of that terrible wilfulness which had controlled her life so far. It +was the unlovely soul of a great pride. She did not want to be forgiven +for anything. She did not want to be condoned. There was a spirit of +defiance which refused to accept favours, preferring punishment to the +pity or the pardon which stooped to make it easier for her. It was a +dangerous pride, and in the mood of it she might throw away everything, +with an abandonment and recklessness only known to such passionate +natures. +</P> + +<P> +The mood came on her all at once as she stood and looked at Rudyard. +She read, or she thought she read in his eyes, in his smile, the +superior spirit condescending to magnanimity, to compassion; and her +whole nature was instantly up in arms. She almost longed on the instant +to strip herself bare, as it were, and let him see her as she really +was, or as, in her despair, she thought she really was. The mood in +which she had talked to Lady Tynemouth was gone, and in its place a +spirit of revolt was at work. A certain sullenness which Rudyard and no +one else had ever seen came into her eyes, and her lips became white +with an ominous determination. She forgot him and all that he would +suffer if she told him the whole truth; and the whole truth would, in +her passion, become far more than the truth: she was again the egoist, +the centre of the universe. What happened to her was the only thing +which mattered in all the world. So it had ever been; and her beauty +and her wit and her youth and the habit of being spoiled had made it +all possible, without those rebuffs and that confusion which fate +provides sooner or later for the egoist. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," she said, sharply, "say what you wish to say. You have wanted +to say it badly. I am ready." +</P> + +<P> +He was stunned by what seemed to him the anger and the repugnance in +her tone. +</P> + +<P> +"You remember you asked me to come, Jasmine, when you took the sjambok +from me." +</P> + +<P> +He nodded towards the table where it lay, then went forward and picked +it up, his face hardening as he did so. +</P> + +<P> +Like a pendulum her mood swung back. By accident he had said the one +thing which could have moved her, changed her at the moment. The savage +side of him appealed to her. What he lacked in brilliance and the +lighter gifts of raillery and eloquence and mental give-and-take, he +had balanced by his natural forces—from the power-house, as she had +called it long ago. Pity, solicitude, the forced smile, magnanimity, +she did not want in this black mood. They would have made her cruelly +audacious, and her temper would have known no license; but now, +suddenly, she had a vision of him as he stamped down the staircase, his +coat off, laying the sjambok on the shoulders of the man who had +injured her so, who hated her so, and had done so over all the years. +It appealed to her. +</P> + +<P> +In her heart of hearts she was sure he had done it directly or +indirectly for her sake; and that was infinitely more to her than that +he should stoop from the heights to pick her up. He was what he was +because Heaven had made him so; and she was what she was because Heaven +had forgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or +understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she +could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain +on Abel. She softened, changed at once. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and +I ordered him to go. He would not." +</P> + +<P> +"I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he +was—a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was +pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That +counts for much with the most of us." +</P> + +<P> +"Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and +take him away. Will there be trouble?" +</P> + +<P> +A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are +reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to +Kruger, he and—" +</P> + +<P> +He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he and—and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She had +a sudden intuition. +</P> + +<P> +He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes—what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and +one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great +deal." +</P> + +<P> +The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance +had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken was +he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to him. Afterwards, +however, as the Partners all talked together up-stairs, the enormity of +the dead man's crime had fastened on him, and his brain had been +stunned by the terrible thought that directly or indirectly Jasmine had +abetted the crime. Things he had talked over with her, and with no one +else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the information from South +Africa showed. She had at least been indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes +with some freedom or he could not have known what he did. But directly, +knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of course, she had not done that; but her +foolish confidences had abetted treachery, had wronged him, had helped +to destroy his plans, had injured England. +</P> + +<P> +He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his +treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last half-hour. +Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment had taken +possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important and +critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of his +wife. +</P> + +<P> +Upon her now this announcement came with crushing force. Adrian +Fellowes had gained from her—she knew it all too well now—that which +had injured her husband; from which, at any rate, he ought to have been +immune. Her face flushed with a resentment far greater than that of +Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed +her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one who +ruled, had been used like a—she could not form the comparison in her +mind—by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it was +through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in life +by Rudyard. +</P> + +<P> +"I am sorry," she said, calmly, as soon as she could get her voice. "I +was the means of your employing him." +</P> + +<P> +"That did not matter," he said, rather nervously. "There was no harm in +that, unless you knew his character before he came to me." +</P> + +<P> +"You think I did?" +</P> + +<P> +"I cannot think so. It would have been too ruthless—too wicked." +</P> + +<P> +She saw his suffering, and it touched her. "Of course I did not know +that he could do such a thing—so shameless. He was a low coward. He +did not deserve decent burial," she added. "He had good fortune to die +as he did." +</P> + +<P> +"How did he die?" Rudyard asked her, with a face so unlike what it had +always been, so changed by agitation, that it scarcely seemed his. His +eyes were fixed on hers. +</P> + +<P> +She met them resolutely. Did he ask her in order to see if she had any +suspicion of himself? Had he done it? If he had, there would be some +mitigation of her suffering. Or was it Ian Stafford who had done it? +One or the other—but which? +</P> + +<P> +"He died without being made to suffer," she said. "Most people who do +wrong have to suffer." +</P> + +<P> +"But they live on," he said, bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"That is no great advantage unless you want to live," she replied. "Do +you know how he died?" she added, after a moment, with sharp scrutiny. +</P> + +<P> +He shook his head and returned her scrutiny with added poignancy. "It +does not matter. He ceases to do any more harm. He did enough." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, quite enough," she said, with a withered look, and going over to +her writing-table, stood looking at him questioningly. He did not speak +again, however. +</P> + +<P> +Presently she said, very quietly, "I am going away." +</P> + +<P> +"I do not understand." +</P> + +<P> +"I am going to work." +</P> + +<P> +"I understand still less." +</P> + +<P> +She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to him. +He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had given +to Alice Tynemouth. +</P> + +<P> +He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"It is for a hospital-ship." +</P> + +<P> +"Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have." +</P> + +<P> +"It is two-thirds of what I have." +</P> + +<P> +"Why—in God's name, why?" +</P> + +<P> +"To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"From what?" +</P> + +<P> +"From you." +</P> + +<P> +He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase. +</P> + +<P> +"Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. +</P> + +<P> +He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last +hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was deepest +in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that +something was wrong with it all,—the day that Ian Stafford dined after +his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong—cruelly wrong. We +haven't made the best of things together, when everything was with us +to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you expected." +</P> + +<P> +"Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and +sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that +is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside +that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine? +Answer that." +</P> + +<P> +He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be +recognized. +</P> + +<P> +His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the +midst of all this—of everything that has nothing to do with love?" she +asked. +</P> + +<P> +What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her again +it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which looked +on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, singing to a +travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the song: +</P> + +<P> +"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers +around her are sighing—" +</P> + +<P> +The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own experience +or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her veins like +tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with eyes +shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her tremble and +her face go white. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And +because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never +truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself—that is all that I +can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I +saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok." +</P> + +<P> +She flung up her hands. "For God's sake, let me be truthful at last. I +don't want to hurt you—I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; +and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together +to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible." +</P> + +<P> +He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must +be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I +must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is." +</P> + +<P> +She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table +again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because +it is the thing I feel I must do." +</P> + +<P> +"You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice. +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, my +very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your +work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no scandal, +because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world will not +misunderstand." +</P> + +<P> +"There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged. +</P> + +<P> +"I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was +going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I +am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist +on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of them. +I will get him down now, I—" +</P> + +<P> +"Ian Stafford is here—in this house?" she asked, with staring eyes. +What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked with that +laughter which is more painful far than tears. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us—he knows the +international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend—you +will know how good some day." +</P> + +<P> +She went white and leaned against the table. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee." +</P> + +<P> +"But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh—oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting. +</P> + +<P> +He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair. +</P> + +<P> +"You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent +over her. "You will be sane some day." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap29"></A> +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +BOOK IV +</H2> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXIX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN +</H3> + +<P> +Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and +ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of +men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a +giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while +over his grey quiet, generations of men pass. First came savage, +warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races +with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard +and hair—men restless and coarse and brave, and with ancient sins upon +them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the +prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their +race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the +clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were +housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, +adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to +win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer +in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, having +room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had left only +the ashes of past energies. +</P> + +<P> +Up there, these mountains which, like Marathon, look on the sea. But +lower the gaze from the austere hills, slowly to the plains below. +First the grey of the mountains, turning to brown, then the bare bronze +rock giving way to a tumbled wilderness of boulders, where lizards lie +in the sun, where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then the bronze +merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a blanket +spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and lonely, +rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and still +below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly rift +turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till lost in +the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river in the +waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks baked and +sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to the veld, as some gloomy +giver of good gifts would pay a debt of atonement. +</P> + +<P> +On certain Dark Days of 1899-1900, if you had watched these turgid +waters flow by, your eyes would have seen tinges of red like blood; and +following the stain of red, gashed lifeless things, which had been torn +from the ranks of sentient beings. +</P> + +<P> +Whereupon, lifting your eyes from the river, you would have seen the +answer to your question—masses of men mounted and unmounted, who +moved, or halted, or stood like an animal with a thousand legs +controlled by one mind. Or again you would have observed those myriad +masses plunging across the veld, still in cohering masses, which shook +and broke and scattered, regathering again, as though drawn by a +magnet, but leaving stark remnants in their wake. +</P> + +<P> +Great columns of troops which had crossed the river and pushed on into +a zone of fierce fire, turn and struggle back again across the stream; +other thousands of men, who had not crossed, succour their wounded, and +retreat steadily, bitterly to places of safety, the victims of blunders +from which come the bloody punishment of valour. +</P> + +<P> +Beyond the grey mountains were British men and women waiting for +succour from forces which poured death in upon them from the malevolent +kopjes, for relief from the ravages of disease and hunger. They waited +in a straggling town of the open plain circled by threatening hills, +where the threat became a blow, and the blow was multiplied a million +times. Gaunt, fighting men sought to appease the craving of starvation +by the boiled carcasses of old horses; in caves and dug-outs, feeble +women, with undying courage, kept alive the flickering fires of life in +their children; and they smiled to cheer the tireless, emaciated +warriors who went out to meet death, or with a superior yet careful +courage stayed to receive or escape it. +</P> + +<P> +When night came, across the hills and far away in the deep blue, white +shaking streams of light poured upward, telling the besieged forces +over there at Lordkop that rescue would come, that it was moving on to +the mountain. How many times had this light in the sky flashed the same +grave pledge in the mystic code of the heliograph, "We are gaining +ground—we will reach you soon." How many times, however, had the +message also been, "Not yet—but soon." +</P> + +<P> +Men died in this great camp from wounds and from fever, and others went +mad almost from sheer despair; yet whenever the Master Player called, +they sprang to their places with a new-born belief that he who had been +so successful in so many long-past battles would be right in the end +with his old rightness, though he had been wrong so often on the +Dreitval. +</P> + +<P> +Others there were who were sick of the world and wished "to be well out +of it"—as they said to themselves. Some had been cruelly injured, and +desire of life was dead in them; others had given injury, and remorse +had slain peace. Others still there were who, having done evil all +their lives, knew that they could not retrace their steps, and yet +shrank from a continuance of the old bad things. +</P> + +<P> +Some indeed, in the red futile sacrifice, had found what they came to +find; but some still were left whose recklessness did not avail. +Comrades fell beside them, but, unscathed, they went on fighting. +Injured men were carried in hundreds to the hospitals, but no wounds +brought them low. Bullets were sprayed around them, but none did its +work for them. Shells burst near, yet no savage shard mutilated their +bodies. +</P> + +<P> +Of these was Ian Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +Three times he had been in the fore-front of the fight where Death came +sweeping down the veld like rain, but It passed him by. Horses and men +fell round his guns, yet he remained uninjured. +</P> + +<P> +He was patient. If Death would not hasten to meet him, he would wait. +Meanwhile, he would work while he could, but with no thought beyond the +day, no vision of the morrow. +</P> + +<P> +He was one of the machines of war. He was close to his General, he was +the beloved of his men, still he was the man with no future; though he +studied the campaign with that thoroughness which had marked his last +years in diplomacy. +</P> + +<P> +He was much among his own wounded, much with others who were comforted +by his solicitude, by the courage of his eye, and the grasp of his +firm, friendly hand. It was at what the soldiers called the Stay Awhile +Hospital that he came in living touch again with the life he had left +behind. +</P> + +<P> +He knew that Rudyard Byng had come to South Africa; but he knew no +more. He knew that Jasmine had, with Lady Tynemouth, purchased a ship +and turned it into a hospital at a day's notice; but as to whether +these two had really come to South Africa, and harboured at the Cape, +or Durban, he had no knowledge. He never looked at the English +newspapers which arrived at Dreitval River. He was done with that old +world in which he once worked; he was concerned only for this narrow +field where an Empire's fate was being solved. +</P> + +<P> +Night, the dearest friend of the soldier, had settled on the veld. A +thousand fires were burning, and there were no sounds save the +murmuring voices of myriads of men, and the stamp of hoofs where the +Cavalry and Mounted Infantry horses were picketed. Food and fire, the +priceless comfort of a blanket on the ground, and a saddle or kit for a +pillow gave men compensation for all the hardships and dangers of the +day; and they gave little thought to the morrow. +</P> + +<P> +The soldier lives in the present. His rifle, his horse, his boots, his +blanket, the commissariat, a dry bit of ground to sleep on—these are +the things which occupy his mind. His heroism is incidental, the +commonplace impulse of the moment. He does things because they are +there to do, not because some great passion, some exaltation, seizes +him. His is the real simple life. So it suddenly seemed to Stafford as +he left his tent, after he had himself inspected every man and every +horse in his battery that lived through the day of death, and made his +way towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. +</P> + +<P> +"This is the true thing," he said to himself as he gazed at the wide +camp. He turned his face here and there in the starlight, and saw human +life that but now was moving in the crash of great guns, the shrieking +of men terribly wounded, the agony of mutilated horses, the bursting of +shells, the hissing scream of the pom-pom, and the discordant cries of +men fighting an impossible fight. +</P> + +<P> +"There is no pretense here," he reflected. "It is life reduced down to +the bare elements. There is no room for the superficial thing. It's all +business. It's all stark human nature." +</P> + +<P> +At that moment his eye caught one of those white messages of the sky +flashing the old bitter promise, "We shall reach you soon." He forgot +himself, and a great spirit welled up in him. +</P> + +<P> +"Soon!" The light in the sky shot its message over the hills. +</P> + +<P> +That was it—the present, not the past. Here was work, the one thing +left to do. +</P> + +<P> +"And it has to be done," he said aloud, as he walked on swiftly, a +spring to his footstep. Presently he mounted and rode away across the +veld. Buried in his thoughts, he was only subconsciously aware of what +he saw until, after near an hour's riding, he pulled rein at the door +of the Stay Awhile Hospital, which was some miles in the rear of the +main force. +</P> + +<P> +As he entered, a woman in a nurse's garb passed him swiftly. He +scarcely looked at her; he was only conscious that she was in great +haste. Her eyes seemed looking at some inner, hidden thing, and, though +they glanced at him, appeared not to see him or to realize more than +that some one was passing. But suddenly, to both, after they had +passed, there came an arrest of attention. There was a consciousness, +which had nothing to do with the sight of the eyes, that a familiar +presence had gone by. Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back +from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face +to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it +stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the +darkness beyond. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship. +</P> + +<P> +Of all those he had left behind, this was the one being whom to meet +was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle +of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her +tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his own. The +same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian Fellowes had +injured them both through the same woman, had shaken, if not shattered, +the fabric of their lives. However much they two were blameworthy, they +had been sincere, they had been honourable in their dishonour, they had +been "falsely true." They were derelicts of life, with the comradeship +of despair as a link between them. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah," he said again, gently. Then, with a bitter humour, he added, +"You here—I thought you were a prima donna!" +</P> + +<P> +The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is +grand opera," she said. "It is the Nibelungen Ring of England." +</P> + +<P> +"To end in the Twilight of the Gods?" he rejoined with a hopeless kind +of smile. +</P> + +<P> +They turned to the outer door of the hospital and stepped into the +night. For a moment they stood looking at the great camp far away to +right and left, and to the lone mountains yonder, where the Boer +commandoes held the passes and trained their merciless armament upon +all approaches. Then he said at last: "Why have you come here? You had +your work in England." +</P> + +<P> +"What is my work?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"To heal the wounded," he answered. +</P> + +<P> +"I am trying to do that," she replied. +</P> + +<P> +"You are trying to heal bodies, but it is a bigger, greater thing to +heal the wounded mind." +</P> + +<P> +"I am trying to do that too. It is harder than the other." +</P> + +<P> +"Whose minds are you trying to heal?" he questioned, gently. +</P> + +<P> +"'Physician heal thyself' was the old command, wasn't it? But that is +harder still." +</P> + +<P> +"Must one always be a saint to do a saintly thing?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not clever," she replied, "and I can't make phrases. But must one +always be a sinner to do a wicked thing? Can't a saint do a wicked +thing, and a sinner do a good thing without being called the one or the +other?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think you need apologize for not being able to make phrases. I +suppose you'd say there is neither absolute saintliness nor absolute +wickedness, but that life is helplessly composite of both, and that +black really may be white. You know the old phrase, 'Killing no +murder.'" +</P> + +<P> +She seemed to stiffen, and her lips set tightly for a minute; then, as +though by a great effort, she laughed bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"Murder isn't always killing," she replied. "Don't you remember the +protest in Macbeth, 'Time was, when the brains were out the man would +die'?" Then, with a little quick gesture towards the camp, she added, +"When you think of to-day, doesn't it seem that the brains are out, and +yet that the man still lives? I'm not a soldier, and this awful +slaughter may be the most wonderful tactics, but it's all beyond my +little mind." +</P> + +<P> +"Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice," he replied +with kindly irony. "There is almost an epidemic of it. Let us hope we +shall have an antidote soon." +</P> + +<P> +There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital. Al'mah shut her eyes +for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she +recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though +waiting for some one to come out. +</P> + +<P> +"What is the matter?" he asked. "Some bad case?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes—very bad," she replied. +</P> + +<P> +"One you've been attending?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"What arm—the artillery?" he asked with sudden interest. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, the artillery." +</P> + +<P> +He turned towards the door of the hospital again. "One of my men? What +battery? Do you know?" +</P> + +<P> +"Not yours—Schiller's." +</P> + +<P> +"Schiller's! A Boer?" +</P> + +<P> +She nodded. "A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back." +</P> + +<P> +"When was that?" +</P> + +<P> +"This morning early." +</P> + +<P> +"The little business at Wortmann's Drift?" +</P> + +<P> +She nodded. "Yes, there." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't quite understand. Was he in our lines—a Boer spy?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. But he wore British uniform, he spoke English. He was an +Englishman once." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face steadily. +"I will tell you all," she said scarce above a whisper. "He came to +spy, but he came also to see his wife. She had written to ask him not +to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, to leave +them and join his own people. He came, but not to join his +fellow-countrymen. He came to get money from his wife; and he came to +spy." +</P> + +<P> +An illuminating thought shot into Stafford's mind. He remembered +something that Byng once told him. +</P> + +<P> +"His wife is a nurse?" he asked in a low tone. +</P> + +<P> +"She is a nurse." +</P> + +<P> +"She knew, then, that he was a spy?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, she knew. I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial. She +did not expose him. She gave him a chance to escape. But he was shot as +he tried to reach the Boer lines." +</P> + +<P> +"And was brought back here to his wife—to you! Did he let them"—he +nodded towards the hospital—"know he was your husband?" +</P> + +<P> +When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not tremble. +"Of course. He would not spare me. He never did. It was always like +that." +</P> + +<P> +He caught her hand in his. "You have courage enough for a hundred," he +said. +</P> + +<P> +"I have suffered enough for a hundred," she responded. +</P> + +<P> +Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards +the door. +</P> + +<P> +"I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way," she +replied. "It came to me that he might need me." +</P> + +<P> +"You paid the price of his life once to Kruger—after the Raid, I've +heard," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible," she responded +with a dark, pained look. +</P> + +<P> +"His life is in danger—an operation?" he questioned. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes. There is one chance; but they could not give him an anaesthetic, +and they would not let me stay with him. They forced me away—out +here." She appeared to listen again. "That was his voice—that crying," +she added presently. +</P> + +<P> +"Wouldn't it be better he should go? If he recovers there would only +be—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, to be tried as a spy—a renegade Englishman! But he would +rather live in spite of that, if it was only for an hour." +</P> + +<P> +"To love life so much as that—a spy!" Stafford reflected. +</P> + +<P> +"Not so much love of life as fear of—" She stopped short. +</P> + +<P> +"To fear—silence and peace!" he remarked darkly, with a shrug of his +shoulders. Then he added: "Tell me, if he does not die, and if—if he +is pardoned by any chance, do you mean to live with him again?" +</P> + +<P> +A bitter laugh broke from her. "How do I know? What does any woman know +what she will do until the situation is before her! She may mean to do +one thing and do the complete opposite. She may mean to hate, and will +end by loving. She may mean to kiss and will end by killing. She may +kiss and kill too all in one moment, and still not be inconsistent. She +would have the logic of a woman. How do I know what I would do—what I +will do!" +</P> + +<P> +The door of the hospital opened. A surgeon came out, and seeing Al'mah, +moved towards the two. Stafford went forward hurriedly, but Al'mah +stood like one transfixed. There was a whispered word, and then +Stafford came back to her. +</P> + +<P> +"You will not need to do anything," he said. +</P> + +<P> +"He is gone—like that!" she whispered in an awed voice. "Death, +death—so many die!" She shuddered. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford passed her arm through his, and drew her towards the door of +the hospital. +</P> + +<P> +A half-hour later Stafford emerged again from the hospital, his head +bent in thought. He rode slowly back to his battery, unconscious of the +stir of life round him, of the shimmering white messages to the +besieged town beyond the hills. He was thinking of the tragedy of the +woman he had left tearless and composed beside the bedside of the man +who had so vilely used her. He was reflecting how her life, and his +own, and the lives of at least three others, were so tangled together +that what twisted the existence of one disturbed all. In one sense the +woman he had just left in the hospital was nothing to him, and yet now +she seemed to be the only living person to whom he was drawn. +</P> + +<P> +He remembered the story he had once heard in Vienna of a man and a +woman who both had suffered betrayal, who both had no longer a single +illusion left, who had no love for each other at all, in whom indeed +love was dead—a mangled murdered thing; and yet who went away to Corfu +together, and there at length found a pathway out of despair in the +depths of the sea. Between these two there had never been even the +faint shadow of romance or passion; but in the terrible mystery of pain +and humiliation, they had drawn together to help each other, through a +breach of all social law, in pity of each other. He apprehended the +real meaning of the story when Vienna was alive with it, but he +understood far, far better now. +</P> + +<P> +A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he +stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it +seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the +desert together, and minister to each other's despair. It was only the +swift thought of a moment, which faded even as it saw the light; but it +had its origin in that last flickering sense of human companionship +which dies in the atmosphere of despair. "Every man must live his dark +hours alone," a broken-down actor once said to Stafford as he tried to +cheer him when the last thing he cared for had been taken from him—his +old, faded, misshapen wife; when no faces sent warm glances to him +across the garish lights. "It is no use," this Roscius had said, "every +man must live his dark hours alone." +</P> + +<P> +That very evening, after the battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, Stafford's +trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord that rang +in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting +disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the +blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what his trouble +was. +</P> + +<P> +In reply Jigger had said, "When it 'it 'm 'e curled up like a bit o' +shaving. An' when I done what I could 'e says, 'It's a speshul for one +now, an' it's lonely goin',' 'e says. When I give 'im a drink 'e says, +'It 'd do me more good later, little 'un'; an' 'e never said no more +except, 'One at a time is the order—only one.'" +</P> + +<P> +Not even his supper had lifted the cloud from Jigger's face, and +Stafford had left the lad trying to compose a letter to the mother of +the dead man, who had been an especial favourite with the trumpeter +from the slums. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford was roused from his reflections by the grinding, rumbling +sound of a train. He turned his face towards the railway line. +</P> + +<P> +"A troop-train—more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He +could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the +locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the last +incline to the camp. +</P> + +<P> +"Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a +premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible +forces were converging upon him. But did it matter? He knew in his soul +that he was now doing the right thing, that he had come out in the open +where all the archers of penalty had a fair target for their arrows. He +wished to be "Free among the dead that are wounded and that lie in the +grave and are out of remembrance;" but he would do no more to make it +so than tens of thousands of other men were doing on these +battle-fields. +</P> + +<P> +"Who comes there!" he said again, his eyes upon the white, round light +in the distance, and he stood still to try and make out the black, +winding, groaning thing. +</P> + +<P> +Presently he heard quick footsteps. +</P> + +<P> +A small, alert figure stopped short, a small, abrupt hand saluted. "The +General Commanding 'as sent for you, sir." +</P> + +<P> +It was trumpeter Jigger of the Artillery. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you the General's orderly, then?" asked Stafford quizzically. +</P> + +<P> +"The orderly's gone w'ere 'e thought 'e'd find you, and I've come w'ere +I know'd you'd be, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Where did he think he'd find me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Wiv the 'osses, sir." +</P> + +<P> +A look of gratification crossed Stafford's face. He was well known in +the army as one who looked after his horses and his men. "And what made +you think I was at the hospital, Jigger?" +</P> + +<P> +"Becos you'd been to the 'osses, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Did you tell the General's orderly that?" +</P> + +<P> +"No, your gryce—no, sir," he added quickly, and a flush of +self-reproach came to his face, for he prided himself on being a real +disciplinarian, a disciple of the correct thing. "I thought I'd like +'im to see our 'osses, an' 'ow you done 'em, an' I'd find you as quick +as 'e could, wiv a bit to the good p'r'aps." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford smiled. "Off you go, then. Find that orderly. Say, Colonel +Stafford's compliments to the General Commanding and he will report +himself at once. See that you get it straight, trumpeter." +</P> + +<P> +Jigger would rather die than not get it straight, and his salute made +that quite plain. +</P> + +<P> +"It's made a man of him, anyhow," Stafford said to himself, as he +watched the swiftly disappearing figure. "He's as straight as a nail, +body and mind—poor little devil.... How far away it all seems!" +</P> + +<P> +A quarter of an hour later he was standing beside the troop-train which +he had seen labouring to its goal. It was carrying the old regiment of +the General Officer Commanding, who had sent Stafford to its Colonel +with an important message. As the two officers stood together watching +the troops detrain and make order out of the chaos of baggage and +equipment, Stafford's attention was drawn to a woman some little +distance away, giving directions about her impedimenta. +</P> + +<P> +"Who is the lady?" he asked, while in his mind was a sensible stir of +recognition. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, there's something like the real thing!" his companion replied. +"She is doing a capital bit of work. She and Lady Tynemouth have got a +hospital-ship down at Durban. She's come to link it up better with the +camp. It's Rudyard Byng's wife. They're both at it out here." +</P> + +<P> +"Who comes there!" Stafford had exclaimed a moment before with a sense +of premonition. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine had come. +</P> + +<P> +He drew back in the shadow as she turned round towards them. +</P> + +<P> +"To the Stay Awhile—right!" he heard a private say in response to her +directions. +</P> + +<P> +He saw her face, but not clearly. He had glimpse of a Jasmine not so +daintily pretty as of old, not so much of a dresden-china shepherdess; +but with the face of a woman who, watching the world with understanding +eyes, and living with an understanding heart, had taken on something of +the mysterious depths of the Life behind life. It was only a glimpse he +had, but it was enough. It was more than enough. +</P> + +<P> +"Where is Byng?" he asked his fellow-officer. +</P> + +<P> +"He's been up there with Tain's Brigade for a fortnight. He was in +Kimberley, but got out before the investment, went to Cape Town, and +came round here—to be near his wife, I suppose." +</P> + +<P> +"He is soldiering, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"He was a Colonel in the Rand Rifles once. He's with the South African +Horse now in command of the regiment attached to Tain. Tain's out of +your beat—away on the right flank there." +</P> + +<P> +Presently Stafford saw Jasmine look in their direction; then, on seeing +Stafford's companion, came forward hastily. The Colonel left Stafford +and went to meet her. +</P> + +<P> +A moment afterwards, she turned and looked at Stafford. Her face was +now deadly pale, but it showed no agitation. She was in the light of an +electric lamp, and he was in the shadow. For one second only she gazed +at him, then she turned and moved away to the cape-cart awaiting her. +The Colonel saw her in, then returned to Stafford. +</P> + +<P> +"Why didn't you come and be introduced?" the Colonel asked. "I told her +who you were." +</P> + +<P> +"Hospital-ships are not in my line," Stafford answered casually. "Women +and war don't go together." +</P> + +<P> +"She's a nurse, she's not a woman," was the paradoxical reply. +</P> + +<P> +"She knows Byng is here?" +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose so. It looks like a clever bit of strategy—junction of +forces. There's a lot of women at home would like the chance she +has—at a little less cost." +</P> + +<P> +"What is the cost?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that ship didn't cost less than a hundred thousand pounds." +</P> + +<P> +"Is that all?" +</P> + +<P> +The Colonel looked at Stafford in surprise: but Stafford was not +thinking of the coin. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap30"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" +</H3> + +<P> +As the cape-cart conveying Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the +station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the +helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed as +though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for so +long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair of +Argentines, said to her sympathetically: +</P> + +<P> +"It's all right, ma'am. We'll be there in a jiffy. Don't give way." +</P> + +<P> +This friendly solicitude had immediate effect. Jasmine sat up, and +thereafter held herself as though she was in her yellow salon yonder in +London. +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you," she replied serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long, +tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment." +</P> + +<P> +"A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he ventured. Then +he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel Rudyard Byng?" +</P> + +<P> +She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big +B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship—they +told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a +mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana +Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely—just like the 4.7's flay the +kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long +way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all right +to us." +</P> + +<P> +"Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression lifting. +</P> + +<P> +He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia +onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was +both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal leash, +so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, shearing +and sun-downing—all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit o' luck +and found a mob of warrigals—horses run wild, you know. We stalked 'em +for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got 'em, and coaxed +'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and with the hard tin +shipped for to see the world. So it was as of old. And by and by we +found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, puttin' in a bit o' +time for the Flag." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many +friends in the past—a smile none the less alluring because it had lost +that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, had +been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight drooping of +the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and natural. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the +world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where +life is so simple and so large." +</P> + +<P> +His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he said +to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But he felt +too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give it—a +friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so simple +and so large." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that might be so 'long o' some continents," he remarked, "but it +wasn't so where Joey Clynes and me was nourished, so to speak. I +tripped up on a good many mean things from Bendigo to Thargomindah and +back around. The back-blocks has its tricks as well as the towns, as +you would see if you come across a stock-rider with a cheque to be +broke in his hand. I've seen six months' wages go bung in a day with a +stock-rider on the gentle jupe. But again, peradventure, I've seen a +man that had lost ten thousand sheep tramp fifty miles in a blazing sun +with a basket of lambs on his back, savin' them two switherin' little +papillions worth nothin' at all, at the risk of his own life—just as +mates have done here on this salamanderin' veld; same as Colonel Byng +did to-day along o' Wortmann's Drift." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever +since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do so. +She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left +England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so far +as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as +Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo. She had been busy as she +had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful way. +It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the +negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to +render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee +appointed, for form's sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that +the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring +her. This had become almost an obsession with her. Her grandfather had +had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she +had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her confidence +and a key to what she had to do. It was the first real work; for what +she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing upon the +weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an +instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them. The +first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul. +</P> + +<P> +Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else—than +either Rudyard or Ian Stafford. Towards both of these her mind had +slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about +neither. There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic +experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a +crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and on. +From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life's +elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart. She tried to +smother every thought concerning the past. She did not seek to find her +bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the emotions +she was travelling. +</P> + +<P> +One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her +in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree—a +sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment. Against whom? Against +all. Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a thousand +times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of life, leaving +behind a memory which could sting murderously. +</P> + +<P> +Now, when she heard of Rudyard's bravery at Wortmann's Drift, a curious +thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be truer to say +that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her blood. She had heard +many tales of valour in this war, and more than one hero of the +Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but as a child's heart +might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful story, so she felt +a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding eyes took on a +brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale of Wortmann's +Drift. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me about it," she said, yet turned her head away from her eager +historian. +</P> + +<P> +Corporal Shorter's words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he had +ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of that. He +was full of a man's pride in a man's deed. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, it was like this," he recited. "Gunter's horse bolted—Dick +Gunter's in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng—his lot. Old +Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd +been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at +last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see +him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again. And while we +was lookin' and tossin' pennies like as to his chances out there, a +grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin' every string. +We knowed her all right, that grey mare—a regular Mrs. Mephisto, w'ich +belongs to Colonel Byng. Do the Boojers fire at him? Don't they! We +could see the spots of dust where the bullets struck, spittin', +spittin', spittin', and Lord knows how many hunderd more there was that +didn't hit the ground. An' the grey mare gets there. As cool as a +granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old Gunter; down goes the +grey mare—Colonel Byng had taught her that trick, like the Roosian +Cossack hosses. Then up on her rolls old Gunter, an' up goes Colonel +Byng, and the grey mare switchin' her bobtail, as if she was havin' a +bit of mealies in the middle o' the day. But when they was both on, +then the band begun to play. Men was fightin' of course, but it looked +as if the whole smash stopped to see what the end would be. It was a +real pretty race, an' the grey mare takin' it as free as if she was +carryin' a little bit of a pipkin like me instead of twenty-six stone. +She's a flower, that grey mare! Once she stumbled, an' we knowed it +wasn't an ant-bear's hole she'd found in the veld, and that she'd been +hurt. But they know, them hosses, that they must do as their Baases do; +and they fight right on. She come home with the two all right. She +switched round a corner and over a nose of land where that crossfire +couldn't hit the lot; an' there was the three of 'em at 'ome for a cup +o' tea. Why, ma'am, that done the army as much good to-day, that little +go-to-the-devil, you mud-suckers! as though we'd got Schuster's Hill. +'Twas what we needed—an' we got it. It took our eyes off the nasty +little fact that half of a regiment was down, an' the other half with +their job not done as it was ordered. It made the S.A.'s and the +Lynchesters and the Gessex lot laugh. Old Gunter's all right. He's in +the Stay Awhile now. You'll be sure to see him. And Colonel Byng's all +right, too, except a little bit o' splinter—" +</P> + +<P> +"A bit of splinter—" Her voice was almost peremptory. +</P> + +<P> +"A chip off his wrist like, but he wasn't thinkin' of that when he got +back. He was thinkin' of the grey mare; and she was hit in three +places, but not to mention. One bullet cut through her ear and through +Colonel Byng's hat as he stooped over her neck; but the luck was with +them. They was born to do a longer trek together. A little bit of the +same thing in both of 'em, so to speak. The grey mare has a temper like +a hunderd wildcats, and Colonel Byng can let himself go too, as you +perhaps know, ma'am. We've seen him let loose sometimes when there was +shirkers about, but he's all right inside his vest. And he's a good +feeder. His men get their tucker all right. He knows when to shut his +eyes. He's got a way to make his bunch—and they're the hardest-bit +bunch in the army—do anything he wants 'em to. He's as hard himself as +ever is, but he's all right underneath the epidermotis." +</P> + +<P> +All at once there flashed before Jasmine's eyes the picture of Rudyard +driving Krool out of the house in Park Lane with a sjambok. She heard +again the thud of the rhinoceros-whip on the cringing back of the Boer; +she heard the moan of the victim as he stumbled across the threshold +into the street; and again she felt that sense of suffocation, that +excitement which the child feels on the brink of a wonderful romance, +the once-upon-a-time moment. +</P> + +<P> +They were nearing the hospital. The driver silently pointed to it. He +saw that he had made an impression, and he was content with it. He +smiled to himself. +</P> + +<P> +"Is Colonel Byng in the camp?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"He's over—'way over, miles and miles, on the left wing with Kearey's +brigade now. But old Gunter's here, and you're sure to see Colonel Byng +soon—well, I should think." +</P> + +<P> +She had no wish to see Colonel Byng soon. Three days would suffice to +do what she wished here, and then she would return to Durban to her +work there—to Alice Tynemouth, whose friendship and wonderful +tactfulness had helped her in indefinable ways, as a more obvious +sympathy never could have done. She would have resented one word which +would have suggested that a tragedy was slowly crushing out her life. +</P> + +<P> +Never a woman in the world was more alone. She worked and smiled with +eyes growing sadder, yet with a force hardening in her which gave her +face a character it never had before. Work had come at the right moment +to save her from the wild consequences of a nature maddened by a series +of misfortunes and penalties, for which there had been no warning and +no preparation. +</P> + +<P> +She was not ready for a renewal of the past. Only a few minutes before +she had been brought face to face with Ian Stafford, had seen him look +at her out of the shadow there at the station, as though she was an +infinite distance away from him; and she had realized with overwhelming +force how changed her world was. Ian Stafford, who but a few short +months ago had held her in his arms and whispered unforgettable things, +now looked at her as one looks at the image of a forgotten thing. She +recalled his last words to her that awful day when Rudyard had read the +fatal letter, and the world had fallen: +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he had +said. "But there is Rudyard. You must help him through. He heard +scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't +believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie. Good-bye." +</P> + +<P> +That had been the end—the black, bitter end. Since then Ian had never +spoken a word to her, nor she to him; but he had stood there in the +shadow at the station like a ghost, reproachful, unresponsive, +indifferent. She recalled now the day when, after three years' parting, +she had left him cool, indifferent, and self-contained in the doorway +of the sweet-shop in Regent Street; how she had entered her carriage, +had clinched her hands, and cried with wilful passion: "He shall not +treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall! He shall!" +</P> + +<P> +Here was indifference again, but of another land. Hers was not a +woman's vanity, in fury at being despised. Vanity, maybe, was still +there, but so slight that it made no contrast to the proud turmoil of a +nature which had been humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its +mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they had +been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had been +an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or +impelling habits. +</P> + +<P> +And over all there hung the shadow of a man's death, with its black +suspicion. When Ian Stafford looked at her from the shadow of the +railway-station, the question had flashed into his mind, Did she kill +him? Around Adrian Fellowes' death there hung a cloud of mystery which +threw a sinister shadow on the path of three people. In the middle of +the night, Jasmine started from her sleep with the mystery of the man's +death torturing her, and with the shuddering question, Which? on her +fevered lips. Was it her husband—was it Ian Stafford? As he galloped +over the veld, or sat with his pipe beside the camp-fire, Rudyard Byng +was also drawn into the frigid gloom of the ugly thought, and his mind +asked the question, Did she kill him? It was as though each who had +suffered from the man in life was destined to be menaced by his shade, +till it should be exorcised by that person who had taken the useless +life, saying, "It was I; I did it!" +</P> + +<P> +As Jasmine entered the hospital, it seemed to her excited imagination +as though she was entering a House of Judgment: as though here in a +court of everlasting equity she would meet those who had played their +vital parts in her life. +</P> + +<P> +What if Rudyard was here! What if in these few days while she was to be +here he was to cross her path! What would she say? What would she do? +What could be said or done? Bitterness and resentment and dark +suspicion were in her mind—and in his. Her pride was less wilful and +tempestuous than on the day when she drove him from her; when he said +things which flayed her soul, and left her body as though it had been +beaten with rods. Her bitterness, her resentment had its origin in the +fact that he did not understand—and yet in his crude big way he had +really understood better than Ian Stafford. She felt that Rudyard +despised her now a thousand times more than ever he had hinted at in +that last stifling scene in Park Lane; and her spirit rebelled against +it. She would rather that he had believed everything against her, and +had made an open scandal, because then she could have paid any debt due +to him by the penalty most cruel a woman can bear. But pity, +concession, the condescension of a superior morality, were impossible +to her proud mind. +</P> + +<P> +As for Ian Stafford, he had left her stripped bare of one single +garment of self-respect. His very kindness, his chivalry in defending +her; his inflexible determination that all should be over between them +forever, that she should be prevailed upon to be to Rudyard more than +she had ever been—it all drove her into a deeper isolation. This +isolation would have been her destruction but that something bigger +than herself, a passion to do things, lifted to idealism a mind which +in the past had grown materialistic, which, in gaining wit and mental +skill, had missed the meaning of things, the elemental sense. +</P> + +<P> +Corporal Shorter's tale of Rudyard's heroism had stirred her; but she +could not have said quite what her feeling was with regard to it. She +only knew vaguely that she was glad of it in a more personal than +impersonal way. When she shook hands with the cheerful non-com. at the +door of the hospital, she gave him a piece of gold which he was loth to +accept till she said: "But take it as a souvenir of Colonel Byng's +little ride with 'Old Gunter.'" +</P> + +<P> +With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll +not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and +God-bless-you!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap31"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER +</H3> + +<P> +It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of +destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no +moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so +near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their +nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide men +to a new Messiah. +</P> + +<P> +In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for her. +All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and she saw +herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality that once +she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was answered by a +choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she started up from her +couch with poignant apprehension; but presently she realized that it +was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward not far from the room +where she lay. +</P> + +<P> +It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been +excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide +the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it +soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists +presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she +was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on +her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon herself, +it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. +</P> + +<P> +Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires +dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of +the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust +and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling that +around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other scenes, or +wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last fight, and if +so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in the home of the +cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around their fires were +like a family, where men grow to serve each other as brother serves +brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving each other's +honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each other. +</P> + +<P> +As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance +which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, +she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs +upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take +up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was +like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her +mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim +lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw +the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the game was +won. +</P> + +<P> +The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost +upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where +their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they +reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop +passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of +life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their +helpless comrades in this place of healing. +</P> + +<P> +As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure +dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each +other—"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me, +Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!" +</P> + +<P> +But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman somewhere +waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others still had +only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a woman looks at +them; and where women are few and most of them are angels,—the +battle-field has no shelter for any other—such looks have deep +significance. +</P> + +<P> +The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone +past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one of +them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came towards +the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's window, +slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted its neck, +and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a moment Jasmine +stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew why, by this little +incident of the night, and then suddenly the starlight seemed to draw +round the patient animal standing at attention, as it were. +</P> + +<P> +Then she saw it was a grey horse. +</P> + +<P> +Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old Gunter," +ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was Rudyard Byng. +</P> + +<P> +That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had +passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the +night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she +stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she +would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could— +</P> + +<P> +She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe closely +about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter her +room—she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not on the +chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against a table. +She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not there. Her +brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried to button the +night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned it to throw back +her head and gather her golden hair away from her shoulders and breast. +All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her own room.... Where was +her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why should she be at such a +disadvantage! She reached for the table again and found a match-box. +She would strike a light, and find her dressing-gown. Then she abruptly +remembered that she had no dressing-gown with her; that she had +travelled with one single bag—little more than a hand-bag—and it +contained only the emergency equipment of a nurse. She had brought no +dressing-gown; only the light outer rain-proof coat which should serve +a double purpose. She had forgotten for a moment that she was not in +her own house, that she was an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She +felt her way to the wall, found the rain-proof coat, and, with +trembling fingers, put it on. As she did so a wave of weakness passed +over her, and she swayed as though she would fall; but she put a hand +on herself and fought her growing agitation. +</P> + +<P> +She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard +footsteps in the hall outside—footsteps she knew, footsteps which for +years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the +quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of +determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's +voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and +afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his hand +upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move forward as +though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no lock. With +strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the door, +expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she could +hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were throbbing. +</P> + +<P> +The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could +bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the +sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes—the hold-all of the +odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, officers +waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of the +hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One light +was burning—a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind her +quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of relief. +Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened her eyes. +A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door. +</P> + +<P> +It was her husband. +</P> + +<P> +Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her +bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom +turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had +frightened her had followed his entrance here. +</P> + +<P> +She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her night-dress +showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind the table, as +though to hide her bare ankles. +</P> + +<P> +He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered himself. +"Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer place." +</P> + +<P> +All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and still. +She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she could not +have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a haunting +sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but against +everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of the last +few months seemed suddenly undone—to go for nothing. Just as a +drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for a +period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for +drink, and plunges into a debauch,—the last maddening degradation +before his final triumph,—so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and +self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged +from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, and +her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven into +the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the unknown—into a +strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation. +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny +and inquiry in his eyes which she saw—and saw nothing else there. +There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in their +last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, "What did +it mean—that letter from Adrian Fellowes?" +</P> + +<P> +It was all there in his eyes now—that hateful inquiry, the piercing +scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into her +eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked. +</P> + +<P> +She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the look +in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked the +same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man stood +between them, as he had never stood in life—of infinitely more +importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between +Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any +sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of +real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a +disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him! +It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway +over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted now. +</P> + +<P> +"Why have you come here—to this room?" she asked coldly. +</P> + +<P> +As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which +angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; but +the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her +steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and +forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in London. +There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, the panic +excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day when Adrian +Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none of the +barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the sjambok. +Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed older, his +thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep fissure between +the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, had freed him +from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had wholly gone from his +cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious life about him. He +was merely the business-like soldier with work to do. His khaki fitted +him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique without defect. He +carried in his hand a short whip of rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed +his hands upon his hips and looked at Jasmine meditatively, before he +answered her question, she recalled the scene with Krool. Her eyes were +fascinated by the whip in his hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as +though she was to be the victim of his wrath, and that the whip would +presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld. +But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to +her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his +voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her +shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," he +answered her. +</P> + +<P> +"Old Gunter," she said mechanically. +</P> + +<P> +"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?" +</P> + +<P> +"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I came to see Gunter." +</P> + +<P> +"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream. +</P> + +<P> +"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and—" +</P> + +<P> +"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with +a querulous ring to her voice. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp +were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come." +</P> + +<P> +"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say. +</P> + +<P> +"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is +obvious that I should visit you." +</P> + +<P> +"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That must +come." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We +don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we +cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to +the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing +you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing from +our friends. There's enough of that from our foes." +</P> + +<P> +"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not in your room. Something—call it anything you like—made us +meet on this neutral ground." +</P> + +<P> +"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely. +</P> + +<P> +"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be +fighting. War waits for no one—not even for you," he added, with more +sarcasm than he intended. +</P> + +<P> +Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into battle. +Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives together +came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms too +against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to this +was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium of +all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one five +months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, craving +for amusement and excitement and—she was going to say romance, but +there was no romance in those sordid hours of pleasure-making, when she +plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand—ah, if only Rudyard had not +gone to South Africa then! That five months held no romance. She had +never known but one romance, and it was over and done. The floods had +washed it away. +</P> + +<P> +"You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It came +to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the night +as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above +her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or +whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us +worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between us. +I never want to see you any more." +</P> + +<P> +In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night-dress, +and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the linen. +Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him were too +vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, however, by a +cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a man's death thrust +itself between them. This war might have never been, had it not been +for the treachery of the man who had been false to everything and every +being that had come his way. Indirectly this vast struggle in which +thousands of lives were being lost had come through his wife's +disloyalty, however unintentional, or in whatever degree. Whenever he +thought of it, his pulses beat faster with indignation, and a deep +resentment possessed him. +</P> + +<P> +It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him, +but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his +country. The map was dead—so much. He had paid a price—too small. +</P> + +<P> +And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the +same shadow—the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she +said, "There is a black sea between us." +</P> + +<P> +What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she +could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The +passion of the body was dead in her—atrophied. She was as one through +whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of +desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the +months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a +paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red +corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from +which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the +amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to +restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an +invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was +no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; where +the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing of the +flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, of +houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal life, of +domestic being—of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of no mental +protest which could be put into words: she was only conscious of +emotions which now shook her with their power, now left her starkly +cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering as intense as +that of Procrustes on his bed of iron. +</P> + +<P> +This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared +breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an +indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by +herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she felt +he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of that. +</P> + +<P> +That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though +he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret +of life—a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, +contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was +the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She +was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being +exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it +was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of +anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the +rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit +of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling. +</P> + +<P> +"Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have +you no consideration? It is past midnight." +</P> + +<P> +His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said +with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always now. What +else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch at his +wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work begins—not an +eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here sometimes. This one +may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a one-hour day—or less." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear +wife—Jasmine—" he exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a +moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact +that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him +the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world +seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy +stronger than Time. +</P> + +<P> +She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable—that +old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her +past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she +scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was +bewildered, distraught. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no—coward!" she cried. +</P> + +<P> +He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned white. +Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened to the +floor and passed through it into the night. +</P> + +<P> +An instant later he was on his horse. +</P> + +<P> +A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, +and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out. +</P> + +<P> +She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her +awe-struck ears. +</P> + +<P> +With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on the +floor, her face turned towards the stars. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned. +</P> + +<P> +At least here was no longer the cry of doom. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap32"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING +</H3> + +<P> +At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on +her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward a +figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar motion. +Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing her. +Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched the +nurse's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah—it is Al'mah?" she said. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she recovered +herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost dazedly. +</P> + +<P> +After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place +for it to happen," she added. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched +the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of +paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a +look of aversion? +</P> + +<P> +"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in +explanation. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, +with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to +her, she smiled winningly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined. +</P> + +<P> +"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then to +gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings." +</P> + +<P> +After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now +she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her +face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work for +in England." +</P> + +<P> +"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added +suddenly, "I could not sing any longer." +</P> + +<P> +"Your voice—what happened to it?" Jasmine asked. +</P> + +<P> +"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the +voice." +</P> + +<P> +They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah +caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said. +</P> + +<P> +She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld +everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy +and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack. +</P> + +<P> +"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. +"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a +little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas—Offenbach, +Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I +sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks. +How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over +sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the +time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and that there's no +such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the +mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things, +and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things. +But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with +the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories here from men +before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many, +many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real at all, but +just phantasy." +</P> + +<P> +"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it +does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere +snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here; +and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too +sometimes." +</P> + +<P> +"Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden remembrance. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here." +</P> + +<P> +"So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said to +me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing it +is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke of +you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite honest, +too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who you are?" +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes +I'm the world's foundling." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical +features became drawn. +</P> + +<P> +"I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most +to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my identity +altogether. Do you ever feel that?" +</P> + +<P> +"No; I often wish I could." +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she asked. +"You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in London. +Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it something you +wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help here?" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and wondered +what this woman had to say which could be of any import to herself; yet +she felt there was something drawing nearer which would make her shrink. +</P> + +<P> +"No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and +remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to +the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to +one family, or to one's self. That's all." +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do +not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have +had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet +it pursued me till yesterday—till yesterday evening. Now it's gone; +that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was." +</P> + +<P> +She pointed to the door of another room. +</P> + +<P> +There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her movements. +Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the look in the +woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine stepped +inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a moment nothing +was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two chairs. +</P> + +<P> +"That was the first man I ever loved—my husband," Al'mah said quietly, +pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him from +me—you and others." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she +drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of +disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and indefinable +horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through her brain. +It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely calm, she +said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?" +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You +took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and +painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at Glencader. +Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter from you. I +had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, when there was +no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little Jigger's sister, when +he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I killed him. Then—I +killed him." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not shrink. +She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as though to +read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was really +true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest horror of +memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. +</P> + +<P> +"You—are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know +what you have said?" +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am +insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is the +place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness—the madness of war and +other madnesses." +</P> + +<P> +"You had loved him, yet you killed him!" +</P> + +<P> +"You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of +course—I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a +little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air—its flight was only a +little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed Adrian, +as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but I did it. +Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that day he died? +I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw your face +that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms and found +him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca killed Scarpia? +You remember how she felt? I felt so—just like that. I never +hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it." +</P> + +<P> +"How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which +comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy. +</P> + +<P> +"You remember the needle—Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had it. He +showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too weak. The +needle was in his pocket-book—to kill me with some day perhaps. He +certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went to see him. He +was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I said, he had +showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the needle. He talked +of his journey abroad. He lied—nothing but lies, about himself, about +everything. When he had said enough,—lying was easier to him than +anything else—I told him the truth. Then he went wild. He caught hold +of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize the needlepoint when +it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to him only the prick of +a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all over. He died quite +peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him on the sofa. He looked +sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would never lie any more to +women, to you or to me or any other. It is a good thing to stop a +plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was handsome, and his +music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its kind, and it was +part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two wicked men hurt +me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; and I went from +bad to worse. At least he"—she pointed to the other room—"he had some +courage at the very last. He fought, he braved death. The other—you +remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and Ian Stafford went down, +and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian would not go. Then it +was I began to hate him. That was the beginning. What happened had to +be. I was to kill him; and I did. It avenged me, and it avenged your +husband. I was glad of that, for Rudyard Byng had done so much for me: +not alone that he saved me at the opera, you remember, but other good +things. I did his work for him with Adrian." +</P> + +<P> +"Have you no fear—of me?" Jasmine asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Fear of—you? Why?" +</P> + +<P> +"I might hate you—I might tell." +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish things. You +would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to me. Some one had +to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or yourself. It fell +to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it would not matter if +you did. Nothing would happen—nothing at all. Think it out, and you +will see why." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?" +</P> + +<P> +"Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the +war.' It may all end here. Who knows—who cares!" +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had +overpowered her; but now it was all gone. +</P> + +<P> +"We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"—once +Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would +pay, and would pay here—here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a +woman who, like herself, had suffered. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took +both of Almah's hands in her own. +</P> + +<P> +Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all at +once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any human +being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine pity +which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had been +generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; but +it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning compassion +for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or estate." +</P> + +<P> +But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went +from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her +far behind him,—since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had +sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her +heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the +Invisible—that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her +wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and +had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her +inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even then +been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life. +</P> + +<P> +That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the +last few hours—why, she knew not—her heart had found a new sense. She +felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something that made +her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading power, a +brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away into the +mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to see, +however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether the +woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity of +her soul made no choice and sought no difference. +</P> + +<P> +As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over +Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a +light which made them aglow with understanding. +</P> + +<P> +"I always thought you selfish—almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said +presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real +suffering—only the surface, only disappointment at not having your own +happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I did +what I did?" +</P> + +<P> +"I understand." +</P> + +<P> +"I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison +and on the scaffold—if they knew—" +</P> + +<P> +Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes +with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that +to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you +must put it behind you." ... Suddenly she pointed to the other room +where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood +looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man lay. +"I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was all so +many centuries ago, when I was young and glad." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away. +</P> + +<P> +A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the wards. +At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the booming +of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies were at +work. +</P> + +<P> +The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an +impassioned gesture. +</P> + +<P> +"Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, +that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow—a general assault—if Byng +pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His combination's +working all right—thanks to Byng's lot." +</P> + +<P> +As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But her +voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear. +</P> + +<P> +She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he +could not know. +</P> + +<P> +But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his fighting +at daybreak, as he had said. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap33"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"ALAMACHTIG!" +</H3> + +<P> +When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window at +the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his +heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and +defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it +with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of peace +in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black curtain +between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could be set a +soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not even said a +God-be-with-you—she who had lain in his bosom, been so near, so dear, +so cherished: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "For Time and Change estrange, estrange—<BR> + And, now they have looked and seen us,<BR> + Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near,<BR> + With the thick of the world between us!"<BR> +</P> + +<P> +How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each +other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting +shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each other, +should come to a day when they would be less to each other than +strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot +bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's +assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have +gone, after hope is dead. +</P> + +<P> +There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these +vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel +that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him; +not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she +had done him. +</P> + +<P> +But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his +troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of feeling. +After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be treated so? Was +he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal concession? Why should he +be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? He did not know why. But +at the bottom of everything lay a something—a yearning—which would +not be overwhelmed. In spite of wrong and injury, it would live on and +on; and neither Time nor crime, nor anything mortal could obliterate it +from his heart's oracles. +</P> + +<P> +The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the +sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled +his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His +head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the +stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not +felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so +stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas +beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the +salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie +or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but +yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the +others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets +into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a man +away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where lies +repose. +</P> + +<P> +The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he galloped +gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once again, his +mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, as he left +Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was over and done. +</P> + +<P> +How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over—unless, +unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should +settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands +of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a +primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was +no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was a +lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the product +of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in a +blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the friend +of his race and the lover of one woman. +</P> + +<P> +Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far +off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if +they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill, +turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the +Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his +mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries of +artillery and three thousand infantry—Leary's brigade, which had not +been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift. +</P> + +<P> +But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his hard-bitten +South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no doubt. War was part +chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil. He had +ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; he had always +possessed ballast even when the London life had enervated, had +depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a commonplace: it +belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong. +</P> + +<P> +Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which +was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of +the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry +did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and +the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be +open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his +gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours +before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master +Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far. +</P> + +<P> +The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in +command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, +and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the +blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on +the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, +either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep +basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld +people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they were +not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were prepared to +go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to get up early +in the morning if they want to catch us." +</P> + +<P> +This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's +command had already reached the position from which they could do their +work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no sign of +life from the Boer trenches in the dusk—naught of what chanced at +Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would certainly +have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not allow the +Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be threatened +or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, there would be +fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for half a +continent. +</P> + +<P> +"Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry Whalen drew up by him. +</P> + +<P> +"Not a sound from them—not a sign." +</P> + +<P> +"Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?" +</P> + +<P> +"Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of +Hetmeyer's Kopje." +</P> + +<P> +"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take +the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of +trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be +all right." +</P> + +<P> +"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry. +</P> + +<P> +"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje, +and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast." +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As +it struck, he noted the time. +</P> + +<P> +His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall have +the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before they +know it." +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They +clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other—knew each +other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither +disaster nor death could destroy. +</P> + +<P> +"My girl—if anything happens to me," Barry said. +</P> + +<P> +"You may be sure—as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I go +down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the day I +married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I said then +I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened out—and I'll +not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if things should +happen that way." +</P> + +<P> +"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he recovered +himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?" +</P> + +<P> +"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the +salute. "That is all," he added brusquely. +</P> + +<P> +They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given +softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen, +moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer trenches. +</P> + +<P> +Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey +glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly, +till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and kind. +Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the sun +shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active being, +and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first +delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above +the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes +flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat +sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon the +stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and +beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was +new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and +this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all +things living begin the world afresh. +</P> + +<P> +But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the +sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the +aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter than +attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house or +fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any +mysterious thing may happen—a world of five thousand years ago—the +air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would seem +of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast colonies of +green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might belong. Something +frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his flight through the +grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful adventure; a bird hears the +sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves or the swaying shrubs, and +in disdain of such slight performance flings out a song which makes the +air drunken with sweetness. +</P> + +<P> +A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with +flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known +no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is +still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest +beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common. +</P> + +<P> +Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the +lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them +upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is +it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there to +the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not— +</P> + +<P> +Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is +shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the +veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and +beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of +light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle of +vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering +bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with strange, +half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the +rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying +to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of their world; +useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of Boers and +British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in alarm; for they +knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered the madness of +battle, and they realized it at its native first value. +</P> + +<P> +There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind +Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had +brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this flank +of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at work on +the kopjes—the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people from the +places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks. +</P> + +<P> +Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer trenches. +These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose blood was in a +tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at hand-to-hand range, +men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in the days when the +only fighting was man to man, or one man to many men. Here every +"Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell back because he was +forced back by men who were men of the veld like himself; and the +Briton pressed forward because he would not be denied; because he was +sick of reverses; of going forward and falling back; of taking a +position with staggering loss and then abandoning it; of gaining a +victory and then not following it up; of having the foe in the hollow +of the hand and hesitating to close it with a death-grip; of promising +relief to besieged men, and marking time when you had gained a +foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on. +</P> + +<P> +Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked +below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a +fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew +should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty +and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men the +status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters under +Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led nowhere +forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done a big +thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like +Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to be +the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from almost +perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory. +</P> + +<P> +From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! But +here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his +heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the +bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his +fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only +bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and +muscle, though the will was iron. +</P> + +<P> +Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by +step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward, +taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot; +never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat +above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and +might be caught by a lightning shot. +</P> + +<P> +Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the +hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a +soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men +of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently +throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where +hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At +last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the +rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top, +mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit because of the +comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before them. As they +were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely as ever men +fought in the days of Rustum. +</P> + +<P> +In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen +and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger +number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his +life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry +Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he +had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also passed +through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely conscious +of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall him; but, in +the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his men were waving +their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before him, ragged and +grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and race-hatred in their +eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he wounded, but the wounded +voortrekker—a giant of near seven feet clubbed his rifle, and drove at +him. Rudyard shot at close quarters again, but his pistol missed fire. +</P> + +<P> +Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that +the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes +involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, but, +as he did so, he heard a cry—the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he knew +so well. +</P> + +<P> +"Baas! Baas!" it called. +</P> + +<P> +Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him +to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +"Baas! Baas!" +</P> + +<P> +The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness. +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do +anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in the +instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of "Baas! +Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of the Boer +who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As Rudyard +fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" again, +and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own pistol +brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he realized who +it was had cried out, "Baas!" +</P> + +<P> +The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, with +sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street. +</P> + +<P> +It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's +body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas—Baas!" +</P> + +<P> +Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own +fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed +that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger +than death. +</P> + +<P> +Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his +unconscious friend with a great anxiety. +</P> + +<P> +"No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's breast. +"The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the blow. Alamachtig, +it is good! The Baas—it is right with the Baas." +</P> + +<P> +Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as +Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head. +</P> + +<P> +Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and +machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and the +infantry—Humphrey's and Blagdon's men—were hurrying up the slope +which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position the +enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, because +they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high as their +own. +</P> + +<P> +"A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still +unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor this +time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at +DeLancy Scovel's." +</P> + +<P> +Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he +looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind +being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the +hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard +would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the +thing for him. +</P> + +<P> +Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful +would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's +hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken +ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a +Westminster sawbones. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng +had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once +he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance +before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the +Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been +known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called +Little Jingo. +</P> + +<P> +His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard, +but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"He wants brandy," Jigger said. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply. +</P> + +<P> +"I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it +too!" +</P> + +<P> +"A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently. +</P> + +<P> +As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What +do you stay here as—deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the +other." +</P> + +<P> +"Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See—the Baas." +</P> + +<P> +Rudyard's eyes were open. +</P> + +<P> +"Prisoner—who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly. +</P> + +<P> +"Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him. +</P> + +<P> +"He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap34"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"THE ALPINE FELLOW" +</H3> + +<P> +To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who +emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay +in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit, +were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree, +transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the +skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of +conflict. +</P> + +<P> +The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before +him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of death +on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in his +young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and +desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of +those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated. +</P> + +<P> +Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant +rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches +and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has +little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades +and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he has to do +so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has none of the +composure of those who have solace in thinking that what they leave +behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and there some +simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off the meaning +of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in their hands +for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment. +</P> + +<P> +So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom +Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard +Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the +Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet grim +frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden and +masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of +Britain's manhood. +</P> + +<P> +"From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as +fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he +heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he shoves +the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, sticks his +chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and treks across +the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave him and all his +that went before him the key to civilization, and how to be happy +though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, the +I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the best. He +was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and out of a +fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to say, 'I've +got the hang of this, and it's different from what I thought; but that +doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in style. It's the +has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, he fished out the +little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, to let it tell his +fellow-countrymen how he looked at it—that he was just a pawn in the +great game. The game had to be played, and won, and the winner had to +sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the sacrifices. Well, I'd like a +tombstone the same as that fella from New Zealand, if I could win it as +fair, and see as far." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the +ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An +Alexander, with not one world conquered." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could put +such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want +to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay, +but he went against his will, and—and I wish that the grub-hunters, +and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get +hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in +Thamesfontein and the little green islands." +</P> + +<P> +"You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier," +said Stafford with a friendly nod. +</P> + +<P> +"I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that +was hard enough." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough—a handful of guns and +fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put in +an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning +the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big shindy. +It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away like a fat +old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in his bones now. +I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, more that's worth +having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he wants what 'd make his +wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it." +</P> + +<P> +"Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded +Stafford evenly. +</P> + +<P> +Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when +we took Hetmeyer's Kopje." +</P> + +<P> +"Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had +so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng." +</P> + +<P> +Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm +for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at the +Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the smell of +disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a snigger little +place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of peaches and oranges, +and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of nice flowers in the +garden, and a stoep made for candidates for Stellenbosch—as +comfortable as the room of a Rand director." +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards +Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn, +the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or +cloud of green in the veld. +</P> + +<P> +"No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look of +sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to +Durban, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed +at the hospital." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked heavily. "Is +she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken. +</P> + +<P> +"She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend +would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the +same, and took her some veld-roses." +</P> + +<P> +"You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered, +"but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can +smile still, but it's a new one—a war-smile, I expect. Everything gets +a turn of its own at the Front." +</P> + +<P> +"She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, with +his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would have +died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, looking +into the bloom of the garden. +</P> + +<P> +"Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he +should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend had +told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the name +of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's wife, +there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and +Jasmine were not the same as of yore. +</P> + +<P> +"Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse +Byng." +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed +back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box +to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had +widened since then. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah was +nursing Jasmine's husband—surely life was merely farce and tragedy. +</P> + +<P> +At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose +to go, but turned back to Stafford again. +</P> + +<P> +"She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell +what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty frail. +We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No need to +say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and responsibility, and +in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more ill than the chill +makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my stupid way." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful +friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry +Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and a +fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips +very easily. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a +friend," he said aloud—"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not +betray a "—the waving of wings above him caught his eye—"he could not +betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the servitor +of carrion death, as it flew down the wind. +</P> + +<P> +He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in +the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; and +it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his past, +towards his future. +</P> + +<P> +What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New +Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had +purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was +immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated +himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe +was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this +obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price +which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol +or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying +to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not +do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge that +Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To pay +the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the +equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy all +hope for the future. +</P> + +<P> +It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear +honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open to +him—to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take the +stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself and +soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those who +hoped for him the now unattainable things. +</P> + +<P> +In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had +invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in +the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by. +</P> + +<P> +The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had +opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the railway +station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul hitherto +hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new world—not like the +one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or tumultuous, but it +had the lure of that peace, not sterile or somnolent, which summons the +burdened life, or the soul with a vocation, to the hood of a monk—a +busy self-forgetfulness. +</P> + +<P> +Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave +world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his +eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came +to him. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she once +wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she +can smile still, but it's a new one—a war-smile, I expect. Everything +gets a turn of its own at the Front." +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To go +to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out for +it either in pity—or in love? +</P> + +<P> +In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was +dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, +that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, +which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be dislodged. +It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom. Even +betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It continues. No +longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for +adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple, +and the portals ate closed forever. +</P> + +<P> +For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was +behind the curtain still. +</P> + +<P> +He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house +in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man +who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering would +carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or the +other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done that, +there could be no reunion. +</P> + +<P> +He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had +cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead +from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's +Farm. +</P> + +<P> +No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine—unless, it might be, she was +dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen +suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take in +camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard by +her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital. +</P> + +<P> +His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn +for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be +convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said. +</P> + +<P> +He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any +change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her +know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or +secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course. +</P> + +<P> +As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a +Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same engagement, +"Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the English of it. +</P> + +<P> +Out of the agony of conflict would all come right—for Boer, for +Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah? +</P> + +<P> +As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just +arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The +address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth. +</P> + +<P> +He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had come +to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over so +many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded +by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had +written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply +would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future +restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the +wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world. +</P> + +<P> +After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own +darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and opened +the envelope. +</P> + +<P> +It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking +him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her +trouble: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to me +quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old +Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make +that light in his face! I never saw it there—did you? It is just +giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving +up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and +profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on.... Ian, I'm +not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's too +much of the Climbers in us all—not social climbing, I mean, but +wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big +material world. When I look at Tynie—he's lying there so peaceful—you +might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set free into a +world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of light that +never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the sight of his +eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that belongs to +Allah,—I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so friendly, so +gentler than the name by which we call the First One in our language +and our religion—and that world is inside ourselves.... Tynie is +always thinking of other people now, wondering what they are doing and +how they are doing it. He was talking about you a little while ago, and +so admiringly. It brought the tears to my eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, +that our friendship has always been so much on the surface, so 'void of +offence'—is that the phrase? I can look at it without wincing; and I +am glad. It never was a thing of importance to you, for I am not +important, and there was no weight of life in it or in me. But even the +butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in +your big life. I like to think it was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a +little more interest from the drone of the locust or the glow of a +butterfly's wings. I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the +bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of +fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard +the lines—foolish they read, but they are not: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "'All summer long there was one little butterfly,<BR> + Flying ahead of me,<BR> + Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow,<BR> + Flying ahead of me.<BR> + One little butterfly, one little butterfly,<BR> + What can his message be?—<BR> + All summer long, there was one little butterfly<BR> + Flying ahead of me.'<BR> +</P> + +<P> +"It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of +things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us +on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher +hills. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment; +perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to do, +and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used always to +think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I first knew you +on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, would have +carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you have lost that +ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever told me. The thing +behind the words in your letter tells me plainer than words. The last +time I saw you in London—do you remember when it was? It was the day +that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with the sjambok. Well, +that last time, when I met you in the hall as we were both leaving a +house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you remember the day I went to +see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the truth then more. I often +wondered how I could ever help you in the old days. That was an +ambition of mine. But I had no brains—no brains like Jasmine's and +many another woman; and I was never able to do anything. But now I feel +as I never felt anything before in my life. I feel that my time and my +chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, like Miriam,—or was it +Deborah?—and that I must wind the horn of warning as you walk on the +edge of the precipice. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to +Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's +hands,—He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful child +must be taught his lesson—without getting smashed up at a sharp corner +that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to do. Even +Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, as he +never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do anything if +you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man before the war +she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the pieces, and put +them all together again. He says that after we win, reconstruction in +South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given to a man, because, +if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial show'—that's +Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it here, or why +shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in England? You found +the key to England's isolation, to her foreign problem,—I'm quoting +Tynie—which meant that the other nations keep hands off in this fight; +well, why shouldn't you find another key, that to the future of this +Empire? You got European peace for England, and now the problem is how +to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie says this, not me. His command +of English is better than mine, but neither of us would make a good +private secretary, if we had to write letters with words of over two +syllables. I've told you what Tynie says, but he doesn't know at all +what I know; he doesn't see the danger I see, doesn't realize the mad +thing in your brain, the sad thing weighing down your heart—and hers. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your letter +has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it must not, +shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in this war. Is +not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go yet, and that +you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan now would be a +crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken memory—even mine, +Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all want you, to be the big +man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It is too small. If one +must be a slave, then let it be to something greater than one's self, +higher—toweringly unattainably higher. Believe me, neither the girl +you love nor any woman on earth is entitled to hold in slavery the +energies and the mind and hopes of a man who can do big things—or any +man at all. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them down. +At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it +through—blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them still; +but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you not +live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, and +He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own making. +</P> + +<P> +"You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things +home to me—and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and +maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too +that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to +teach us our lesson—us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am +going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night—oh, how strange +that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me +say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were, +he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to +him a fortnight ago—Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at +these words: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> + "'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:<BR> + Wait ye the warning?<BR> + Our low life was the level's and the night's;<BR> + He's for the morning.'<BR> +</P> + +<P> +"Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine +fellow!' ..." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage, +solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it, +not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so good.... +We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth +of her share of Ian Stafford...." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Then there followed a postscript which ran: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or +that. Well, here is the ship—mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home +for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the joy +of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were +silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its +fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt +that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; and +he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian +Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said. +</P> + +<P> +Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as +his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair +retreated before a woman's insight. +</P> + +<P> +"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap35"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +AT BRINKWORT'S FARM +</H3> + +<P> +"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown +more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at +Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the +mask of his outward self-control. +</P> + +<P> +"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly. +</P> + +<P> +"When—where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's. +</P> + +<P> +"At Hetmeyer's Kopje." +</P> + +<P> +"But what are you—a prisoner—doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?" +</P> + +<P> +"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." +</P> + +<P> +"They let you come without a guard?" +</P> + +<P> +"No—not. They are outside"—Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of +the house—"with the biltong and the dop." +</P> + +<P> +"You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." +</P> + +<P> +"What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at +Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: +Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute +certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with +the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when +the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool +believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas. +</P> + +<P> +It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the +House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a reconstructed +life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe. +</P> + +<P> +The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of him. +The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare +frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with +the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki hat +which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and +vengeful. +</P> + +<P> +Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the +Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it +all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the best, +lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would break +her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament which alone +could make life tolerable to her or to others who might live with her +under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he swiftly devised +means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He was certain harm +was meant—there was a look of semi-insanity in Krool's eyes. Krool +must be put out of the way before he could speak with the Baas.... But +how? +</P> + +<P> +With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid +of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept +there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would +move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently move +on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, to +which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of his +neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old +friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason why. +</P> + +<P> +"You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"To sjambok you again?" +</P> + +<P> +Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's Kopje. +I kill Piet Graaf to do it." +</P> + +<P> +There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a +wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety. +</P> + +<P> +He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he +dreaded the inconsistency which such men show—forgiving and forgetting +when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of punishment +remain. +</P> + +<P> +He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said presently +with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet Graaf—have you told +the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? The sjambok is the Baas' +cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills to cure. Do you think that +the Baas would want his life through the killing of Piet Graaf by his +friend Krool, the slim one from the slime?" +</P> + +<P> +As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its +branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of +Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage +possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on Wotan +in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could not. His +body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of hatred, +then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and again +opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. +</P> + +<P> +At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban was +off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, you speak of traitor—you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The +sjambok—fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes—a t'ousand! Krool—Krool is +a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool do? +He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek—against the Philistine. He help +the chosen against the children of Hell. +</P> + +<P> +"What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in +the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves +would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the +voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps +and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things +good for him to hear." +</P> + +<P> +Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through +the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his +eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him +and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in the +broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over the +boulders of a rapid. +</P> + +<P> +"Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland from +the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The Baas an' +I, we understand—on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the Baas, and +I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people of the Baas' +country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he will it. So it +was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas strike, he strike; +if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set down. All else go. +Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, Cronje, Botha, they all +go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On the Limpopo it is written. +All must go, if the Baas speak—one, two, three, a t'ousand. Else the +bond is water, and the spirits come in the night, and take you to the +million years of torment. It is nothing to die—pain! But only the Baas +is kill me. It is written so. Only the Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor +all the verdomde Rooineks out there"—he pointed to the vast camp out +on the veld—"nor the Baas' vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas' +vrouw! She cannot hurt me..." He spat on the ground. "Who is the +traitor? Is it Krool? Did Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas' +slave; it is only the friend of the Baas that steal from him—only him +is traitor. I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to +save the Baas! I saw you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go +tell the Baas all. If he kill me—it is the Baas. It is written." +</P> + +<P> +He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion +glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly +to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent this +abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he would +have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the Baas' +vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that the end +was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice Tynemouth's letter +a new spirit had been working in him. He must do nothing rash. There +was enough stain on his hands now without the added stain of blood. But +he must act; he must prevent Krool from telling the Baas. Yonder at the +hospital was Jasmine, and she and her man must come together here in +this peaceful covert before Rudyard went forward with the army. It must +be so. +</P> + +<P> +Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep +and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first, +did not understand. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at +once march him back to the prisoners' camp." +</P> + +<P> +Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a +pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would +not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a +soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no +resistance. +</P> + +<P> +But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry—"Baas!" +</P> + +<P> +In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty +neckcloth provided a gag. +</P> + +<P> +The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of +superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries. +Stafford's move was regular from a military point of view. He was +justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner. He +could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged. +</P> + +<P> +As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had +disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during +the incident. +</P> + +<P> +A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much in +common—the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against. +</P> + +<P> +"I heard his last words about you and—her," she said in a low voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. +</P> + +<P> +"In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." +</P> + +<P> +"Thank God!" +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to +him, or why you have come," she said, "but—" +</P> + +<P> +"I have come to congratulate him on his recovery." +</P> + +<P> +"I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them +before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes." +</P> + +<P> +"What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his +heart give a bound and his brain throb. +</P> + +<P> +"Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were—concerned." +</P> + +<P> +"I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily. +</P> + +<P> +He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare friendliness. +There came over him again the feeling he had at the hospital when they +talked together last, that whatever might come of all the tragedy and +sorrow around them they two must face irretrievable loss. +</P> + +<P> +She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she +said, "Yes, I will take it while I can." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for +something—some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, +then they steadied to his firmly. +</P> + +<P> +"You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death—I saw that at +the inquest." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I knew." +</P> + +<P> +"It was a poisoned needle." +</P> + +<P> +"I know. I found the needle." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it." +</P> + +<P> +Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation +broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was +buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices—voices of old +thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering +on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed +to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him. +</P> + +<P> +"He had hurt me more than any other—than my husband or her. I did it. +I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, I +wanted something for all I had lost, and he was ..." +</P> + +<P> +Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am +not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself for +it—only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to pay, in +my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands that +carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This one +man died because ..." +</P> + +<P> +He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying +now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The +gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So +long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting for +Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there would +always have been a black shadow between—the shadow that hangs over the +scaffold. +</P> + +<P> +"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. +</P> + +<P> +"They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On the +day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." +</P> + +<P> +There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here +before he joins his regiment." +</P> + +<P> +"I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was +better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she was +coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, I +sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what a +woman like me does." +</P> + +<P> +"What did you say to her?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She +will think he is dying." +</P> + +<P> +"If she resents the subterfuge?" +</P> + +<P> +"Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting—who can tell! +Now is the time—now. I want to see it. It must be." +</P> + +<P> +He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes +had a strange childishly frightened look. +</P> + +<P> +"You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. +</P> + +<P> +A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her +eyes were suffused. +</P> + +<P> +"The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a voice +which told how deep was the well of misery in her being. +</P> + +<P> +"It is as old as Allah," he replied. +</P> + +<P> +"Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is +coming." +</P> + +<P> +An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and +Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left. +</P> + +<P> +As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her +fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she +heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the +house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's Farm. +Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the neckcloth was +still binding his mouth. +</P> + +<P> +As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like +flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to +the frock-coat and the huge top-boots. +</P> + +<P> +The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way. +</P> + +<P> +"What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing +Krool. +</P> + +<P> +"A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the guard. +"He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a lump o' +lead in 'is baskit 'e does." +</P> + +<P> +"'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it +hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"—he jerked +his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's voices +talking earnestly. +</P> + +<P> +"Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on +that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, this +half-caste Boojer is." +</P> + +<P> +The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the next +push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's done a +lot o' bitin' in 'is time—let 'im bite the dust now, I sez. I'm fair +sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square fighters. Why, 'e'd +fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke would." +</P> + +<P> +"There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was +jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this +time—goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes +and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're +goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over +the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the +howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening +their bouquets to-morrow—" +</P> + +<P> +"Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second. +</P> + +<P> +"I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear +let 'im 'ear—that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the +off side of a vicarage." +</P> + +<P> +He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade followed +up with a sharp challenge. +</P> + +<P> +"I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's—not about wot +the next move is, and w'en it is." +</P> + +<P> +The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard +Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night—w'en you was sleepin' at your +post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit at it. +You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the hills—that's +shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' thing in the air +wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' to 'it. That's +shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being shook—that's mausers and +others. You'll see regiments marching out o' step, an' every man on his +own, which is not how we started this war, not much. And where there's +a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, and you get behind it like a +man. And w'en there's nothing to get behind, you get in front, and take +your chances, and you get there—right there, over the trenches, over +the bloomin' Amalakites, over the hills and far away, where they want +the relief they're goin' to get, or I'm a pansy blossom." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the Second. +He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front of him +with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics of the +fight to come. +</P> + +<P> +"We'll all be in it—even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah +with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done a +bit o' nursin'—there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell in +'is 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me where +I squeak that kind o' thing do." +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep sounded +smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house. +</P> + +<P> +He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the +distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a +pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the +lightness of a boy, and galloped away. +</P> + +<P> +He had not seen Al'mah as he passed. +</P> + +<P> +In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh +broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw +Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where +Jasmine was. +</P> + +<P> +"Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the +stain of the blossoms from her fingers. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap36"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +SPRINGS OF HEALING +</H3> + +<P> +Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm, +the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it +was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone +should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of +her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all +was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at +Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the chance +to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been hers. She +herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all to which +she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of it. She was +of those who get their happiness first in making others happy—as she +would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; as even she +tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account with the +firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the protective +sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her life. It had +sent her to South Africa—to protect the wretch who had done his best +to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she did her nurse's +work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source of her revolt at +Jasmine's conduct and character. +</P> + +<P> +But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was, +after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she +really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's +rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, have +become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that also in +part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp disapproval +of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter at what cost +to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which would make a +woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order that he might +be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her which would make a +thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she herself set above +all others? +</P> + +<P> +But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think +and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and +they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins. +</P> + +<P> +She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly waned. +Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, up and +down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. At +length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat down in a great +arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid down the law for +his people. +</P> + +<P> +Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm? +</P> + +<P> +A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate +Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would +link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on to +the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived +while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he left. +It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for three +hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was made +of the delay. +</P> + +<P> +When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was +one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and +he, like Stafford, though in another sphere—that of the Secret +Intelligence Department—had travelled far and wide in the world. +Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near +that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman +beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because +he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly +classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful. +But there was something in her face that haunted him—a wistful, +appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant readiness +of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of organization. +And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown those who hadn't +life-belts," as he said. +</P> + +<P> +In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said +that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one +family was unusual. +</P> + +<P> +"Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest +officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's Farm, +in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a fellow +well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the Stay +Awhile with a staff-officer." +</P> + +<P> +The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any +officers' mess. +</P> + +<P> +"I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll +muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you, +Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of +impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have +traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at +Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think +so." +</P> + +<P> +"If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major, +"the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time for +teaching the rudiments of human intercourse." +</P> + +<P> +Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly +self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't +met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that—" +</P> + +<P> +The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what +Nancy would tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook—and then Rigby +would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw his +wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't tell +what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's pegnoir, +for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook—nor Rigby." +</P> + +<P> +With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side +pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the +hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's +own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a +match. +</P> + +<P> +"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin +precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table. +</P> + +<P> +A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the +technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any +number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions, +is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports. +</P> + +<P> +"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the +tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the +relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did +not exist. +</P> + +<P> +When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly +over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was +the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock. +</P> + +<P> +It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she +must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind—that she must go to +him? +</P> + +<P> +If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he +was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into the +night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her voice +faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him—the last time +before he rode away again forever, on that white horse called Death? A +shudder passed through her. +</P> + +<P> +"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those were +the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford dined +with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the life +they lived. "We have everything—everything," he had said, "and yet—" +</P> + +<P> +Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the thought +of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun strands of +hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its great coiled +abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust the simple +linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the soft simplicity +of her dark-blue gown. +</P> + +<P> +She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the +messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been gone +three hours or more. +</P> + +<P> +Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without +hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired +reconciliation and peace. +</P> + +<P> +She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to Brinkwort's +Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have orders. She +hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and explained. His +sympathy translated itself into instant action. Fortunately there was a +cart at the door. In a moment she was ready, and the cart sped away +into the night across the veld. +</P> + +<P> +She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart—neither the driver nor +the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar voice +saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje—done it brown. First +Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be over the +hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of the +hold-me-backs." +</P> + +<P> +She recognized him—the first person who had spoken to her of her +husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told her +of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter." +</P> + +<P> +She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low +tone. +</P> + +<P> +"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you +should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one +else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and +'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's +well as ends well, and you're together at the finish." +</P> + +<P> +She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt +her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that pain +now. She had felt it—ah, how many times since the night she found +Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man she +had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head drooped. "At +the finish"—how strange and new and terrible it was! The world stood +still for her. +</P> + +<P> +"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's +voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly it +came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the +siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not +said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was +closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She +seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream. +</P> + +<P> +She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only +answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was +distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her +anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to +which he belonged. +</P> + +<P> +What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if Rudyard +was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him understand +that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the flood"—before +that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her life except the +old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the power which swept her +into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, deaf to her voice and to +any mortal sound, then—there rushed into her vision the figure of Ian +Stafford, but she put that from her with a trembling determination. +That was done forever. She was as sure of it as she was sure of +anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, would never forgive +her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred her. Ian had saved her +from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation and fury, and had then +repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him with a magnanimity and a +chivalry which had humiliated her. He had protected her from the shame +of an open tragedy, and then had shut the door in her face. Rudyard, +with the same evidence as Ian held,—the same letter as proof—he, +whatever he believed or thought, he had forgiven her. Only a few nights +ago, that night before the fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his +arms to her and called her his wife. In Rudyard was some great good +thing, something which could not die, which must live on. She sat up +straight in the seat of the cart, her hands clinched. +</P> + +<P> +No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered +not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove herself; +his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must not be cut +off at the moment when so much had been done; when there was so much to +do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little burst of eloquence," +as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he thought her; but a +woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the poppy-fields of +pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue in her to avoid +the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, and to have +learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have been wholly +destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might be turned to +good account. +</P> + +<P> +She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright +lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of +her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a +hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng." +</P> + +<P> +He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights +seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came +the sharp voice of a soldier saying: +</P> + +<P> +"Halt! Who goes there?" +</P> + +<P> +"A friend," was the Corporal's reply. +</P> + +<P> +"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned. +</P> + +<P> +A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the +lights of the house were flaring out upon her. +</P> + +<P> +She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal +Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that at +the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity. +</P> + +<P> +All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she +knew it was Al'mah. +</P> + +<P> +"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a +whisper. +</P> + +<P> +The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it might +almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp. +</P> + +<P> +"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which +seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by +Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and the +morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The butterfly +had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat. +</P> + +<P> +She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never +would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since all +was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had been +dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had been of +the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no harm, but +only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the result of +her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She +had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the +possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine +should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant +egotism once more! Suppose—no, she would suppose nothing. She must +believe that all she had done was for the best. +</P> + +<P> +She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm +fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes, +and all at once realized the cause of that agitation—the fear that +death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever +shut against the answering voices. +</P> + +<P> +"You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened +the grasp of her hands. +</P> + +<P> +As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are suddenly +withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so Jasmine's +hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though she must +fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained her balance, +withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah. +</P> + +<P> +"He is alive—he is alive—he is alive," she kept repeating to herself +like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear +herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me." +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense of +something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, old +room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias +Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a +picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome +of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they +were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer army +in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot his +house or ravage his belongings. +</P> + +<P> +To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at +once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost +mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision, +her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the +corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no +more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint +smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside +another room—not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the +Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something +English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man +standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was +a figure which had no affinity with death. +</P> + +<P> +As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found +herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really +was—like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and sun. +The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self were not +yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and intensity. +This had been too daring an experiment with one of her nature, which +had within the last few months become as strangely, insistently, even +fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the past. In spite of a +tremulous effort to govern herself and see the situation as it really +was—an effort of one who desired her good to bring her and Rudyard +together, the ruse itself became magnified to monstrous proportions, +and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that she had been inveigled; +that what should have been her own voluntary act of expiation and +submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, ever her most secret +enemy, took possession of her. +</P> + +<P> +"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body +trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation +in her voice. +</P> + +<P> +He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently +held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more +fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the +beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly leaped +at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the primitive +thing of which he had had enough. +</P> + +<P> +"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The +letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she +was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you—never. I should +not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to +get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not +let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that +midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you +would not really wish it to end." +</P> + +<P> +Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women, +as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the +anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being +alive—overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament +had flooded it for the moment. +</P> + +<P> +He would have gone to her—that was what he had said. In spite of her +conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he +would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or +how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was! +</P> + +<P> +How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face grown +hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his +temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the +centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making +for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It +had all the sombreness of reproach—of immitigable reproach. Could she +face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to +live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would +not empty, on and on, than to live with that look in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a sjambok +lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and in the +minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the street +under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide. +</P> + +<P> +Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of all. Idiosyncrasy +may not be cauterized, temperament must assert itself, or the +personality dies. Was he to be her master—was that the end of it all? +She had placed herself so completely in his power by her wilful +waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have been ruler over +him; now she must be his slave! +</P> + +<P> +"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a +cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now? +Don't you want to?" +</P> + +<P> +"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A +twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!" +</P> + +<P> +Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had +in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for +that—and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But +why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there +was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with +herself—and with him. She was in chaos again. +</P> + +<P> +"You treat me like a child, you condescend—" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, for God's sake—for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden +storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the +will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared. +</P> + +<P> +"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You +haven't got over your illness yet." +</P> + +<P> +He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of +it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far +greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two +people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was +this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with +Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind—a talk which, in its +brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a +promise to one of the best friends that man—or woman—ever had, as he +thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford +understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived +by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of +her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble +she had caused. So he said to himself. +</P> + +<P> +As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him. +</P> + +<P> +"Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You have +not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at +Al'mah and the doctor!" +</P> + +<P> +She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed +him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the +chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act +was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she felt +his pulse with the gravity of a doctor. +</P> + +<P> +Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed +there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the +whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the +table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it +to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You +shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming." +</P> + +<P> +As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour +of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before. +</P> + +<P> +There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even +wounds and illness had not faced—only humour, only a hovering joy, +only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of +the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not fantastically +to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other room where were +the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was no offending +magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, but a human +something which took no account of the years that the locust had eaten, +the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of them. There was only +the look she had seen the day he first visited her in her own home, +when he had played with words she had used in the way she adored, and +would adore till she died; when he had said, in reply to her remark +that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make any difference to +his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly it was all as if +that day had come back, although his then giant physical strength had +gone; although he had been mangled in the power-house of which they had +spoken that day. Come to think of it, she too had been working in the +"power-house" and had been mangled also; for she was but a thread of +what she was then, but a wisp of golden straw to the sheaf of the then +young golden wheat. +</P> + +<P> +All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright +look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her old self +like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back +again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle +wind. +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the +thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling +as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and +buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly. +</P> + +<P> +With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew +her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace." +</P> + +<P> +They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not make +her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew +her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and +each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means! +</P> + +<P> +All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little +spasmodic grasp. +</P> + +<P> +"I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be +absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, bravely. +</P> + +<P> +"Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not +change. She noted that. +</P> + +<P> +"I know. It was—" +</P> + +<P> +She paused. What right had she to tell! +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me." +</P> + +<P> +She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely +waiting and watching. +</P> + +<P> +Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his. +They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they +dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said: +</P> + +<P> +"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master +me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me—and the shackles on my +wrists." +</P> + +<P> +She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used +them concerning herself the night before the tragedy. +</P> + +<P> +"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I +was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You +took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest." +</P> + +<P> +"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so beautiful." +</P> + +<P> +She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always—only a +dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had +been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or +did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and +words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any +real thing in me. I never emerged—never was myself." +</P> + +<P> +"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It +takes all that ever was and makes it new." +</P> + +<P> +She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to +have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all +that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond +endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught +the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what +he thought of her meant so much just now—in this one hour, for this +one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place +on the road. +</P> + +<P> +He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and +held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great +sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre +of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of +spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart. +</P> + +<P> +"It's her real self—at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to +have her chance, and she has got it." +</P> + +<P> +Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She +knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the +night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's +surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went +back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent Garden. +The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some phrases of +the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no resonance or +vibration. It trailed away into a whisper. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it +that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to herself.... Again +reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. "No, I +am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a long time, "If a +price must be paid, I will pay it." +</P> + +<P> +Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near by. +At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of +sentries off duty—the two who had talked to her earlier in the +evening, after Ian Stafford had left. +</P> + +<P> +"This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o' +space in a night out here." +</P> + +<P> +"I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath," +rejoined the other. +</P> + +<P> +"I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously. +</P> + +<P> +"I got kids—somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a flourish +of pride and self-assertion. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First. +</P> + +<P> +"You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," declared +his friend in a voice of fatality. +</P> + +<P> +"You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I +like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in the +morning 'ere." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son," +challenged the Second. +</P> + +<P> +"I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet +reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you +when we're in Lordkop." +</P> + +<P> +"I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was +the railing reply. +</P> + +<P> +"She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then they +struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, and said +good-night in the vernacular. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap37"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +UNDER THE GUN +</H3> + +<P> +They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who +had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it +seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a +waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far +away in front—that front which must be taken—there hung over the +ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured +the air—crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of +animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, +on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which +quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and +the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, +showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead. +</P> + +<P> +"Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, fell +into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with a +sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in the +millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The +lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a +verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin +this day." +</P> + +<P> +Alamachtig! +</P> + +<P> +At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air +was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the +ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that +human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike +were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no +apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly, +coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a +comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds +his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too—puddles +of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from +the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense +concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony of +those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and +voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men +around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained +with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were not +the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and making +bets as to where the attack would begin to-day. +</P> + +<P> +Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had +been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever +done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking was +indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his +battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result to +the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders +accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the new +position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against this +fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe at +advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and the +clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an +enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall +back into a smother—as though, in falling, blankets were drawn roughly +over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air around him. +And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets flapping in +the air were the machine guns of the foe following his battery into a +zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that smothered him were +wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the direst agonies of +body and mind. +</P> + +<P> +The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power, +sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks +flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the struggle +of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, plunging here +and there in flight and futile motion. As unconsciousness enwrapped him +the vision of these distraught denizens of the veld was before his +eyes. Somehow, in a lightning transformation, he became one with them +and was mingled with them. +</P> + +<P> +Time passed. +</P> + +<P> +When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was before +him—the negative left on the film of his sight by his last conscious +glance at the world. +</P> + +<P> +He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The +springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the army +to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the hill +lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious of +this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone forward. +There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a kind of +valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a world in +which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many years—or +centuries—was it since he had been in that harvest of death? There was +no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was that his soul had +made so far a journey. +</P> + +<P> +In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had +gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of +the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind—only that +confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of +the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it +waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own +blood, in the swath which the battle had cut. +</P> + +<P> +His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the +mists of morning. Something—Some One—had reached out and touched him +on the shoulder, had summoned him. +</P> + +<P> +When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to +live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and Rudyard +had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken +roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It had +seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and that +the way was open to peace, if not to happiness. +</P> + +<P> +When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I +will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time +and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way of +the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death. +</P> + +<P> +To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and +absolution without penalty—that had been his course. In the hour when +he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by +the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not +for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had +reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink it. +Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish—drink it." +</P> + +<P> +He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a +vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle—the +everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he smiled +too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant that the +army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would soon be the +Relief for which England prayed. +</P> + +<P> +There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His +battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its +work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great +day's work. +</P> + +<P> +He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable day. +He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery had +suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not +hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the +battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant +withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and renewed +activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and his slain +men and fellow-officers. +</P> + +<P> +But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant +to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It +was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was +small, distant, and subordinate. +</P> + +<P> +If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the +battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from +that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid, +and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed +for darkness. +</P> + +<P> +He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind +the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping +down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he +gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the +spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his +parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness +swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed his +temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had ever +known. +</P> + +<P> +"Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed eyes. +"Jasmine—water," he pleaded, and sank away again into that dream from +which he had but just wakened. +</P> + +<P> +It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head +was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead. +</P> + +<P> +But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held +the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips. +</P> + +<P> +Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their way +from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to this +corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the +enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they first +fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of fire. No +heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, nurse, or +surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here were two +races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give and take for +the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was closed. +</P> + +<P> +The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no +right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the +battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and +in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and +had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where +wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of war. +When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow her to +remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her way to +where the wounded and dead lay. +</P> + +<P> +A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured +gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of +Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come +whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the +man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like +herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose +hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that +as a brother loves so he loved her. +</P> + +<P> +Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the +lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are +commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser +nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the +abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached +Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The +surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care for +a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a +courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With +both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light his +cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it was +with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it! +</P> + +<P> +"Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over +him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me +pipe, glory be!" +</P> + +<P> +With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun, +left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that +nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was +made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the +young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, some +with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the gunner, +who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood at +attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his credit +for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she threw +over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained jackets +lying near—jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had tried +hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down. +</P> + +<P> +There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was +spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were +dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. +</P> + +<P> +Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was +ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that +the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until +she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to +tell—all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that +look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and +peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came +to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going: +his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from +the lever that lifted things. +</P> + +<P> +She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards +the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome +birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they +could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she +drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from +the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little more water. +</P> + +<P> +"God make it easy!" she said. +</P> + +<P> +A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through +the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing +them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all +her own problems—like Stafford—like Stafford? Stooping, she +reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed +her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need her +on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who +could help him now. Who else was there beside herself—and Jigger? +</P> + +<P> +Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been +with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like Jigger +to be absent when Stafford needed him. +</P> + +<P> +She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him +coming—to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she +saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner, +stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and +head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though +there was a goal which must be reached. +</P> + +<P> +An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat +at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was +the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so +flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who +had fallen. Now he also was in dire need. +</P> + +<P> +She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an +angular assertion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log, +ungainly and rigid. +</P> + +<P> +"They got me! I'm hit—twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that +stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an +abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he +added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found him. +His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure seemed +to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if not +resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out +querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis. +</P> + +<P> +"They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I wasn't +fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, accent, +and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips moved +once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace—first floor," he said +mechanically, and said no more. +</P> + +<P> +As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last words. +"Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly. +</P> + +<P> +They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and +died. She shuddered. +</P> + +<P> +"So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the +lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay. +</P> + +<P> +Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took +no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being +killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of Ian +Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea. +</P> + +<P> +He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her +vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept +ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi +Terrace—first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had +sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes had +died—"More was lost at Mohacksfield." +</P> + +<P> +The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim +of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie +unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face +of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the +armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or +struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over the +hills. +</P> + +<P> +In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept +Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been justified. He +would have died had it not been for the water and brandy she had forced +between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath the gun. In the +end they would come and gather the dead and wounded. When the battle +was over they would come, or, maybe, before it was over. +</P> + +<P> +But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of +artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar +of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her +senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew +thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a dream. +She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than all the +noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her very body +seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers hurting +her brain. +</P> + +<P> +At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs. +</P> + +<P> +So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and +bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded! +</P> + +<P> +The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder +almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was +ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to know +that friends were with him at the last, and also what had happened at +Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one +man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and +swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so. +</P> + +<P> +The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare frock-coat, +huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's Farm. The last +time she had seen that malevolent face was when its owner was marched +away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. +</P> + +<P> +It was Krool. +</P> + +<P> +An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, for +it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it. +</P> + +<P> +When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces +with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The +superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; +then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of +savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with +sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was +upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he +saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry. +</P> + +<P> +With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A +sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained +horses sprang forward. +</P> + +<P> +"The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins, +but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for +him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach +Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after +his escape—if he was caught—he would do something to gall the pride +of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to issue +forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy loss +while the battle was at its height—he would ride it over the hills +into the Boers' camp. +</P> + +<P> +There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with +his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a +wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the +staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses, +and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow +the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire +upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it rose +again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It +swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, +Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that +dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and understood +that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer lines. +</P> + +<P> +At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had also +fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British gun was +not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, and their +fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was doing the thing +with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval as the gun came +nearer and nearer. +</P> + +<P> +Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of +one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses +were behaving so gallantly,—horses of one of their own batteries +daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force—that there was +scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden +turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving +behind it a little cloud of dust. +</P> + +<P> +Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man +who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry +Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way, +and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still +unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much +the same as those of Barry Whalen. +</P> + +<P> +With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's vigil. +The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by the Red +Cross wagons. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap38"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXVIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"PHEIDIPPIDES" +</H3> + +<P> +At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and +fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and friend, +the end came to the man who had lain under the gun. +</P> + +<P> +"Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the +humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner who +brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it. +</P> + +<P> +It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth, +he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle, +to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died +for England before they knew that victory was hers. +</P> + +<P> +"Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much +upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his +hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had +to go before they knew." +</P> + +<P> +"I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look in +his face. +</P> + +<P> +His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and +Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah +took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, +noiseless steps, left the room. +</P> + +<P> +What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. +</P> + +<P> +Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time. +</P> + +<P> +"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written +self-control. +</P> + +<P> +"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It +will help him." +</P> + +<P> +He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of +pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another room. +</P> + +<P> +There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips. +</P> + +<P> +She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white and +still upon the coverlet. +</P> + +<P> +At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would +reach to the farthest borders of his being—would bring him back from +the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half +raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A light +transfigured his face. +</P> + +<P> +"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly down. +</P> + +<P> +"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap39"></A> +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XXXIX +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +"THE ROAD IS CLEAR" +</H3> + +<P> +The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and +glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an +emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from +Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the +petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its +improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain, +where she guarded the jewels of her honour. +</P> + +<P> +The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and +drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills +from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup +of trembling, the wine of loss. +</P> + +<P> +As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of +brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets +of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to +bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the +Day Path and took the Night Road. +</P> + +<P> +Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with +bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave—"I am the resurrection +and the life"—the volleys of honour, the proud salut of the brave to +the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few who turn away +from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging behind—all had +been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the veld with a golden +radiance which soothed like prayer. +</P> + +<P> +By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a +woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed +to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the +attitude of the figure. +</P> + +<P> +A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away +from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see +that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was +properly in its place. +</P> + +<P> +"'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how +I'll git along now." +</P> + +<P> +There was great hopelessness in the tone. +</P> + +<P> +"He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, Jigger. He +thought of all that." +</P> + +<P> +"'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of +protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money, +when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for +'im—that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im." +</P> + +<P> +"You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago +that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard—good for all the +time." +</P> + +<P> +The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that—did 'e?" he asked, +and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, ain't 'e?" +His look questioned her eagerly. +</P> + +<P> +For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took on +a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from +strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered +steadily: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, he is happy now." +</P> + +<P> +"How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed +in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is +it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep +sometimes—singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time I +ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it is like that—just like that," she answered, taking his hand, +and holding it with a motherly tenderness. +</P> + +<P> +"Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added. +</P> + +<P> +She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly. +</P> + +<P> +"This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all +have to go back to work." +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it something +of her old whimsical self. +</P> + +<P> +"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of +intellectual effort. "It's a cut above 'em both—that's my fancy." +</P> + +<P> +"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do +when you get back to England?" she inquired. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a +scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked. +</P> + +<P> +"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, +"and we'll have to find a way of being busy together." +</P> + +<P> +"His gryce'd like that," he responded. +</P> + +<P> +She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds became +silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a long +time. +</P> + +<P> +"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a +whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to +shut out something that pained her sight. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish you'd sing somethin'—same as you did that night at Glencader, +about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from the +bed. +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and +turned again to the light in the evening sky. +</P> + +<P> +"P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself. +</P> + +<P> +On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to +sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go +down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence +between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which +the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the +disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared +to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence +would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to +look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should +force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had +talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been nothing. +</P> + +<P> +Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time +the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the +grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs +of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, +that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should +be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its +own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same +light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which +exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things any +more. +</P> + +<P> +There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the valley. +With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the land +where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land where +he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped to +make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it from +disaster. +</P> + +<P> +But there had come another victory—the victory of Home. The +coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one +hour. +</P> + +<P> +Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman beside +him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him with an +understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a colour +came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days than he +could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a sadness +which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen those eyes +he had thought them the most honest he had ever known. Looking at them +now, with confidence restored, he thought again as he did that night at +the opera the year of the Raid. +</P> + +<P> +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose and +a great gentleness in his tone. +</P> + +<P> +Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination +gathered at her lips. +</P> + +<P> +Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself. +</P> + +<P> +"But I cannot—I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then you +may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour went +from her lips. "I must be honest now—at last, about everything. I want +to tell you—" +</P> + +<P> +He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely in +the eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of +finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in +one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips. +</P> + +<P> +"A fresh start for a long race—the road is clear," he said firmly. +</P> + +<P> +Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that in +his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she +was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast. +</P> + +<P> +A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed +and echoed away among the hills. +</P> + +<P> +He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again. +</P> + +<P> +Her fingers tightened on his. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="finis"> +THE END +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<PRE> +GLOSSARY: + +AASVOGEL Vulture. + +ALFALFA Lucerne. + +BILTONG Strips of dried meat. + +DISSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon. + +DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil. + +DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally +applied to Dutchmen in South Africa. + +DORP Settlement or town. + +KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa. + +KOPJE A rounded hillock. + +KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains. + +KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle. + +KRANZES Rocky precipices. + +MEERKAT A species of ichneumon. + +ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the +Boers. + +SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills). + +SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. + +SPRUIT A small stream. + +STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house. + +TAAL South African Dutch. + +TREK To move from place to place with belongings. + +VELD An open grassy plain. + +VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes. + +VERDOMDE Damned. + +VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African +Republics. + +VOORTREKKER Pioneer. + +VROUW Wife. +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUDGMENT HOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 3746-h.htm or 3746-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/4/3746/ + +Produced by Juli Rew. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Judgment House + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Posting Date: May 13, 2009 [EBook #3746] +Release Date: February, 2003 +First Posted: August 15, 2001 +Last Updated: June 13, 2002 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUDGMENT HOUSE *** + + + + +Produced by Juli Rew. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + + +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE + + +by + +Gilbert Parker + + + + +CONTENTS + + I THE JASMINE FLOWER + II THE UNDERGROUND WORLD + III A DAUGHTER OF TYRE + IV THE PARTNERS MEET + V A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY + VI WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE + VII THREE YEARS LATER + VIII "HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" + IX THE APPIAN WAY + X AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST + XI IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART + XII THE KEY IN THE LOCK + XIII "I WILL NOT SING" + XIV THE BAAS + XV THE WORLD WELL LOST + XVI THE COMING OF THE BAAS + XVII IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? + XVIII LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE + XIX TO-MORROW ... PREPARE! + XX THE FURNACE DOOR + XXI THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE + XXII IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY + XXIII "MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" + XXIV ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING + XXV WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND + XXVI JASMINE'S LETTER + XXVII KROOL + XXVIII "THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" + XXIX THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN + XXX "AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" + XXXI THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER + XXXII THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING + XXXIII "ALAMACHTIG!" + XXXIV "THE ALPINE FELLOW" + XXXV AT BRINKWORT'S FARM + XXXVI SPRINGS OF HEALING + XXXVII UNDER THE GUN + XXXVIII "PHEIDIPPIDES" + XXXIX "THE ROAD IS CLEAR" + + + + +NOTE + +Except where references to characters well-known to all the world occur +in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public or +private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a historical +novel. It is in conception and portraiture a work of the imagination. + + + "Strangers come to the outer wall-- + (Why do the sleepers stir?) + Strangers enter the Judgment House-- + (Why do the sleepers sigh?) + Slow they rise in their judgment seats, + Sieve and measure the naked souls, + Then with a blessing return to sleep. + (Quiet the Judgment House.) + Lone and sick are the vagrant souls-- + (When shall the world come home?)" + + + "Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far, + God must judge the couple: leave them as they are-- + Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory, + And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story! + + + "Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all, + Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall? + No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places! + While I count three, step you back as many paces!" + + + "And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at + Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What + would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'" + + + "So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the noble strong man + Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a + God loved so well: + He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell + Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began + So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter to be mute: + 'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed." + + + "Oh, never star + Was lost here, but it rose afar." + + + + +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE + + +BOOK I + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE JASMINE FLOWER + + +The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air +was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the +gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the +boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this +sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power of +the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast of +the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack of +enterprise had somewhat forfeited. + +Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypnotized by the +unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage name was Al'mah. At the +moment of the opera's supreme appeal the eyes of three people at least +were not in the thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first +row of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of about +thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in +his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes +over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction +which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name +was Adrian Fellowes. + +Either the opera and the singer had no charms for Adrian Fellowes, or +else he had heard both so often that, without doing violence to his +musical sense, he could afford to study the effect of this wonderful +effort upon the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the +stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked; of happy colour, +and, apparently, with a mind and soul in which no conflicts ever +raged--to the advantage of his attractive exterior. Only at the summit +of the applause did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the +gloating look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table with +the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes that he has +beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit which has tricked him so +often. Now the cold-blue eyes caught, for a second, the dark-brown eyes +of the Celtic singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, +eagerly, and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad +faces before her. + +In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man and a very young +woman, who also in the crise of the opera were not looking at the +stage. The eyes of the man, sitting well back--purposely, so that he +might see her without marked observation--were fixed upon the +rose-tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk gown, +which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair and wonderful colour +of her face. Her eyes were fixed upon her lap, the lids half closed, as +though in reverie, yet with that perspicuous and reflective look which +showed her conscious of all that was passing round her--even the effect +of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel. + +She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat faster because of +it; and a temperament adjustable to every mood and turn of human +feeling was answering to the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, +child-likeness, and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate +consciousness. She was responsive to the passionate harmony; but she +was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet deferential appeal to her +emotions of the dark, distinguished, bearded man at her side, with the +brown eyes and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign +Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him a tact and an +insinuating address peculiarly alluring to her sex. She was well aware +of Ian Stafford's ambitions, and had come to the point where she +delighted in them, and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or for +woe"; but she would probably have resented the suggestion that his +comparative poverty was weighed against her natural inclinations and +his real and honest passion. For she had her ambitions, too; and when +she had scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that something +only little less than a diadem would really satisfy her. + +Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards another occupant +of her box, who sat beside her pretty stepmother--a big, bronzed, +clean-shaven, strong-faced man of about the same age as Ian Stafford of +the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her request. Ian +had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to the millions he +had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and on the Rand. At +first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form she had inwardly +contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and that other +spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in the stalls, +towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, happy glance, +and with which she herself had been familiar since her childhood. The +contrast had not been wholly to the advantage of the nabob; though, to +be sure, he was simply arrayed--as if, indeed, he were not worth a +thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense of power, but his +occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own great sense of +humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur delightful to +hear. + +Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and that she +interested him was evident by the sudden arrest of his look and his +movements when introduced to her. Ian Stafford had noted this look; but +he had seen many another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as much +natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the shoulders of his +mind; for the millions alone would not influence her, that was sure. +Had she not a comfortable fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was not the +kind of man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and nature. So much +had happened between Jasmine and himself, so deep an understanding had +grown up between them, that it only remained to bring her to the last +court of inquiry and get reply to a vital question--already put in a +thousand ways and answered to his perfect satisfaction. Indeed, there +was between Jasmine and himself the equivalent of a betrothal. He had +asked her to marry him, and she had not said no; but she had bargained +for time to "prepare"; that she should have another year in which to be +gay in a gay world and, in her own words, "walk the primrose path of +pleasure untrammelled and alone, save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy." + +Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was well. And now the +year was nearly up, and she had not changed; had, indeed, grown more +confiding and delicately dependent in manner towards him, though seeing +him but seldom alone. + +As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to himself, "So +exquisite and so clever, what will she not be at thirty! So well +poised, and yet so sweetly child-like dear dresden-china Jasmine." + +That was what she looked like--a lovely thing of the time of Boucher in +dresden china. + +At last, as though conscious of what was going on in his mind, she +slowly turned her drooping eyes towards him, and, over her shoulder, as +he quickly leaned forward, she said in a low voice which the others +could not hear: + +"I am too young, and not clever enough to understand all the music +means--is that what you are thinking?" + +He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes commanded hers, +but still deferentially, as he said: "You know of what I was thinking. +You will be forever young, but yours was always--will always be--the +wisdom of the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at twenty-two." + +"How trying that you should know my age so exactly--it darkens the +future," she rejoined with a soft little laugh; then, suddenly, a cloud +passed over her face. It weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed before +her into space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous anxiety. What +did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous, for her small sensuous +lips drew closer, and the fan she held in her lap slipped from her +fingers to the floor. + +This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan to her, said +into a face again alive to the present: "You look as though you were +trying to summon the sable spirits of a sombre future." + +Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once more quite +self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it +chimes with every mood and circumstance." + +Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough +power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed +through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! +Three millions at thirty-three--and millions beget millions!" + +... Power--millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for the +display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full +occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of +life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of merit. +Power--that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had made his +fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the vanity of +mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for his +fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which nearly +every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a fortune +which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human nature, then +had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, the native +genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He had died at +last with the smile on his lips which had followed his remark, quoted +in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The world wants to +be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I stunned it. My +fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid me well. But +they all love being fooled best." + +Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons and +herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was the +only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of his +existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception so +acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only one +of his blood who had anything of himself in character or personality, +and he predicted--too often in her presence--that she "would give the +world a start or two when she had the chance." His intellectual +contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced in her with no +prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from the age of +three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet with too +much intelligence to carry her will and power too far. Infinite +adaptability had been the result of a desire to please and charm; +behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own way and bend +other wills to hers. + +The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her +stepmother and of Ian Stafford--one, because she was jealous and +obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and an +ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give +save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in +England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, +determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity which +even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar high +above the capable average. That chance, the predestined alluring +opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was ready +for the spring--nerved the more to do so by the thought that Jasmine +would appreciate his success above all others, even from the standpoint +of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded. How did it come +that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously the +insouciant child? + +He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the impression of +force and natural power of the millionaire struck him now, as it had +often done. As though summoned by them both, Byng turned his face and, +catching Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward. + +"I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet," he said, with +a little jerk of the head towards the stage, where, for the moment, +minor characters were in possession, preparing the path for the last +rush of song by which Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her +first night to a complete triumph. + +With face turned full towards her, something of the power of his head +seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was honest, alert, and almost brutally +simple--the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and +the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had in +them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat +self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were +combined of strength, activity, and also a little of grace. + +"I never had much chance to hear great singers before I went to South +Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this swallows me like a storm on +the high veld--all lightning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot +in my time." + +With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine leaned over and +whispered--for the prima donna was beginning to sing again: + +"There's nothing you have missed in your race that you cannot ride back +and collect. It is those who haven't run a race who cannot ride back. +You have won; and it is all waiting for you." + +Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation came to him--the +kind of thing he felt once when he was sixteen, and the vicar's +daughter had suddenly held him up for quite a week, while all his +natural occupations were neglected, and the spirit of sport was +humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time--who was there +in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not carouse, +when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; when men got +so dead beat, with no homes anywhere--only shake-downs and the Tents of +Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be his slave, to keep +his home; but that was a business which had revolted him, and he had +never repeated the experiment. Then, there had been an adventuress, a +wandering, foreign princess who had fooled him and half a dozen of his +friends to the top of their bent; but a thousand times he had preferred +other sorts of pleasures--cards, horses, and the bright outlook which +came with the clinking glass after the strenuous day. + +Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him--his primitive, +almost Edenic sincerity; his natural indolence and native force: a +nature that would not stir until greatly roused, but then, with an +unyielding persistence and concentrated force, would range on to its +goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will, vision and a +gallant heart. + +Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward eagerly. There was a +rustle in the audience, a movement to a listening position, then a +tense waiting and attention. + +As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to Ian Stafford, +whose well-proportioned character, personality, and refinement of +culture were in such marked contrast to the personality of the other: +"They live hard lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of +himself." + +"Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal of one thing to +get another," Ian answered a little grimly. + +"Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper. + +Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience. The bold and +generous orchestration, the exceptional chorus, the fine and brilliant +tenor, had made a broad path for her last and supreme effort. The +audience had long since given up their critical sense, they were ready +to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was instant and +complete. Now, not an eye was turned away from the singer. Even the +Corinthian gallant at the end of the first row of stalls gave himself +up to feasting on her and her success, and the characters in the opera +were as electrified as the audience. + +For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the only thing in the +world, transposing all thoughts, emotions, all elements of life into +terms of melody. Then, at last, with a crash of sweetness, the voice +broke over them all in crystals of sound and floated away into a world +of bright dreams. + +An instant's silence which followed was broken by a tempest of +applause. Again, again, and again it was renewed. The subordinate +singers were quickly disposed of before the curtain, then Al'mah +received her memorable tribute. How many times she came and went she +never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her well up the +stage beside a table where two huge candles flared. The storm of +applause breaking forth once more, the grateful singer raised her arms +and spread them out impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon. + +As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught the flame +of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud of fire. The wild +applause turned suddenly to notes of terror as, with a sharp cry, she +stumbled forward to the middle of the stage. + +For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an +opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet +between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He +crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In +an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had +crushed out the flames with swift, strong movements. + +Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great arms, he strode +off with her behind the scenes. + +"Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried a strong voice from the +audience; and a cheer went up. + +In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage. "She is not +seriously hurt," he said simply to the audience. "We were just in time." + +Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafening applause +broke forth. + +"We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an admiring, teasing +laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm. + +"'We'--well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine, standing close to +him and looking up into his eyes with that ingratiating softness which +had deluded many another man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak +you took?" she added, whimsically. + +"Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly. "You'll have to wear +my overcoat home." + +"I certainly will," she answered. "Come--the giant's robe." + +People were crowding upon their box. + +"Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat from the hook +on the wall. + +As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prematurely aged father +whispered in the pretty stepmother's ear: "Jasmine'll marry that +nabob--you'll see." + +The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in love with Ian +Stafford," she said, decisively. + +"But she'll marry Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn reply. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE UNDERGROUND WORLD + + +"What's that you say--Jameson--what?" + +Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at the end of his cigar, and +stared at a man who was reading from a tape-machine, which gave the +club the world's news from minute to minute. + +"Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight hundred men. He +started from Pitsani two days ago. And Cronje with his burghers are out +after him." + +The flaming match burned Byng's fingers. He threw it into the +fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment, his face hot with +feeling, then he burst out: + +"But--God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The burghers'll catch him +at Doornkop or somewhere, and--" He paused, overcome. His eyes +suffused. His hands went out in a gesture of despair. + +"Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's lost the game for them." + +The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get in yet. He surely +planned the thing with due regard for every chance. Johannesburg--" + +"Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the Rand +should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide now. It +might have been--it was to have been--a revolution at Johannesburg, +with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a filibustering +business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as sure as guns. +'Gad, it makes me sick!" + +"Europe will like it--much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, offering +Byng a lighted match. + +Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on +Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870 +and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your +business, you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out +there, friends of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the +British kids that can't be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men +who pay all the taxes and can't become citizens. It's the justice you +can only buy; it's the foot of Kruger on the necks of the subjects of +his suzerain; it's eating dirt as Englishmen have never had to eat it +anywhere in the range of the Seven Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, +it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be at Doornkop, unless-- But, no, +they'll track him, trap him, get him now. Johannesburg wasn't ready. +Only yesterday I had a cable that--" he stopped short ... "but they +weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or something; and Englishmen +aren't good conspirators, not by a damned sight! Now it'll be the old +Majuba game all over again. You'll see." + +"It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than +your first," remarked Stafford. + +Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost, +as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never +touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal swizzle +revolted his aesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very slowly, +gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking. Then he +looked round. There was no one very near, though curious faces were +turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was passed from +mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched his chest with +a firm forefinger. + +"Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of that. Dr. +Jim'll never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque for +breakfast. But there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if the +chef doesn't turn up his nose too high. After all, what has brought +things to this pass? Why, mean, low tyranny and injustice. Why, just a +narrow, jealous race-hatred which makes helots of British men. Simple +farmers, the sentimental newspapers call them--simple Machiavellis in +veldschoen!" * + + +* A glossary of South African words will be found at the end of the +book. + + +Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he +replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox +way." + +"She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?" + +Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in +England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to get +in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of the +millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger standing +over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera we had +a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into flames on +the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the Transvaal, is +in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who will save her, +and--" + +A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face of +Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low, generous +laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at some +expense to himself--with his own overcoat, or with some one else's +cloak. Is that what you want to say?" + +All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us--even in +moments when interests are in existence so great that they should +obliterate all others--came to the surface. For a moment it almost made +Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done all +that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself into +his very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms of +memory and longing. + +He had read only one paper that morning, and it--the latest attempt at +sensational journalism--had so made him blush at the flattering +references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that he +had opened no other. He had left his chambers to avoid the telegrams +and notes of congratulation which were arriving in great numbers. He +had gone for his morning ride in Battersea Park instead of the Row to +escape observation; had afterwards spent two hours at the house he was +building in Park Lane; had then come to the club, where he had +encountered Ian Stafford and had heard the news which overwhelmed him. + +"Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have +done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to +think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?" + +Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a +soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman +than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a +mind of unusual decision. + +Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he +replied: + +"Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my time, +and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I suppose +it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the trouble's on +you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd have funked the +whole thing, I suppose--jumping from that box onto the stage, and +grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it were. But that +wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man that's in most of +us, even when we're not very clever, does things right. It's when the +conventional man comes in and says, Let us consider, that we go wrong. +By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her beauty spoiled as any woman +ever was; but she's only got a few nasty burns on the arm and has +singed her hair a little." + +"You've seen her to-day, then?" + +Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one +likely to rouse a man's interest in a woman. Al'mah was unmarried, so +far as the world knew, and a man of Byng's kind, if not generally +inflammable, was very likely to be swept off his feet by some unusual +woman in some unusual circumstance. Stafford had never seen Rudyard +Byng talk to any woman but Jasmine for more than five minutes at a +time, though hundreds of eager and avaricious eyes had singled him out +for attention; and, as it seemed absurd that any one should build a +palace in Park Lane to live in by himself, the glances sent in his +direction from many quarters had not been without hopefulness. And +there need not have been, and there was not, any loss of dignity on the +part of match-making mothers in angling for him, for his family was +quite good enough; his origin was not obscure, and his upbringing was +adequate. His external ruggedness was partly natural; but it was also +got from the bitter rough life he had lived for so many years in South +Africa before he had fallen on his feet at Kimberley and Johannesburg. + +As for "strange women," during the time that had passed since his +return to England there had never been any sign of loose living. So, to +Stafford's mind, Byng was the more likely to be swept away on a sudden +flood that would bear him out to the sea of matrimony. He had put his +question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply. It came +frankly and instantly: + +"Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this +morning--with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe it, +but I saw her, too. She'd been up since six o'clock, she said. Couldn't +sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy blossom all the +same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, and a nurse +doing the needful. It's an odd dark kind of beauty she has, with those +full lips and the heavy eyebrows. Well, it was a bull in a china-shop, +as you might judge--and thank you kindly, Mr. Byng, with such a jolly +laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so +wonderfully--thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had +planned it all. And wouldn't I stay to breakfast? And not a bit stagey +or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond--a gem in her +way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the +prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; +and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at +breakfast--why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and +cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all +right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." + +As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to +him, so patently true and honest in every particular. It was rather +contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged +fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to +the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's +personality. It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who +would be comparing Jasmine's quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, +and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius +of the singer. It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a personality +more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him perfectly at ease +mentally and physically. + +Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was +so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant +woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and +attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in +marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she +had naturally shown only the one side of her nature--she adapted +herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at +an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well. + +Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be--she had been so from a +child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had +made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving +surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the +spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married +again; and then it had been too late to control her. The wonder was +that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so +determined, so capable. Was it because she had unusual brain and +insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to +see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had +kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely +from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense +emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman +of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very +amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize women. + +Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was concerned. +He had not heard her father's remark of the night before, "Jasmine will +marry that nabob--you'll see." + +He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a +note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room fire. +He could not help but see--he knew the envelope, and no other +handwriting was like Jasmine's, that long, graceful, sliding hand. Byng +turned it over before opening it. + +"Hello," he said, "I'm caught. It's a woman's hand. I wonder how she +knew I was here." + +Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself: "If +Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she'd find out. I wonder--I +wonder." + +He watched Byng, over whose face passed a pleased smile. + +"Why," Byng said, almost eagerly, "it's from Miss Grenfel--wants me to +go and tell her about Jameson and the Raid." + +He paused for an instant, and his face clouded again. "The first thing +I must do is to send cables to Johannesburg. Perhaps there are some +waiting for me at my rooms. I'll go and see. I don't know why I didn't +get news sooner. I generally get word before the Government. There's +something wrong somewhere. Somebody has had me." + +"If I were you I'd go to our friend first. When I'm told to go at once, +I go. She wouldn't like cablegrams and other things coming between you +and her command--even when Dr. Jim's riding out of Matabeleland on the +Rand for to free the slaves." + +Stafford's words were playful, but there was, almost unknown to +himself, a strange little note of discontent and irony behind. + +Byng laughed. "But I'll be able to tell her more, perhaps, if I go to +my rooms first." + +"You are going to see her, then?" + +"Certainly. There's nothing to do till we get news of Jameson at bay in +a conga or balled up at a kopje." Thrusting the delicately perfumed +letter in his pocket, he nodded, and was gone. + +"I was going to see her myself," thought Stafford, "but that settles +it. It will be easier to go where duty calls instead, since Byng takes +my place. Why, she told me to come to-day at this very hour," he added, +suddenly, and paused in his walk towards the door. + +"But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to reflect.... +"Well, there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, that's sure. +France, Austria, Russia can spit out their venom now and look to their +mobilization. And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap if Dr. Jim gets +caught! What a mess it will be! Well--well--well!" + +He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this +was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A DAUGHTER OF TYRE + + +"Monsieur voleur!" + +Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the +opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in +his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume +greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet +by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to +him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence +and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous +protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt +quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy +and beauty and bloom. + +"Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand +rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran +off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive one +it was." + +"Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable." + +She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat +this morning--before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of +thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came +back." + +"It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I +didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." + +"In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. + +"Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." + +"Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. + +"Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." + +"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid itself--or +went out and hanged itself?" + +He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made +especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this very +chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in full +view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words--a deep, round +chuckle it was. + +"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield +where I could see it and breakfast too." + +"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of +a boudoir." + +"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. + +"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't she?" + +"Not so good a breakfast as I got." + +"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a +little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like +those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while +at all. + +"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I +give up. I can't talk in your way." + +"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her +eyes. + +"Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the +kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there." + +"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock +dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" + +His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness +suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, +"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch +Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop +or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul." + +Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about +this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to be +settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the prima +donna's boudoir, and--" + +"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly. + +"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little laugh. +"Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this horrid +flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like this, or +been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known everything; if I +hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her and knew that she +was recovering from that dreadful shock very quickly? But could you +think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to have asked about her?" + +"I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were +talking--not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be thinking +that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to me to--" + +She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languishing humour. "Now +you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head +turned, and--" + +"It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head," he broke +in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an +opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him. + +There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was +half-assumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was +so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that the +unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however +agreeably so. Then she said to him: "I won't say you were brave last +night--that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; +it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with +great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at all +in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a +burning building, was it?" + +"There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned," he replied. +"I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to move +quick--by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was just a +little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was nearer to +the stage." + +"Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford." + +"They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb +for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening things; +and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we +veld-rangers and adventurers." + +"You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions," she said, almost shyly. +"You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last +night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should think." + +"Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage natures. +The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the sculpture of +Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music of a master, +though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've carried a banjo +and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved my life with the +cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun +within reach, but I'd been playing the cornet, and just as he was +crouching I blew a blast from it--one of those jarring discords of +Wagner in the "Gotterdammerung"--and he turned tail and got away into +the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be the most acute of all the +senses with the pioneer. If you've ever been really dying of thirst, +and have reached water again, its sounds become wonderful to you ever +after that--the trickle of a creek, the wash of a wave on the shore, +the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a fall, the swish of a rainstorm. +It's the same with birds and trees. And trees all make different +sounds--that's the shape of the leaves. It's all music, too." + +Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and +observation of his words. "So it wasn't strange that you should be +ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?" She looked at him +keenly. "Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given +to a woman who in other respects--" she paused. + +"Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's +what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world +of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of +irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I +suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they +don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It +alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would +commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance +of it all." + +"Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?" + +"Yes, when she was laughing and jesting--and when she kissed me +good-bye." + +"When--she--kissed you--good-bye?" + +Jasmine drew back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the +other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had +been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it +had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been +allowed to read books of verse--Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, +Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others--unchallenged and unguided. The +understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been +at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to her by slow but subtle +means--an apprehension from instinct, not from knowledge. There had +never been a shock to her mind. + +The knowledge of things had grown imperceptibly, and most of life's +ugly meanings were known--at a great distance, to be sure, but still +known. Yet there came a sudden half-angry feeling when she heard +Rudyard Byng say, so loosely, that Al'Mah had kissed him. Was it +possible, then, that a man, that any man, thought she might hear such +things without resentment; that any man thought her to know so much of +life that it did not matter what was said? Did her outward appearance, +then, bear such false evidence? + +He did not understand quite, yet he saw that she misunderstood, and he +handled the situation with a tact which seemed hardly to belong to a +man of his training and calibre. + +"She thought no more of kissing me," he continued, presently, in a calm +voice--"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely to see +again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her than +kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it as soon +as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat +unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little +Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist and bohemian." + +Jasmine's face cleared, and her equilibrium was instantly restored. She +was glad she had misunderstood. Yet Al'mah had not kissed her when she +left, while expressing gratitude, too. There was a difference. She +turned the subject, saying: "Of course, she insists on sending me a new +cloak, and keeping the other as a memento. It was rather badly singed, +wasn't it?" + +"It did its work well, and it deserves an honoured home. Do you know +that even as I flung the cloak round her, in the excitement of the +moment I 'sensed,' as my young nephew says, the perfume you use." + +He lifted his hand, conscious that his fingers still carried some of +that delicate perfume which her fingers left there as they lay in his +palm when she greeted him on his entrance. "It was like an incense from +the cloak, as it blanketed the flames. Strange, wasn't it, that the +undersense should be conscious of that little thing, while the +over-sense was adding a sensational postscript to the opera?" + +She smiled in a pleased way. "Do you like the perfume? I really use +very little of it." + +"It's like no other. It starts a kind of cloud of ideas floating. I +don't know how to describe it. I imagine myself--" + +She interrupted, laughing merrily. "My brother says it always makes him +angry, and Ian Stafford calls it 'The Wild Tincture of +Time'--frivolously and sillily says that it comes from a bank whereon +the 'wild thyme' grows! But now, I want to ask you many questions. We +have been mentally dancing, while down beyond the Limpopo--" + +His demeanour instantly changed, and she noted the look cf power and +purpose coming into the rather boyish and good-natured, the rash and +yet determined, face. It was not quite handsome. The features were not +regular, the forehead was perhaps a little too low, and the hair grew +very thick, and would have been a vast mane if it had not been kept +fairly close by his valet. This valet was Krool, a +half-caste--Hottentot and Boer--whom he had rescued from Lobengula in +the Matabele war, and who had in his day been ship-steward, barber, +cook, guide, and native recruiter. Krool had attached himself to Byng, +and he would not be shaken off even when his master came home to +England. + +Looking at her visitor with a new sense of observation alive in her, +Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of +sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, +adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in the +chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and +hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel suggestion +of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in fact and by +suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent underlying force, a +capacity to do huge things when once roused. He had been roused in his +short day. The life into which he had been thrown with men of vaster +ambition and much more selfish ends than his own, had stirred him to +prodigies of activity in those strenuous, wonderful, electric days when +gold and diamonds changed the hard-bitten, wearied prospector, who had +doggedly delved till he had forced open the hand of the Spirit of the +Earth and caught the treasure that flowed forth, into a millionaire, +into a conqueror, with the world at his feet. He had been of those who, +for many a night and many a year, eating food scarce fit for Kaffirs, +had, in poverty and grim endeavour, seen the sun rise and fall over the +Magaliesberg range, hope alive in the morning and dead at night. He had +faced the devilish storms which swept the high veld with lightning and +the thunderstone, striking men dead as they fled for shelter to the +boulders of some barren, mocking kopje; and he had had the occasional +wild nights of carousal, when the miseries and robberies of life and +time and the ceaseless weariness and hope deferred, were forgotten. + +It was all there in his face--the pioneer endeavour, the reckless +effort, the gambler's anxiety, the self-indulgence, the crude passions, +with a far-off, vague idealism, the selfish outlook, and yet great +breadth of feeling, with narrowness of individual purpose. The rough +life, the sordid struggle, had left their mark, and this easy, coaxing, +comfortable life of London had not covered it up--not yet. He still +belonged to other--and higher--spheres. + +There was a great contrast between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was +handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a mind +which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a skill +of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen +languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human +intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with +him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming again. +The contrast was prodigious--and perplexing, for Rudyard Byng had +qualities which compelled her interest. She sighed as she reflected. + +"I suppose you can't get three millions all to yourself with your own +hands without missing a good deal and getting a good deal you could do +without," she said to herself, as he wonderingly interjected the +exclamation: + +"Now, what do you know of the Limpopo? I'll venture there isn't another +woman in England who even knows the name." + +"I always had a thirst for travel, and I've read endless books of +travel and adventure," she replied. "I'd have been an explorer, or a +Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man." + +"Can you ride?" he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her +slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and +white. + +"Oh, man of little faith!" she rejoined. "I can't remember when I +didn't ride. First a Shetland pony, and now at last I've reached +Zambesi--such a wicked dear." + +"Zambesi--why Zambesi? One would think you were South African." + +She enjoyed his mystification. Then she grew serious and her eyes +softened. "I had a friend--a girl, older than I. She married. Well, +he's an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son then, +and wild for sport. They went on their honeymoon to shoot in Africa, +and they visited the falls of the Zambesi. She, my friend, was standing +on the edge of the chasm--perhaps you know it--not far from +Livingstone's tree, between the streams. It was October, and the river +was low. She put up her big parasol. A gust of wind suddenly caught it, +and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly swept +into the chasm. A man with them pulled her back in time--but she hung +on to that red parasol. Only when it was all over did she realize what +had really happened. Well, when she came back to England, as a kind of +thank-offering she gave me her father's best hunter. That was like her, +too; she could always make other people generous. He is a beautiful +Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi. I wanted the red parasol, too, +but Alice Tynemouth wouldn't give it to me." + +"So she gave it to the man who pulled her back. Why not?" + +"How do you know she did that?" + +"Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford's chambers. I +conjecture right, do I?" + +Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her +faintly smiling lips; but she only said, "You see he was entitled to +it, wasn't he?" To herself, however, she whispered, "Neither of +them--neither ever told me that." + +At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard +Byng. "If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him. There +is news from South Africa." + +Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened. "No, tell him to come here," she +said to the footman. "Mayn't he?" she asked. + +Byng nodded, and remained standing. He seemed suddenly lost to her +presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, +intense. + +Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided +that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct personality. +Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing of the nouveau +riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, his watch-chain +was simple and inconspicuous enough for a school-boy--and he was worth +three million pounds, with a palace building in Park Lane and a feudal +castle in Wales leased for a period of years. There was nothing greatly +striking in his carriage; indeed, he did not make enough of his height +and bulk; but his eye was strong and clear, his head was powerful, and +his quick smile was very winning. Yet--yet, he was not the type of man +who, to her mind should have made three millions at thirty-three. It +did not seem to her that he was really representative of the great +fortune-builders--she had her grandfather and others closely in mind. +She had seen many captains of industry and finance in her grandfather's +house, men mostly silent, deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their +manner and persons the accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless +aggression and domination. + +Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions? It +could not be just that alone. She remembered her grandfather used to +say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of +every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew when +to take it, and how to use it. "The lucky man is the man that sits up +watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping"--that was the +way he had put it. So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of those +who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but not a +hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he was, +still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in England +and the prettiest and best-born. He certainly had inherent breeding. +His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be as +distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford--as Ian Stafford, who, however, +had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his name and +might never do so. + +She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to +Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future--ambassador at Paris +or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall--Ian, +gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his luck +and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a prince +of princelier days. Ian gratified every sense in her, met every demand +of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical instinct, and +was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so hard to wait for +luck, for place, for power, for the environment where she could do +great things, could fill that radiant place which her cynical and +melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had prefigured +for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and he had +filled her brain--purposely--with ambitious ideas. He had done it when +she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he had +overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be vivid +and indelible when he was gone. He had meant to bless, for, to his +mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain +power, "to make the band play when you come," was the true philosophy +of life. And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was +accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection +by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or +admonition. He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had +built the structure of his success. He had made material things the +basis of life's philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly +materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at +the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she +had a passion which was represented by books of biography without +number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her bedroom +and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity--when Lady +Tynemouth brought them to her--she read the newest and most daring +productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the +world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had +remarked to Alice Tynemouth: + +"You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose the +over-coloured thing three times out of five--it used to be more than +that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in everything. I +need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in everything. I +wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being ruled." + +To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband--not a difficult +thing to find--would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd choose +the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one time, out +of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A little +cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in colour--and +everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no orientation." + +Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no +doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give her +greater proportion--and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with three +millions behind her--she herself had only the tenth of one million--she +could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, perfect life +where the world would come as to a court, and-- + +Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, +and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from +some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted--her idealistic +self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and +thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! Why +should it be so hard for her? + +She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged +note. + +Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, +was standing in the doorway. + +"Cronje! ... Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of smother +in the tone. + +Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the +fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a +crushed captive. + +"Where?" Byng asked, huskily. + +"Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated by +Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw in +his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition +suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, +somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without +present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a +foe--one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil +influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every +individual life. + +"Doornkop--what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine. "I knew they'd +put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and +they've done it--Kruger and Joubert. Englishmen aren't slim enough to +be conspirators. Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, +gambling with the Almighty. It's bury me deep now. It's Paul Kruger +licking his chops over the savoury mess. 'Oh, isn't it a pretty dish to +set before the king!' What else, Krool?" + +"Nothing, Baas." + +"Nothing more in the cables?" + +"No, Baas." + +"That will do, Krool. Wait. Go to Mr. Whalen. Say I want him to bring a +stenographer and all the Partners--he'll understand--to me at ten +to-night." + +"Yes, Baas." + +Krool bowed slowly. As he raised his head his eyes caught those of +Jasmine. For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the +man's eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face. The look +had its revelation which neither ever forgot. A quiver of fear passed +through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a +hardening of her will, as against some possible danger. + +As Krool left the room he said to himself: "The Baas speaks her for his +vrouw. But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal--p'r'aps." + +Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of +the Rooinek--of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his +fingers again with a malignant cruelty. + +Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that +old ironic humour which was always part of him: "'Fee, fo, fi, fum, I +smell the blood of an Englishman.'" + +Her face contracted with pain. "They will take Dr. Jim's life?" she +asked, solemnly. + +"It's hard to tell. It isn't him alone. There's lots of others that we +both know." + +"Yes, yes, of course. It's terrible, terrible," she whispered. + +"It's more terrible than it looks, even now. It's a black day for +England. She doesn't know yet how black it is. I see it, though; I see +it. It's as plain as an open book. Well, there's work to do, and I must +be about it. I'm off to the Colonial Office. No time to lose. It's a +job that has no eight-hours shift." + +Now the real man was alive. He was transformed. The face was set and +quiet. He looked concentrated will and power as he stood with his hands +clasped behind him, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes alight with +fire and determination. To herself Jasmine seemed to be moving in the +centre of great events, having her fingers upon the levers which work +behind the scenes of the world's vast schemes, standing by the secret +machinery of government. + +"How I wish I could help you," she said, softly, coming nearer to him, +a warm light in her liquid blue eyes, her exquisite face flushing with +excitement, her hands clasped in front of her. + +As Byng looked at her, it seemed to him that sweet honesty and +high-heartedness had never had so fine a setting; that never had there +been in the world such an epitome of talent, beauty and sincerity. He +had suddenly capitulated, he who had ridden unscathed so long. If he +had dared he would have taken her in his arms there and then; but he +had known her only for a day. He had been always told that a woman must +be wooed and won, and to woo took time. It was not a task he +understood, but suddenly it came to him that he was prepared to do it; +that he must be patient and watch and serve, and, as he used to do, +perhaps, be elate in the morning and depressed at night, till the day +of triumph came and his luck was made manifest. + +"But you can help me, yes, you can help me as no one else can," he said +almost hoarsely, and his hands moved a little towards her. + +"You must show me how," she said, scarce above a whisper, and she drew +back slightly, for this look in his eyes told its own story. + +"When may I come again?" he asked. + +"I want so much to hear everything about South Africa. Won't you come +to-morrow at six?" she asked. + +"Certainly, to-morrow at six," he answered, eagerly, "and thank you." + +His honest look of admiration enveloped her as her hand was again lost +in his strong, generous palm, and lay there for a moment thrilling +him.... He turned at the door and looked back, and the smile she gave +seemed the most delightful thing he had ever seen. + +"She is a flower, a jasmine-flower," he said, happily, as he made his +way into the street. + +When he had gone she fled to her bedroom. Standing before the mirror, +she looked at herself long, laughing feverishly. Then suddenly she +turned and threw herself upon the bed, bursting into a passion of +tears. Sobs shook her. + +"Oh, Ian," she said, raising her head at last, "oh, Ian, Ian, I hate +myself!" + +Down in the library her stepmother was saying to her father, "You are +right, Jasmine will marry the nabob." + +"I am sorry for Ian Stafford," was the response. + +"Men get over such things," came the quietly cynical reply. + +"Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She +has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never +had--the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and--" + +He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his +child. + +"Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply. + +"I wish--Nelly, I do wish that--" + +"Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any +use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone--as her grandfather +did." + +"God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman--" + +Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from her +grandfather's nature was a perilous gift. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PARTNERS MEET + + +England was more stunned than shocked. The dark significance, the evil +consequences destined to flow from the Jameson Raid had not yet reached +the general mind. There was something gallant and romantic in this wild +invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and insufficient +clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the merest flurry of +battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with Fate--challenging a +republic of fighting men with well-stocked arsenals and capable +artillery, with ample sources of supply, with command of railways and +communications. It was certainly magnificent; but it was magnificent +folly. + +It did not take England long to decide that point; and not even the +Laureate's paean in the organ of the aristocracy and upper middle class +could evoke any outburst of feeling. There was plenty of admiration for +the pluck and boldness, for the careless indifference with which the +raiders risked their lives; for the romantic side of the dash from +Pitsani to the Rand; but the thing was so palpably impossible, as it +was carried out, that there was not a knowing mind in the Islands which +would not have echoed Rhodes' words, "Jameson has upset the apple-cart." + +Rudyard Byng did not visit Jasmine the next evening at six o'clock. His +world was all in chaos, and he had not closed his eyes to sleep since +he had left her. At ten o'clock at night, as he had arranged, "The +Partners" and himself met at his chambers, around which had gathered a +crowd of reporters and curious idlers; and from that time till the grey +dawn he and they had sat in conference. He had spent two hours at the +Colonial Office after he left Jasmine, and now all night he kneaded the +dough of a new policy with his companions in finance and misfortune. + +There was Wallstein, the fairest, ablest, and richest financier of them +all, with a marvellous head for figures and invaluable and commanding +at the council-board, by virtue of his clear brain and his power to +co-ordinate all the elements of the most confusing financial problems. +Others had by luck and persistence made money--the basis of their +fortunes; but Wallstein had showed them how to save those fortunes and +make them grow; had enabled them to compete successfully with the games +of other great financiers in the world's stock-markets. Wallstein was +short and stout, with a big blue eye and an unwrinkled forehead; +prematurely aged from lack of exercise and the exciting air of the high +veld; from planning and scheming while others slept; from an inherent +physical weakness due to the fact that he was one of twin sons, to his +brother being given great physical strength, to himself a powerful +brain for finance and a frail if ample body. Wallstein knew little and +cared less about politics; yet he saw the use of politics in finance, +and he did not stick his head into the sand as some of his colleagues +did when political activities hampered their operations. In +Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle with Oom Paul, not +from lack of will, but because he had no stomach for daily intrigue and +guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; and he was convinced that +only a great and bloody struggle would end the contest for progress and +equal rights for all white men on the Rand. His inquiries had been bent +towards so disposing the financial operations, so bulwarking the mining +industry by sagacious designs, that, when the worst came, they all +would be able to weather the storm. He had done his work better than +his colleagues knew, or indeed even himself knew. + +Probably only Fleming the Scotsman--another of the Partners--with a +somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which +compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so +cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how +extraordinary Wallstein's work had been--only Fleming, and Rudyard +Byng, who knew better than any and all. + +There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the +Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein +and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to Rhodes, +being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a master of +commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the days when he +trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had made his first +ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made en route to +Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle of compound +multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again he had a +collateral interest in the commissariat. + +Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an +indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a +few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of the +moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year or in +that, for this thing or for that--cheques written very often on the +backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the fly-leaf +of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so stirred by +half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of his vain +slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, caring +little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he once +wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of his +henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday. + +So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel +came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead +financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the +conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that +one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty +thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a purpose +in which it was expedient their own hands should not appear. They felt +confident that a man who could so carefully and secretly build up his +own fortune had a gift which could be used to advantage. A man who +could be so subterranean in his own affairs would no doubt be equally +secluded in their business. Selfishness would make him silent. And so +it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, the factotum, who in +his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he brushed his own, after the +Kaffir servant had messed them about, came to be a millionaire and one +of the Partners. For him South Africa had no charms. He was happy in +London, or at his country-seat in Leicestershire, where he followed the +hounds with a temerity which was at base vanity; where he gave the +county the best food to be got outside St. Petersburg or Paris; where +his so-called bachelor establishment was cared for by a coarse, +gray-haired housekeeper who, the initiated said, was De Lancy's South +African wife, with a rooted objection to being a lady or "moving in +social circles"; whose pleasure lay in managing this big household +under De Lancy's guidance. There were those who said they had seen her +brush a speck of dust from De Lancy's coat-collar, as she emerged from +her morning interview with him; and others who said they had seen her +hidden in the shrubbery listening to the rather flaccid conversation of +her splendid poodle of a master. + +There were others who had climbed to success in their own way, some by +happy accident, some by a force which disregarded anything in their +way, and some by sheer honest rough merit, through which the soul of +the true pioneer shone. + +There was also Barry Whalen, who had been educated as a doctor, and, +with a rare Irish sense of adaptability and amazing Celtic cleverness, +had also become a mining engineer, in the days when the Transvaal was +emerging from its pioneer obscurity into the golden light of mining +prosperity. Abrupt, obstinately honest, and sincere; always protesting +against this and against that, always the critic of authority, whether +the authority was friend or foe; always smothering his own views in the +moment when the test of loyalty came; always with a voice like a young +bull and a heart which would have suited a Goliath, there was no one +but trusted Barry, none that had not hurried to him in a difficulty; +not because he was so wise, but because he was so true. He would never +have made money, in spite of the fact that his prescience, his mining +sense, his diagnosis of the case of a mine, as Byng called it, had been +a great source of wealth to others, had it not been for Wallstein and +Byng. + +Wallstein had in him a curious gentleness and human sympathy, little in +keeping with the view held of him by that section of the British press +which would willingly have seen England at the mercy of Paul +Kruger--for England's good, for her soul's welfare as it were, for her +needed chastisement. He was spoken of as a cruel, tyrannical, greedy +German Jew, whose soul was in his own pocket and his hand in the +pockets of the world. In truth he was none of these things, save that +he was of German birth, and of as good and honest German origin as +George of Hanover and his descendants, if not so distinguished. +Wallstein's eye was an eye of kindness, save in the vision of business; +then it saw without emotion to the advantage of the country where he +had made his money, and to the perpetual advantage of England, to whom +he gave an honourable and philanthropic citizenship. His charities were +not of the spectacular kind; but many a poor and worthy, and often +unworthy, unfortunate was sheltered through bad days and heavy weather +of life by the immediate personal care of "the Jew Mining Magnate, who +didn't care a damn what happened to England so long as his own nest was +well lined!" + +It was Wallstein who took heed of the fact that, as he became rich, +Barry Whalen remained poor; and it was he who took note that Barry had +a daughter who might any day be left penniless with frail health and no +protector; and taking heed and note, it was he made all the Partners +unite in taking some financial risks and responsibilities for Barry, +when two new mines were opened--to Barry's large profit. It was +characteristic of Barry, however, that, if they had not disguised their +action by financial devices, and by making him a Partner, because he +was needed professionally and intellectually and for other business +reasons, nicely phrased to please his Celtic vanity, he would have +rejected the means to the fortune which came to him. It was a far +smaller fortune than any of the others had; but it was sufficient for +him and for his child. So it was that Barry became one of the Partners, +and said things that every one else would hesitate to say, but were +glad to hear said. + +Others of the group were of varying degrees of ability and interest and +importance. One or two were poltroons in body and mind, with only a +real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive +individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, +whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose +small part in this veracious tale belongs elsewhere. + +Each had his place, and all were influenced by the great schemes of +Rhodes and their reflection in the purposes and actions of Wallstein. +Wallstein was inspired by the dreams and daring purposes of Empire +which had driven Rhodes from Table Mountain to the kraal of Lobengula +and far beyond; until, at last, the flag he had learned to love had +been triumphantly trailed from the Cape to Cairo. + +Now in the great crisis, Wallstein, of them all, was the most +self-possessed, save Rudyard Byng. Some of the others were paralyzed. +They could only whine out execrations on the man who had dared +something; who, if he had succeeded, would have been hailed as the +great leader of a Revolution, not the scorned and humiliated captain of +a filibustering expedition. A triumphant rebellion or raid is always a +revolution in the archives of a nation. These men were of a class who +run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be kept in the +fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of their backs. +Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their denunciations of +the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their side of the +business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any rate, whatever +the merits of their case, no one in England accused the Johannesburgers +of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were so busy in trying +to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time to go forward +themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their hearts were +the disappearing factors. + +At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the +two sections who represented the more extreme views and the unpolitical +minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who were not +cleverer financially than their friends, but who had political sense +and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more concerned, at this +dark moment, for the political and national consequences of the Raid, +than for the certain set-back to the mining and financial enterprises +of the Rand. A few of the richest of them were the most hopeless +politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle for an extra dividend of +a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost souls, ready to bow the knee +to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, undemocratic, and corrupt government, +if only the dividends moved on and up. + +Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural +political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his +pocket. He had a passionate love for the land--for England--which had +given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good name. +So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the sordid +deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and manly +appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but have +heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and discredited +pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his death-warrant, to +take effect within five years, in the little cottage at Muizenberg by +the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from the womb of the +English mother; who said as he sat and watched the tide flow in and +out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three days' trip to the +sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling down, and one day in +packing up again." + +Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took +the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow +from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen +to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and +Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South +Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst +happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw-- + + ... The dull dank morn stare in, + Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes. + + +A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England. + +"I will go. I must go," remarked Byng at last, though there was a +strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of +Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his +duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and +that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had been +in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him the most +vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some regard and +much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at all. + +"I will go," Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard +faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet +their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How +many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions were +not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companionship and +champagne--or something less expensive. + +As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a +dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his +dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile +face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean +hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death +passing the hemlock-brew. + +At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their +conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear +nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being Byng's +servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and particularly +now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and apparently frank +of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but without avail; and +now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful determination. He knew +that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was sitting opposite the +double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes light up. Instantly, +however, that light vanished. They all might have been wooden men, and +Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and concentrated were his +actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some of them shrank a little +as he leaned over and poured the brown, steaming liquid and the hot +milk into the bowls. Only once did the factotum look at anybody +directly, and that was at Byng just as he was about to leave the room. +Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly at his master's face in a +mirror, and again that baleful light leaped up in his eyes. + +When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: "Byng, it's +all damn foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, +'specially now." + +"Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?" Byng asked with +a contemptuous little laugh. "Sugar--what?" He pushed the great bowl of +sugar over the polished table towards Barry. + +"Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but--" + +"But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on one +another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east wind +blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're +living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, +because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious +beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, +Barry." + +"We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the shore," was +the moody and nervously indignant reply. + +"Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too--with me." + +Barry Whalen persisted. "We're in for complications, Byng. England has +to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any +spies. He's more Boer than native." + +"There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our +mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm +not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside +will sell us perhaps--as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one +inside." + +There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his +fellows furtively. + +"We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we +need not fear any spying," continued Byng. + +"If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, +it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to +prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are +justifiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's +necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my +cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand--if I +can." + +There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one said: + +"You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to +Johannesburg?" + +"I didn't say anything about wanting to go. I said I'd go because one +of us--or two of us--ought to go. There's plenty to do here; but if I +can be any more use out there, why, Wallstein can stay here, and--" + +He got no further, for Wallstein, to whom he had just referred, and who +had been sitting strangely impassive, with his eyes approvingly fixed +on Byng, half rose from his chair and fell forward, his thick, white +hands sprawling on the mahogany table, his fat, pale face striking the +polished wood with a thud. In an instant they were all on their feet +and at his side. + +Barry Whalen lifted up his head and drew him back into the chair, then +three of them lifted him upon a sofa. Barry's hand felt the breast of +the prostrate figure, and Byng's fingers sought his wrist. For a moment +there was a dreadful silence, and then Byng and Whalen looked at each +other and nodded. + +"Brandy!" said Byng, peremptorily. + +"He's not dead?" whispered some one. + +"Brandy--quick," urged Byng, and, lifting up the head a little, he +presently caught the glass from Whalen's hand and poured some brandy +slowly between the bluish lips. "Some one ring for Krool," he added. + +A moment later Krool entered. "The doctor--my doctor and his own--and a +couple of nurses," Byng said, sharply, and Krool nodded and vanished. +"Perhaps it's only a slight heart-attack, but it's best to be on the +safe side." + +"Anyhow, it shows that Wallstein needs to let up for a while," +whispered Fleming. + +"It means that some one must do Wallstein's work here," said Barry +Whalen. "It means that Byng stays in London," he added, as Krool +entered the room again with a rug to cover Wallstein. + +Barry saw Krool's eyes droop before his words, and he was sure that the +servant had reasons for wishing his master to go to South Africa. The +others present, however, only saw a silent, magically adept figure +stooping over the sick man, adjusting the body to greater ease, +arranging skilfully the cushion under the head, loosening and removing +the collar and the boots, and taking possession of the room, as though +he himself were the doctor; while Byng looked on with satisfaction. + +"Useful person, eh?" he said, meaningly, in an undertone to Barry +Whalen. + +"I don't think he's at home in England," rejoined Barry, as meaningly +and very stubbornly: "He won't like your not going to South Africa." + +"Am I not going to South Africa?" Byng asked, mechanically, and looking +reflectively at Krool. + +"Wallstein's a sick man, Byng. You can't leave London. You're the only +real politician among us. Some one else must go to Johannesburg." + +"You--Barry?" + +"You know I can't, Byng--there's my girl. Besides, I don't carry enough +weight, anyhow, and you know that too." + +Byng remembered Whalen's girl--stricken down with consumption a few +months before. He caught Whalen's arm in a grip of friendship. "All +right, dear old man," he said, kindly. "Fleming shall go, and I'll +stay. Yes, I'll stay here, and do Wallstein's work." + +He was still mechanically watching Krool attend to the sick man, and he +was suddenly conscious of an arrest of all motion in the half-caste's +lithe frame. Then Krool turned, and their eyes met. Had he drawn +Krool's eyes to his--the master-mind influencing the subservient +intelligence? + +"Krool wants to go to South Africa," he said to himself with a strange, +new sensation which he did not understand, though it was not quite a +doubt. He reassured himself. "Well, it's natural he should. It's his +home.... But Fleming must go to Johannesburg. I'm needed most here." + +There was gratitude in his heart that Fate had decreed it so. He was +conscious of the perfume from Jasmine's cloak searching his senses, +even in this hour when these things that mattered--the things of +Fate--were so enormously awry. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY + + +"Soon he will speak you. Wait here, madame." + +Krool passed almost stealthily out. + +Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat +incongruous furnishing--leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins +from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape +Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical +subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the +walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little +roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the +incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was expressive +of tastes and habits not yet settled and consistent. + +Al'mah's eyes had taken it all in rather wistfully, while she had +waited for Krool's return from his master; but the wistfulness was due +to personal trouble, for her eyes were clouded and her motions languid. +But when she saw the banjo, the cornet, and the roulette-table, a deep +little laugh rose to her full red lips. + +"How like a subaltern, or a colonial civil servant!" she said to +herself. + +She reflected a moment, then pursued the thought further: "But there +must be bigness in him, as well as presence of mind and depth of +heart--yes, I'm sure his nature is deep." + +She remembered the quick, protecting hands which had wrapped her round +with Jasmine Grenfel's cloak, and the great arms in which she had +rested, the danger over. + +"There can't be much wrong with a nature like his, though Adrian hates +him so. But, of course, Adrian would. Besides, Adrian will never get +over the drop in the mining-stock which ruined him--Rudyard Byng's +mine.... It's natural for Adrian to hate him, I suppose," she added +with a heavy sigh. + +Mentally she took to comparing this room with Adrian Fellowes' +sitting-room overlooking the Thames Embankment, where everything was in +perfect taste and order, where all was modulated, harmonious, soigne +and artistic. Yet, somehow, the handsome chambers which hung over the +muddy river with its wonderful lights and shades, its mists and +radiance, its ghostly softness and greyness, lacked in something that +roused imagination, that stirred her senses here--the vital being in +her. + +It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She +knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, art, +hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with the +solid achievement of talent and force in the business of life. Here was +a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the stamps working in +the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of the Kaffir compound +at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind the wire boundaries. + +Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to +the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and +creative Deity--if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on +her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there +was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which +encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity +could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, +like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities +swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal +wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its +thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague +which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or devastated +by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful breast to +feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived of the +breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their all to +their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the poorhouse +in the end--ah, if one did not smile, one would die of weeping, she +thought. + +Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of +sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an +open hand for the poor and miserable,--now that she could afford +it--and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her +humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was +sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and Adrian +was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not to +Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph at +Covent Garden--why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a +hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome face +which had told her then of the completeness of her triumph. + +The half-caste valet entered again. "Here come, madame," he said with +something very near a smile; for he liked this woman, and his dark, +sensual soul would have approved of his master liking her. + +"Soon the Baas, madame," he said as he placed a chair for her, and with +the gliding footstep of a native left the room. + +"Sunny creature!" she remarked aloud, with a little laugh, and looked +round. Instantly her face lighted with interest. Here was nothing of +that admired disorder, that medley of incongruous things which marked +the room she had just left; but perfect order, precision, and balance +of arrangement, the most peaceful equipoise. There was a great carved +oak-table near to sun-lit windows, and on it were little regiments of +things, carefully arranged--baskets with papers in elastic bands; +classified and inscribed reference-books, scales, clips, pencils; and +in one clear space, with a bunch of violets before it, the photograph +of a woman in a splendid silver frame--a woman of seventy or so, +obviously Rudyard Byng's mother. + +Al'mah's eyes softened. Here was insight into a nature of which the +world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of +disciplined hours and careful hands--cabinets with initialed drawers, +shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing +moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their +actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive +influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn +quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the +inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life. Her eyes +travelled on with the gratified reflection that she had been admitted +here. Above the books were rows of sketches--rows of sketches! + +Suddenly, as her eyes rested on them, she turned pale and got to her +feet. They were all sketches of the veld, high and low; of natives; of +bits of Dutch architecture; of the stoep with its Boer farmer and his +vrouw; of a kopje with a dozen horses or a herd of cattle grazing; of a +spruit, or a Kaffir's kraal; of oxen leaning against the disselboom of +a cape-wagon; of a herd of steinboks, or a little colony of meerkats in +the karoo. + +Her hand went to her heart with a gesture of pain, and a little cry of +misery escaped her lips. + +Now there was a quick footstep, and Byng entered with a cordial smile +and an outstretched hand. + +"Well, this is a friendly way to begin the New Year," he said, +cheerily, taking her hand. "You certainly are none the worse for our +little unrehearsed drama the other night. I see by the papers that you +have been repeating your triumph. Please sit down. Do you mind my +having a little toast while we talk? I always have my petit dejeuner +here; and I'm late this morning." + +"You look very tired," she said as she sat down. + +Krool here entered with a tray, placing it on a small table by the big +desk. He was about to pour out the tea, but Byng waved him away. + +"Send this note at once by hand," he said, handing him an envelope. It +was addressed to Jasmine Grenfel. + +"Yes, I'm tired--rather," he added to his guest with a sudden weariness +of manner. "I've had no sleep for three nights--working all the time, +every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn't feed you, one +needs plenty of sleep. You can't play with yourself here as you can on +the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will do. On-saddle +and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a little sleep; +and the air does the rest. It has been a worrying time." + +"The Jameson Raid--and all the rest?" + +"Particularly all the rest. I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and +the others. England will demand--so I understand," he added with a +careful look at her, as though he had said too much--"the right to try +Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but it's +different with the Jo'burgers. They will be arrested--" + +"They have been arrested," she intervened. + +"Oh, is it announced?" he asked without surprise. + +"It was placarded an hour ago," she replied, heavily. + +"Well, I fancied it would be," he remarked. "They'll have a close +squeak. The sympathy of the world is with Kruger--so far." + +"That is what I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and +shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls. + +"What you have come about?" he said, putting down his cup of tea and +looking at her intently. "How are you concerned? Where do you come in?" + +"There is a man--he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, +Phillips, Hammond, and the rest--" + +"Oh, that's bad! A relative, or--" + +"Not a relative, exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she +went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches. + +"How did you come by these?" she asked. + +"Blantyre's sketches? Well, it's all I ever got for all Blantyre owed +me, and they're not bad. They're lifted out of the life. That's why I +bought them. Also because I liked to think I got something out of +Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn't. He could paint a bit--don't +you think so?" + +"He could paint a bit--always," she replied. + +A silence followed. Her back was turned to him, her face was towards +the pictures. + +Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the tone. "Are +you interested in Blantyre?" he asked, cautiously. Getting up, he came +over to her. + +"He has been arrested--as I said--with the others." + +"No, you did not say so. So they let Blantyre into the game, did they?" +he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had said, he +added: "Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest in +Blantyre?" + +She looked at him straight in the eyes. For a face naturally so full of +humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now. + +"Yes, I will tell you as much as I can--enough for you to understand," +she answered. + +He drew up a chair to the fire, and she sat down. He nodded at her +encouragingly. Presently she spoke. + +"Well, at twenty-one I was studying hard, and he was painting--" + +"Blantyre?" + +She inclined her head. "He was full of dreams--beautiful, I thought +them; and he was ambitious. Also he could talk quite marvellously." + +"Yes, Blantyre could talk--once," Byng intervened, gently. + +"We were married secretly." + +Byng made a gesture of amazement, and his face became shocked and +grave. "Married! Married! You were married to Blantyre?" + +"At a registry office in Chelsea. One month, only one month it was, and +then he went away to Madeira to paint--'a big commission,' he said; and +he would send for me as soon as he could get money in hand--certainly +in a couple of months. He had taken most of my half-year's income--I +had been left four hundred a year by my mother." + +Byng muttered a malediction under his breath and leaned towards her +sympathetically. + +With an effort she continued. "From Madeira he wrote to tell me he was +going on to South Africa, and would not be home for a year. From South +Africa he wrote saying he was not coming back; that I could divorce him +if I liked. The proof, he said, would be easy; or I needn't divorce him +unless I liked, since no one knew we were married." + +For an instant there was absolute silence, and she sat with her fingers +pressed tight to her eyes. At last she went on, her face turned away +from the great kindly blue eyes bent upon her, from the face flushed +with honourable human sympathy. + +"I went into the country, where I stayed for nearly three years, +till--till I could bear it no longer; and then I began to study and +sing again." + +"What were you doing in the country?" he asked in a low voice. + +"There was my baby," she replied, her hands clasping and unclasping in +pain. "There was my little Nydia." + +"A child--she is living?" he asked gently. + +"No, she died two years ago," was the answer in a voice which tried to +be firm. + +"Does Blantyre know?" + +"He knew she was born, nothing more." + +"We were married secretly." + +"And after all he has done, and left undone, you want to try and save +him now?" + +He was thinking that she still loved the man. "That offscouring!" he +said to himself. "Well, women beat all! He treats her like a +Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the +hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women--always +women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants him +back!" + +She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind. Rising, with a +bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment +in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: + +"You think it is love for him that prompts me now?" Her eyes blazed, +but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously +pulled at the tails of her sable muff. "You are wrong--absolutely. I +would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch +me. Oh, I know what his life must have been--the life of him that you +know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of +Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating +husks with the swine. I realize him now. He was easily susceptible to +good and evil, to the clean and the unclean; and he might have been +kept in order by some one who would give a life to building up his +character; but his nature was rickety, and he has gone down and not up." + +"Then why try to save him? Let Oom Paul have him. He'll do no more +harm, if--" + +"Wait a minute," she urged. "You are a great man"--she came close to +him--"and you ought to understand what I mean, without my saying it. I +want to save him for his own sake, not for mine--to give him a chance. +While there's life there's hope. To go as he is, with the mud up to his +lips--ah, can't you see! He is the father of my dead child. I like to +feel that he may make some thing of his life and of himself yet. That's +why I haven't tried to divorce him, and--" + +"If you ever want to do so--" he interrupted, meaningly. + +"Yes, I know. I have always been sure that nothing could be quite so +easy; but I waited, on the chance of something getting hold of him +which would lift him out of himself, give him something to think of so +much greater than himself, some cause, perhaps--" + +"He had you and your unborn child," he intervened. + +"Me--!" She laughed bitterly. "I don't think men would ever be better +because of me. I've never seen that. I've seen them show the worst of +human nature because of me--and it wasn't inspiring. I've not met many +men who weren't on the low levels." + +"He hasn't stood his trial for the Johannesburg conspiracy yet. How do +you propose to help him? He is in real danger of his life." + +She laughed coldly, and looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "You +ask that, you who know that in the armory of life there's one +all-powerful weapon?" + +He nodded his head whimsically. "Money? Well, whatever other weapons +you have, you must have that, I admit. And in the Transvaal--" + +"Then here," she said, handing him an envelope--"here is what may help." + +He took it hesitatingly. "I warn you," he remarked, "that if money is +to be used at all, it must be a great deal. Kruger will put up the +price to the full capacity of the victim." + +"I suppose this victim has nothing," she ventured, quietly. + +"Nothing but what the others give him, I should think. It may be a very +costly business, even if it is possible, and you--" + +"I have twenty thousand pounds," she said. + +"Earned by your voice?" he asked, kindly. + +"Every penny of it." + +"Well, I wouldn't waste it on Blantyre, if I were you. No, by Heaven, +you shall not do it, even if it can be done! It is too horrible." + +"I owe it to myself to do it. After all, he is still my husband. I have +let it be so; and while it is so, and while"--her eyes looked away, her +face suffused slightly, her lips tightened--"while things are as they +are, I am bound--bound by something, I don't know what, but it is not +love, and it is not friendship--to come to his rescue. There will be +legal expenses--" + +Byng frowned. "Yes, but the others wouldn't see him in a hole--yet I'm +not sure, either, Blantyre being Blantyre. In any case, I'm ready to do +anything you wish." + +She smiled gratefully. "Did you ever know any one to do a favor who +wasn't asked to repeat it--paying one debt by contracting another, +finding a creditor who will trust, and trading on his trust? Yet I'd +rather owe you two debts than most men one." She held out her hand to +him. "Well, it doesn't do to mope--'The merry heart goes all the day, +the sad one tires in a mile-a.' And I am out for all day. Please wish +me a happy new year." + +He took her hand in both of his. "I wish you to go through this year as +you ended the last--in a blaze of glory." + +"Yes, really a blaze if not of glory," she said, with bright tears, yet +laughing, too, a big warm humour shining in her strong face with the +dark brown eyes and the thick, heavy eyebrows under a low, broad +forehead like his own. They were indeed strangely alike in many ways +both of mind and body. + +"They say we end the year as we begin it," he said, cheerily. "You +proved to Destiny that you were entitled to all she could give in the +old year, and you shall have the best that's to be had in 1897. You are +a woman in a million, and--" + +"May I come and breakfast with you some morning?" she asked, gaily. + +"Well, if ever I'm thought worthy of that honour, don't hesitate. As +the Spanish say, It is all yours." He waved a hand to the surroundings. + +"No, it is all yours," she said, reflectively, her eyes slowly roaming +about her. "It is all you. I'm glad to have been here, to be as near as +this to your real life. Real life is so comforting after the mock kind +so many of us live; which singers and actors live anyhow." + +She looked round the room again. "I feel--I don't know why it is, but I +feel that when I'm in trouble I shall always want to come to this room. +Yes, and I will surely come; for I know there's much trouble in store +for me. You must let me come. You are the only man I would go to like +this, and you can't think what it means to me--to feel that I'm not +misunderstood, and that it seems absolutely right to come. That's +because any woman could trust you--as I do. Good-bye." + +In another moment she had gone, and he stood beside the table with the +envelope she had left with him. Presently he opened it, and unfolded +the cheque which was in it. Then he gave an exclamation of astonishment. + +"Seven thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "That's a better estimate of +Krugerism than I thought she had. It'll take much more than that, +though, if it's done at all; but she certainly has sense. It's seven +thousand times too much for Blantyre," he added, with an exclamation of +disgust. "Blantyre--that outsider!" Then he fell to thinking of all she +had told him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" he said aloud. "But she must not +come here, just the same. She doesn't see that it's not the thing, just +because she thinks I'm a Sir Galahad--me!" He glanced at the picture of +his mother, and nodded toward it tenderly. "So did she always. I might +have turned Kurd and robbed caravans, or become a Turk and kept +concubines, and she'd never have seen that it was so. But Al'mah +mustn't come here any more, for her own sake.... I'd find it hard to +explain if ever, by any chance--" + +He fell to thinking of Jasmine, and looked at the clock. It was only +ten, and he would not see Jasmine till six; but if he had gone to South +Africa he would not have seen her at all! Fate and Wallstein had been +kind. + +Presently, as he went to the hall to put on his coat and hat to go out, +he met Barry Whalen. Barry looked at him curiously; then, as though +satisfied, he said: "Early morning visitor, eh? I just met her coming +away. Card of thanks for kind services au theatre, eh?" + +"Well, it isn't any business of yours what it is, Barry," came the +reply in tones which congealed. + +"No, perhaps not," answered his visitor, testily, for he had had a +night of much excitement, and, after all, this was no way to speak to a +friend, to a partner who had followed his lead always. Friendship +should be allowed some latitude, and he had said hundreds of things +less carefully to Byng in the past. The past--he was suddenly conscious +that Byng had changed within the past few days, and that he seemed to +have put restraint on himself. Well, he would get back at him just the +same for the snub. + +"It's none of my business," he retorted, "but it's a good deal of +Adrian Fellowes' business--" + +"What is a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business?" + +"Al'mah coming to your rooms. Fellowes is her man. Going to marry her, +I suppose," he added, cynically. + +Byng's jaw set and his eyes became cold. "Still, I'd suggest your +minding your own business, Barry. Your tongue will get you into trouble +some day.... You've seen Wallstein this morning--and Fleming?" + +Barry replied sullenly, and the day's pressing work began, with the +wires busy under the seas. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE + + +At a few moments before six o'clock Byng was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room. As he entered, the man who sat at the end of the front +row of stalls the first night of "Manassa" rose to his feet. It was +Adrian Fellowes, slim, well groomed, with the colour of an apple in his +cheeks, and his gold-brown hair waving harmoniously over his +unintellectual head. + +"But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I've ever known," Jasmine +was saying as Byng entered. + +Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she pretended +not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that Byng heard +them as he came forward. + +"Well, he is selfish," she added to Byng, as she shook hands. "I've +known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of +everything and given nothing for it." Turning again to Fellowes, she +continued: "Yes, it's true. The golden apples just fall into your +hands." + +"Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation," +Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an +enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room. + +"Such a boy--Adrian," Jasmine said, as they sat down. + +"Boy--he looks thirty or more!" remarked Byng in a dry tone. + +"He is just thirty. I call him a boy because he is so young in most +things that matter to people. He is the most sumptuous person--entirely +a luxury. Did you ever see such colouring--like a woman's! But selfish, +as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian. Yes, he really is very useful. +He would be a private secretary beyond price to any one who needed such +an article. He has tact--as you saw--and would make a wonderful master +of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the household and equerry and +lord-chamberlain in one. There, if ever you want such a person, or if--" + +She paused. As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast +between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's +clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who knew +their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The +result was a looseness and carelessness of good things--giving him, in +a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little +crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had +touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with the +square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not common. + +"Certainly," he intervened, smiling indulgently; "if ever I want a +comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I'll remember +'Adrian.' In these days one can never tell. There's the Sahara. It +hasn't been exploited yet. It has no emperor." + +"I like you in this mood," she said, eagerly. "You seem on the surface +so tremendously practical and sensible. You frighten me a little, and I +like to hear you touch things off with raillery. But, seriously, if you +can ever put anything in that boy's way, please do so. He has had bad +luck--in your own Rand mine. He lost nearly everything in that, +speculating, and--" + +Byng's face grew serious again. "But he shouldn't have speculated; he +should have invested. It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth +to speculate. But I will remember him, if you say so. I don't like to +think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine. I'll keep him in +mind. Make him one of my secretaries perhaps." + +Then Barry Whalen's gossip suddenly came to his mind, and he added: +"Fellowes will want to get married some day. That face and manner will +lead him into ways from which there's only one outlet." + +"Matrimony?" She laughed. "Oh dear, no, Adrian is much too selfish to +marry." + +"I thought that selfishness was one of the elements of successful +marriages. I've been told so." + +A curious look stole into her eyes. All at once she wondered if his +words had any hidden meaning, and she felt angrily self-conscious; but +she instantly put the reflection away, for if ever any man travelled by +the straight Roman road of speech and thought, it was he. He had only +been dealing in somewhat obvious worldly wisdom. + +"You ought not to give encouragement to such ideas by repeating them," +she rejoined with raillery. "This is an age of telepathy and +suggestion, and the more silent we are the safer we are. Now, please, +tell me everything--of the inside, I mean--about Cecil Rhodes and the +Raiders. Is Rhodes overwhelmed? And Mr. Chamberlain--you have seen him? +The papers say you have spent many hours at the Colonial Office. I +suppose you were with him at six o'clock last evening, instead of being +here with me, as you promised." + +He shook his head. "Rhodes? The bigger a man is the greater the crash +when he falls; and no big man falls alone." + +She nodded. "There's the sense of power, too, which made everything +vibrate with energy, which gave a sense of great empty places +filled--of that power withdrawn and collapsed. Even the bad great man +gone leaves a sense of desolation behind. Power--power, that is the +thing of all," she said, her eyes shining and her small fingers +interlacing with eager vitality: "power to set waves of influence in +motion which stir the waters on distant shores. That seems to me the +most wonderful thing." + +Her vitality, her own sense of power, seemed almost incongruous. She +was so delicately made, so much the dresden-china shepherdess, that +intensity seemed out of relation to her nature. Yet the tiny hands +playing before her with natural gestures like those of a child had, +too, a decision and a firmness in keeping with the perfectly modelled +head and the courageous poise of the body. There was something regnant +in her, while, too, there was something sumptuous and sensuous and +physically thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an +exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla +fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no jewelry +whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and waved like +gossamer in the sun. + +"Well, I don't know," he rejoined, admiration unbounded in his eyes for +the picture she was of maidenly charm and womanly beauty, "I should say +that goodness was a more wonderful thing. But power is the most common +ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions get it in any +large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first heard the stamps +pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You never heard that +sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air reverberates +greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives a sense of +power--power that crushes--as the stamps of a great mine pounding away +night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it seems to you that +some unearthly power is hammering the world into shape. You get up and +go to the window and look out into the night. There's the deep blue +sky--blue like nothing you ever saw in any other sky, and the stars so +bright and big, and so near, that you feel you could reach up and pluck +one with your hand; and just over the little hill are the lights of the +stamp-mills, the smoke and the mad red flare, the roar of great hammers +as they crush, crush, crush; while the vibration of the earth makes you +feel that you are living in a world of Titans." + +"And when it all stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the +stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and +desolate--and frightening?" + +"It is anything you like. If all the mills all at once, with the +thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the +smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more +ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of +peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir +of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they +would dwindle too." + +"If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease--?" + +He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't +want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of +emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly. + +She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging them +afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that Cecil +Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly--I mean your +practical interests?" + +He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this distance. +One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything may happen." + +She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At last +she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke. + +"I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much +to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you have +a political mind--the statesman's intelligence, the Times said. That +letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of Commerce +dinner--" + +She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence +for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not +myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein +was taken ill suddenly. So I stay--I stay." + +She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The +whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her +cheeks--that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face +while life was left to her. + +"If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked. + +"At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added. + +She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special +Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We +need you here. We--" + +Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was +conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It stole +to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with enamoured +eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a nature which +had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in other directions had +taught him much, but experiences with her sex had been few. The designs +of other women had been patent to him, and he had been invincible to +all attack; but here was a girl who, with her friendly little fortune +and her beauty, could marry with no difficulty; who, he had heard, +could pick and choose, and had so far rejected all comers; and who, if +she had shown preference at all, had shown it for a poor man like Ian +Stafford. She had courage and simplicity and a downright mind; that was +clear. And she was capable. She had a love for big things, for the +things that mattered. Every word she had ever said to him had +understanding, not of the world alone, and of life, but of himself, +Rudyard Byng. She grasped exactly what he would say, and made him say +things he would never have thought of saying to any one else. She drew +him out, made the most of him, made him think. Other women only tried +to make him feel. If he had had a girl like this beside him during the +last ten years, how many wasted hours would have been saved, how many +bottles of champagne would not have been opened, how many wild nights +would have been spent differently! + +Too good, too fine for him--yes, a hundred times, but he would try to +make it up to her, if such a girl as this could endure him. He was not +handsome, he was not clever, so he said to himself, but he had a little +power. That he had to some degree rough power, of course, but power; +and she loved power, force. Had she not said so, shown it, but a moment +before? Was it possible that she was really interested in him, perhaps +because he was different from the average Englishman and not of a +general pattern? She was a woman of brains, of great individuality, and +his own individuality might influence her. It was too good to be true; +but there had ever been something of the gambler in him, and he had +always plunged. If he ever had a conviction he acted on it instantly, +staked everything, when that conviction got into his inner being. It +was not, perhaps, a good way, and it had failed often enough; but it +was his way, and he had done according to the light and the impulse +that were in him. He had no diplomacy, he had only purpose. + +He came over to her. "If I had gone to South Africa would you have +remembered my name for a month?" he asked with determination and +meaning. + +"My friends never suffer lunar eclipse," she answered, gaily. "Dear +sir, I am called Hold-Fast. My friends are century-flowers and are +always blooming." + +"You count me among your friends?" + +"I hope so. You will let me make all England envious of me, won't you? +I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny +circle." + +"A hero--you mean me? Well, I begin to think I have some courage when I +ask you to let me inside your 'tiny' circle. I suppose most people +would think it audacity, not courage." + +"You seem not to be aware what an important person you are--how almost +sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like yours, +a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in vain." + +She got to her feet now. "Oh, but believe me, believe me," she said, +with sweet and sudden earnestness, "I am prouder than I can say that +you will let me be a friend of yours! I like men who have done things, +who do things. My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and--" + +"Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once. He was a big man, big as can +be. He had the world by the ear always." + +"He spoiled me for the commonplace," she replied. "If I had lived in +Pizarro's time, I'd have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber." + +He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy. "If you mean +to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way +you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I've spoiled the +Peruvians, too." + +"I like you when you say things like that," she murmured. "If you said +them often--" + +She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and +excitement. + +Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned. "Will +you--" + +He paused. His courage forsook him. Boldness had its limit. He feared a +repulse which could never be overcome. "Will you, and all of you here, +come down to my place in Wales next week?" he blundered out. + +She was glad he had faltered. It was too bewildering. She dared not yet +face the question she had seen he was about to ask. Power--yes, he +could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious soul. +There were other things. There was the desire of the heart, the longing +which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright stars, +the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and +joy--and Ian Stafford. + +Suddenly she drew herself together. She was conscious that the servant +was entering the room with a letter. + +"The messenger is waiting," the servant said. + +With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the fire. +She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes at last +with a slight sense of dizziness. Then she said to the servant: + +"Tell the messenger to wait. I will write an answer." + +"I am sure we shall be glad to go to you in Wales next week," she +added, turning to Byng again. "But won't you be far away from the +centre of things in Wales?" + +"I've had the telegraph and a private telephone wire to London put in. +I shall be as near the centre as though I lived in Grosvenor Square; +and there are always special trains." + +"Special trains--oh, but it's wonderful to have power to do things like +that! When do you go down?" she asked. + +"To-morrow morning." + +She smiled radiantly. She saw that he was angry with himself for his +cowardice just now, and she tried to restore him. "Please, will you +telephone me when you arrive at your castle? I should like the +experience of telephoning by private wire to Wales." + +He brightened. "Certainly, if you really wish it. I shall arrive at ten +to-morrow night, and I'll telephone you at eleven." + +"Splendid--splendid! I'll be alone in my room then. I've got a +telephone instrument there, and so we could say good-night." + +"So we can say good-night," he repeated in a low voice, and he held out +his hand in good-bye. When he had gone, with a new, great hope in his +heart, she sat down and tremblingly re-opened the note she had received +a moment before. + +"I am going abroad" it read--"to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and St. +Petersburg. I think I've got my chance at last. I want to see you +before I go--this evening, Jasmine. May I?" + +It was signed "Ian." + +"Fate is stronger than we are," she murmured; "and Fate is not kind to +you, Ian," she added, wearily, a wan look coming into her face. + +"Mio destino," she said at last--"mio destino!" But who was her +destiny--which of the two who loved her? + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THREE YEARS LATER + + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about Kruger an' his guns!" + +The shrill, acrid cry rang down St. James's Street, and a newsboy with +a bunch of pink papers under his arm shot hither and thither on the +pavement, offering his sensational wares to all he met. + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about the war wot's comin'--all +about Kruger's guns!" + +From an open window on the second floor of a building in the street a +man's head was thrust out, listening. + +"The war wot's comin'!" he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And +all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you +do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a +shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull." + +He hummed to himself an impromptu refrain to an impromptu tune: + + "Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull, Johnny Bull, + Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull!" + + +Stepping out of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down +the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad +looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the +doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good +judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was speeding +upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock--a sharp, insistent +stroke--and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust forward, his +eyes glittering. The fire in such eyes is always cold, for hunger is +poor fuel to the native flame of life. + +"Extra speshul, m'lord--all about Kruger's guns." + +He held out the paper to the figure that darkened the window, and he +pronounced the g in Kruger soft, as in Scrooge. + +The hand that took the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, +skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for +it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers +had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face +regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He +had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was an expert +observer. + +"Thank y' kindly," he said; then, as the fingers made assurance of the +fortune which had come to him, "Ow, thank ye werry much, y'r gryce," he +added. + +Something alert and determined in the face of the boy struck the giver +of the coin as he opened the paper to glance at its contents, and he +paused to scan him more closely. He saw the hunger in the lad's eyes as +they swept over the breakfast-table, still heavy with uneaten +breakfast--bacon, nearly the whole of an omelette, and rolls, toast, +marmalade and honey. + +"Wait a second," he said, as the boy turned toward the door. + +"Yes, y'r gryce." + +"Had your breakfast?" + +"I has me brekfist w'en I sells me pypers." The lad hugged the +remaining papers closer under his arms, and kept his face turned +resolutely away from the inviting table. His host correctly interpreted +the action. + +"Poor little devil--grit, pure grit!" he said under his breath. "How +many papers have you got left?" he asked. + +The lad counted like lightning. "Ten," he answered. "I'll soon get 'em +off now. Luck's wiv me dis mornin'." The ghost of a smile lighted his +face. + +"I'll take them all," the other said, handing over a second shilling. + +The lad fumbled for change and the fumbling was due to honest +agitation. He was not used to this kind of treatment. + +"No, that's all right," the other interposed. + +"But they're only a h'ypenny," urged the lad, for his natural cupidity +had given way to a certain fine faculty not too common in any grade of +human society. + +"Well, I'm buying them at a penny this morning. I've got some friends +who'll be glad to give a penny to know all about Kruger's guns." He too +softened the g in Kruger in consideration of his visitor's +idiosyncrasies. + +"You won't be mykin' anythink on them, y'r gryce," said the lad with a +humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford's heart wide; for to him +heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists. + +"I'll get at them in other ways," Stafford rejoined. "I'll get my +profit, never fear. Now what about breakfast? You've sold all your +papers, you know." + +"I'm fair ready for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's +glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was +relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. + +"Well, sit down--this breakfast isn't cold yet.... But, no, you'd +better have a wash-up first, if you can wait," Stafford added, and rang +a bell. + +"Wot, 'ere--brekfist wiv y'r gryce 'ere?" + +"Well, I've had mine"--Stafford made a slight grimace--"and there's +plenty left for you, if you don't mind eating after me." + +"I dusted me clothes dis mornin'," said the boy, with an attempt to +justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast. "An' I washed me +'ends--but pypers is muck," he added. + +A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the +bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot +again. It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his +bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had +eaten since his return to England after three years' absence, +everything was in order. + +For Gleg was still more the child of habit--and decorous habit--than +himself. It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his +master's philanthropic activities. Much as he disapproved of them, he +could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow +disarmed him. He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and would +have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot from his +hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his master's smile +was worth a good deal to Gleg. It was an exacting if well-paid service, +for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in Europe, and he had +grown excessively so during the past three years, which, as Gleg +observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in him. He had grown +more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his daily life, and +ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct personal share in his +life. There were no more little tea-parties and dejeuners chez lui, +duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or aunt--for there was no +embassy in Europe where he had not relatives. + +"'Ipped--a bit 'ipped. 'E 'as found 'em out, the 'uzzies," Gleg had +observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in +his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who +had 'ipped him. + +As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of +marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, Stafford +read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance at the +food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an occasional +glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the sheets, stepped +across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small fire--for, late +September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had come and gone, +leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome. + +At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were +decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is the +coffee hot?" + +"I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time," +the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes. + +"Was there enough?" + +"I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade +and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot--tykes y'r longer to +drink it," he added. + +Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his money. +He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of a +crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not +fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the neglect +of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour to a waif +of humanity. + +As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like +him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them +would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal. The +words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: + +"War Inevitable--Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the Nozzle +with War Stores--Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement--Sullen and +Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." ... And so on. + +And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter +and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, +this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this +sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So much +withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less with +which to deal with their miseries--perhaps hundreds of millions, mopped +up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease and loss. + +He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the heading +of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, aloud, with +a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the breakfasts will +be fewer. It works down one way or another--it all works down to this +poor little devil and his kind." + +"Now, what's your name?" he asked. + +"Jigger," was the reply. + +"What else?" + +"Nothin', y'r gryce." + +"Jigger--what?" + +"It's the only nyme I got," was the reply. + +"What's your father's or your mother's name?" + +"I ain't got none. I only got a sister." + +"What's her name?" + +"Lou," he answered. "That's her real name. But she got a fancy name +yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a hunderd +uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now." + +"Oh--Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of +his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who +gave her that name? Who were her godfathers and godmothers?" + +"I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd +have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was always +plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy." + +"What did she do before yesterday?" + +"Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't +sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild--for she 'adn't +'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, +'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a +start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, +'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, an' +says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if you'll +be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' Lou says, +says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me bread-baskit full, an' +then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er flowers, an' give 'er five +bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv that, an' 'ad brekfist; an' +sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took her off. She's in the opery +now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her +picture 's on the 'oardings--" + +Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er--that's 'er!" he said, pointing +to the mantel-piece. + +Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait +in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when +Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it then. It +had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had occupied +for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his country's +work--and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to meet the +heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known. + +"So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded +assent. + +"Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford. + +The boy did so. "It's 'er--done up for the opery," he declared. + +"Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to +her." + +"Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to +that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be +cold,' I says to Lou." + +Stafford laughed softly at the illustration. Many a time the lad +snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his +figure of speech from real life. + +"Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked. + +"Me--I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the +two shillings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a +fair start." + +Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "I'm +going to give you a sovereign," he said--"twenty shillings, for your +fair start; and I want you to come to me here next Sunday-week to +breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it." + +"Me--y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's face. +"Twenty bob--me!" + +The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He +seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't +do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst. + +"Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with +the papers, and tell me what you've done." + +"Gawd--my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in +the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a +whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late +visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, +with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way. + +With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he said. +"Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows--who knows!" + +His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over +and stood looking at it musingly. + +"You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't +pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell +it--not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or +is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that +can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and +kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, for +gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? Vain, +vain, vain--and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There might +be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women weren't so +dishonourable--the secret orchard rather than the open highway and +robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!" + +He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight +before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, coming +back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old memories, empty +out the box-room, and come across some useless and discarded things. +I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly useless business +turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all into the junk-shop, +and cuts his losses." + +He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page--the +social column first--with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't +done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, +with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of +them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New +York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little +with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he +had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not +come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not mattered. +And there was no reason why it should matter now. His England was a +land the original elements of which would not change, had not changed; +for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, was still +impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That refuge had +its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating and rather +heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the toadies, the +gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the road. + +It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock +on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as he +went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places like +Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to +stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where +their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got +farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes +of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the +Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years +had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more +keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long +before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and more +the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too +ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge. + +All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following +announcement: + +"Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a +few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to +receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the +Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign Minister, +the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of Tynemouth, and Mr. +Tudor Tempest." + +"'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she would. +She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths to the +claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth to the +desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has done, +and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. The +Slavonian Ambassador--him, and the French Foreign Minister! That looks +like a useful combination at this moment--at this moment. She has a +gift for combinations, a wonderful skill, a still more wonderful +perception--and a remarkable unscrupulousness. She's the naturally +ablest woman I have ever known; but she wants to take short-cuts to a +worldly Elysium, and it can't be done, not even with three times three +millions--and three millions was her price." + +Suddenly he got up and went over to a table where were several +dispatch-boxes. Opening one, he drew forth from the bottom, where he +had placed it nearly three years ago, a letter. He looked at the long, +sliding handwriting, so graceful and fine, he caught the perfume which +had intoxicated Rudyard Byng, and, stooping down, he sniffed the +dispatch-box. He nodded. + +"She's pervasive in everything," he murmured. He turned over several +other packets of letters in the box. "I apologize," he said, +ironically, to these letters. "I ought to have banished her long ago, +but, to tell you the truth, I didn't realize how much she'd influence +everything--even in a box." He laughed cynically, and slowly opened the +one letter which had meant so much to him. + +There was no show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth showed +any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious and +scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and read +it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked at it +since he received it in Vienna and had placed it in the dispatch-box. + +"Dear Ian," it ran, "our year of probation--that is the word isn't +it?--is up; and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am going +to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very strong, and +not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being reminded +daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I have had so +many good hours together, there has been such confidence between us, +that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall always want +to go to you, and ask your advice, and learn to be wise. You will not +turn a cold shoulder on me, will you? I think you yourself realized +that my wish to wait a year before giving a final answer was proof that +I really had not that in my heart which would justify me in saying what +you wished me to say. Oh yes, you knew; and the last day when you bade +me good-bye you almost said as much! I was so young, so unschooled, +when you first asked me, and I did not know my own mind; but I know it +now, and so I go to Rudyard Byng for better or for worse--" + +He suddenly stopped reading, sat back in his chair, and laughed +sardonically. + +"For richer, for poorer'--now to have launched out on the first phrase, +and to have jibbed at the second was distinctly stupid. The quotation +could only have been carried off with audacity of the ripest kind. 'For +better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, +till death us do part, amen--' That was the way to have done it, if it +was to be done at all. Her cleverness forsook her when she wrote that +letter. 'Our year of probation'--she called it that. Dear, dear, what a +poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! She was sworn to me, bound +to me, wanted a year in which to have her fling before she settled +down, and she threw me over--like that." + +He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the +fire, threw it in, and watched it burn. + +"I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly +now. "A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute. It's a +terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to +keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman. If anything had happened +to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor all the +King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" + +Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply. Unlike +him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, +tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the +waste-basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and humiliation. +Finally, she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it into the flames. +She had watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not hotter than that +in her own eyes, which presently were washed by a flood of bitter tears +and passionate and unavailing protest. For hours she had sobbed, and +when she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every +word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since: the sceptic +comment at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the +whispered detraction in every loud accent of praise. + +"Dear Jasmine," his letter had run, "it is kind of you to tell me of +your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands +news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all. I am fortunate +in having my information from the very fountain of first knowledge. You +have seen and done much in the past year; and the end of it all is more +fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire or conceive. You +will adorn the new sphere into which you enter. You are of those who do +not need training or experience: you are a genius, whose chief +characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom nature and +Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you it is given +to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We have had good +times together--happy conversations and some cheerful and entertaining +dreams and purposes. We have made the most of opportunity, each in his +and her own way. But, my dear Jasmine, don't ever think that you will +need to come to me for advice and to learn to be wise. I know of no one +from whom I could learn, from whom I have learned, so I much. I am +deeply your debtor for revelations which never could have come to me +without your help. There is a wonderful future before you, whose +variety let Time, not me, attempt to reveal. I shall watch your going +on"--(he did not say goings on)--"your Alpine course, with clear +memories of things and hours dearer to me than all the world, and with +which I would not have parted for the mines of the Rand. I lose them +now for nothing--and less than nothing. I shall be abroad for some +years, and, meanwhile, a new planet will swim into the universe of +matrimony. I shall see the light shining, but its heavenly orbit will +not be within my calculations. Other astronomers will watch, and some +no doubt will pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of +the flower that was turned into a star! + +"Always yours sincerely, IAN STAFFORD." + + +From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away to +his writing-table. There he sat for a while and answered several notes, +among them one to Alice Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, whose +red parasol still hung above the mantel-piece, a relic of the +Zambesi--and of other things. + +Periodically Lady Tynemouth's letters had come to him while he was +abroad, and from her, in much detail, he had been informed of the rise +of Mrs. Byng, of her great future, her "delicious" toilettes, her great +entertainments for charity, her successful attempts to gather round her +the great figures in the political and diplomatic world; and her +partial rejection of Byng's old mining and financial confreres and +their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their +place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately +aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. + +Ian had read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could and +would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in the +not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not +malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, +and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her +invitation now to spend the next week-end with her and her husband; and +then, with letters to two young nephews in his pocket, he prepared to +sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the +children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a +generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had +married, he would not have been content with a childless home--with a +childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to +him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had +no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like +her and me," Lady Tynemouth's letter had said. + +Three millions then--and how much more now?--and big houses, and no +children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had +come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom +life had been checkered but never dull. + +He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes +caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed. + +"It was all done that night at the opera," he said. "Jasmine made up +her mind then to marry him, ... I wonder what the end will be.... Sad +little, bad little girl.... The mess of pottage at the last? Quien +sabe!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" + + +The air of the late September morning smote Stafford's cheeks +pleasantly, and his spirits rose as he walked up St. James's Street. +His step quickened imperceptibly to himself, and he nodded to or shook +hands with half a dozen people before he reached Piccadilly. Here he +completed the purchases for his school-boy nephews, and then he went to +a sweet-shop in Regent Street to get chocolates for his young +relatives. As he entered the place he was suddenly brought to a +standstill, for not two dozen yards away at a counter was Jasmine Byng. + +She did not see him enter, and he had time to note what matrimony, and +the three years and the three million pounds, had done to her. She was +radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but +increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark +green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and +texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a single +brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In the hat, +too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter green. + +She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who +was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her +with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always her +way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest, +magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her, nothing of charm +and beauty and eloquence,--how eloquent she had always been!--of +esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full +toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some +piled-up tables in the centre of the shop. + +Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes, +at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance--he could +not say trouble--had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the +corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic, +self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent +and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old +days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of +these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a +lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap +into full exercise, or even to recognize itself. + +So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been +capable--not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to +acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of +fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster, +his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even +wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves--so dead that +no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in his +breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was conscious of +a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to the situation. + +Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of +the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and contempt for +one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other women--to +that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and ill-natured soil +exhausted of its power, of its generous and native health. There was a +strange apathy in his senses, an emotional stillness, as it were, the +atrophy of all the passionate elements of his nature. But because of +this he was the better poised, the more evenly balanced, the more +perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or dimmed by any stress of +emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and his forward tread had +leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one part of himself far below +the level of activity or sensation, while new resolves, new powers of +mind, new designs were set in motion to make his career a real and +striking success. He had the most friendly ear and the full confidence +of the Prime Minister, who was also Foreign Secretary--he had got that +far; and now, if one of his great international schemes could but be +completed, an ambassadorship would be his reward, and one of +first-class importance. The three years had done much for him in a +worldly way, wonderfully much. + +As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre--not by +her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter selfishness +and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's fires were out, +and that he could meet her without the agitation of a single nerve. He +despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He knew the strain +that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather plangent +grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the power that +it would bring--and the notoriety, too, again an inheritance from her +grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and he could the more +easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion were still. + +She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, +the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch of +gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and +experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, +then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was +still there, he felt; but how much else was also there--of charm, of +elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to +discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare +splendour, variety and vanity. + +Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His +intellectual side would always be stimulated by her, she would always +"incite him to mental riot," as she had often said. Time had flown, +love had flown, and passion was dead; but friendship stayed. Yes, +friendship stayed--in spite of all. Her conduct had made him blush for +her, had covered him with shame, but she was a woman, and therefore +weak--he had come to that now. She was on a lower plateau of honour, +and therefore she must be--not forgiven--that was too banal; but she +must be accepted as she was. And, after all, there could be no more +deception; for opportunity and occasion no longer existed. He would go +and speak to her now. + +At that moment he was aware that she had caught sight of him, and that +she was startled. She had not known of his return to England, and she +was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. The words of the letter he had +written her when she had thrown him over rushed through her brain now, +and hurt her as much as they did the first day they had been received. +She became a little pale, and turned as though to find some other +egress from the shop. There being none, there was but one course, and +that was to go out as though she had not seen him. He had not even been +moved at all at seeing her; but with her it was different. She was +disturbed--in her vanity? In her peace? In her pride? In her senses? In +her heart? In any, or each, or all? But she was disturbed: her +equilibrium was shaken. He had scorched her soul by that letter to her, +so gently cold, so incisive, so subtly cruel, so deadly in its irony, +so final--so final. + +She was ashamed, and no one else in the world but Ian Stafford could so +have shamed her. Power had been given to her, the power of great +riches--the three millions had been really four--and everything and +everybody, almost, was deferential towards her. Had it brought her +happiness, or content, or joy? It had brought her excitement--much of +that--and elation, and opportunity to do a thousand things, and to +fatigue herself in a thousand ways; but had it brought happiness? + +If it had, the face of this man who was once so much to her, and whom +she had flung into outer darkness, was sufficient to cast a cloud over +it. She felt herself grow suddenly weak, but she determined to go out +of the place without appearing to see him. + +He was conscious of it all, saw it out of a corner of his eye, and as +she started forward, he turned, deliberately walked towards her, and, +with a cheerful smile, held out his hand. + +"Now, what good fortune!" he said, spiritedly. "Life plays no tricks, +practices no deception this time. In a book she'd have made us meet on +a grand staircase or at a court ball." + +As he said this, he shook her hand warmly, and again and again, as +would be fitting with old friends. He had determined to be master of +the situation, and to turn the moment to the credit of his account--not +hers; and it was easy to do it, for love was dead, and the memory of +love atrophied. + +Colour came back to her face. Confusion was dispelled, a quick and +grateful animation took possession of her, to be replaced an instant +after by the disconcerting reflection that there was in his face or +manner not the faintest sign of emotion or embarrassment. From his +attitude they might have been good friends who had not met for some +time; nothing more. + +"Yes, what a place to meet!" she said. "It really ought to have been at +a green-grocer's, and the apotheosis of the commonplace would have been +celebrated. But when did you return? How long do you remain in England?" + +Ah, the sense of relief to feel that he was not reproaching her for +anything, not impeaching her by an injured tone and manner, which so +many other men had assumed with infinitely less right or cause than he! + +"I came back thirty-six hours ago, and I stay at the will of the +master-mind," he answered. + +The old whimsical look came into her face, the old sudden flash which +always lighted her eyes when a daring phrase was born in her mind, and +she instantly retorted: + +"The master-mind--how self-centred you are!" + +Whatever had happened, certainly the old touch of intellectual +diablerie was still hers, and he laughed good-humoredly. Yes, she might +be this or that, she might be false or true, she might be one who had +sold herself for mammon, and had not paid tribute to the one great +natural principle of being, to give life to the world, man and woman +perpetuating man and woman; but she was stimulating and delightful +without effort. + +"And what are you doing these days?" he asked. "One never hears of you +now." + +This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and +she replied: "That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten +for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" + +It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough +to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and +buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined. + +"You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily. + +"It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied. "It is sure to +make one a host of enemies." + +"So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined. + +"Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and there +was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to notice; +but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however vaguely, her +murderous treatment of him. + +"But your career is not yet begun," he remarked. + +Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire +of intellectual combat? + +"I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort. + +"That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent," +he rejoined. + +"Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly. Suddenly a +thought lighted her eyes. "Are you by any chance free to-morrow night +to dine with us--quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see +you--and hear you," she added, teasingly. + +He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked +her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the +ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend an +evening where she sparkled. + +"I am free, and will come with pleasure," he replied. + +"That is delightful," she rejoined, "and please bring a box of bons +mots with you. But you will come, then--?" She was going to add, "Ian," +but she paused. + +"Yes, I'll come--Jasmine," he answered, coolly, having read her +hesitation aright. + +She flushed, was embarrassed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod she +left him. + +In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny hand +clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in her +eyes. + +"He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall--he +shall--he shall!" she gasped, angrily. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE APPIAN WAY + + +"Cape to Cairo be damned!" + +The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed +slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his +desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, +as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and +beat the floor impatiently with his foot. + +At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly +at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which +Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the +pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in +on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely +realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and +perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had +London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared +with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in +dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just +uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more. + +Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor further. +"Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the British +Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want is the +present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of us. I +want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five +millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native +labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with +Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want to +see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng." + +The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously bitter. "That's +what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry Whalen? Well, you +can want it with a little less blither and a little more manners." + +A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which +had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened +in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger +looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on: + +"It doesn't matter what you want--not a great deal, if the others agree +generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it matters +much in any case. What have you come to see me about?" + +"I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to be. +It isn't--" + +Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would +do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with +a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he +burst into a laugh. + +"Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I +oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he +broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, +you'd better try to see me at my chambers--or at the office in London +Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles you. You +take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let me say in +passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither more nor +less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we trekked from +the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and both slept in the +cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more of you than I did +then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want to see you any more +or any fewer. But, Barry"--his voice changed, grew warmer, +kinder--"circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of all of us +are shaped differently--yours as well as mine--here in this +pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; +and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our +Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on--in our +front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble +buccaneer--not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, where +Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and--and, 'If +you please, sir, your bath is ready'! ... Don't be an idiot-child, +Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let myself go. I don't +do it often these days--not since Jameson spilt the milk and the can +went trundling down the area. It's little time we get for dreaming, +these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the world's work and +our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, Barry; it's dreams +that drive us on, that make us see beyond the present and the +stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be Cape to Cairo in +good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you please.... Why, what's +got into you? And again, what have you come to see me about, anyhow? +You knew we were to meet at dinner at Wallstein's to-night. Is there +anything that's skulking at our heels to hurt us?" + +The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came +over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, +Byng resuming his seat meanwhile. + +Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his +words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends +to bring up to-night--a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead +as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite +of Milner and Jo?" + +A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, +loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he +looked as though squaring himself to resist attack. + +"Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to +say--or bring up, you call it?" + +"He's going to say that some one is betraying us--all we do that's of +any importance and most we say that counts--to Kruger and Leyds. He's +going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle." + +Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became +quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming--or you--suspect?" he asked, +with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes. + +Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the +face; then he said, slowly: + +"I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at +least three years old, and you know them. + +"Krool?" + +"Krool--for sure." + +"What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we +say and do?" + +"Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a +consideration." + +"Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort +of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?" + +Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it +very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there +were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or +two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England +knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London +life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by +himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, +had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin +and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the muscles. +Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself to brandy +and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two or three +minutes' silence, and then he said: + +"There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't +Krool." + +"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my +friend." + +"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I am +to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't know." +He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn. + +He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and +with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her +to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to +himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having babbled. But +certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage regarding most +critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause him to say +reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn: + +"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that." + +"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious tone. + +He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was +against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything by +his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago. + +"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped in," +Barry continued. + +"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where +trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as his +visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he pointed. "Glue +your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell me if you can +hear anything--any word I say." + +Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather +louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for +some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room. + +"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?" + +"Not a word--scarcely a murmur." + +"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like a +glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading +into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside +baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the +two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud." + +The test produced the same result. + +"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical +laugh. + +Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled +him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he had +suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had regarded +Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the Partners all +believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought came to him, +too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind. + +There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to Byng. +There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who had +been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing the +hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind of +master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could do. Yes, +there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there was Mrs. +Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the private +secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each other. What came to +Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out some words of good-bye +with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for he had a chivalrous heart +and mind, and he was not prone to be malicious. + +"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a +quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, +whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I +think--not here, my friend." + +Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the +veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for +us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm +spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal +jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it +comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one +else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no +good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will +run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, you +and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your +millions, Byng." + +With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the +veld, and shook it warmly. + +"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently. "But we're +all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here." + +"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the +music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of us. I +see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong shop. +We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, let's go +where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's going on +round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; where you +can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; where you can +have a run for your money." + +Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses +strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not +ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an +Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey." + +"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than +the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish--I can see. The Celt can always +see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this old +land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, and +nobody cares a copper about anything that matters--" + +"About Cape to Cairo, eh?" + +"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, just +the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these isles. +We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest of the +organs too." + +Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us +a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects +after the foie gras, Barry." + +Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the +hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he +did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the mantel-piece. +A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened. + +"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've +degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is +the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything." + +Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening +dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof. + +"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me +over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't +go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you." + +His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a +little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time +we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in +the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there +was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning +business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must commune +together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, there's also +the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is back, and +Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a few days, +and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the dinner. As +soon as I remembered it I left a note on your dressing-table." + +With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her soft +golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he whispered, +softly, "I hate leaving you, but--" + +"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? +It's too late to put him off." + +"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends +as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person +that's got anything to say about that." + +She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that, +coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his +friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had +forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and +she had said nothing, done nothing. + +As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far +depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the +obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on +Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no +perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she +answered: + +"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--" + +"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he rejoined. +"What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some latitude." + +"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the +responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the +dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she +closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of +satisfaction. + +"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him. + +Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected. +"Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept +into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're +wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to +remember that gown before--years ago--" + +She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and +ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you +think I wear my gowns for years?" + +"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a +frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it +looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as +new." + +"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived. +Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate +wearing them two times." + +"Then what do they do with them--after the two times?" + +"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, +if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor +cousins or their particular friends--" + +"Their particular friends--?" + +"Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her +very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart--" + +"Wait. What's 'the Mart'?" + +"The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked +discount." + +"And what becomes of them then?" + +"They are bought by ladies less fortunate." + +"Ladies who wear them?" + +"Why, what else would they do? Wear them--of course, dear child." + +Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me +there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I +could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours--of yours." + +She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but +you haven't known they were mine; that's all." + +"I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like +you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine." + +She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you +are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my +clothes." + +He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down approvingly. +"Because I only see a general effect, but I always remember colour. +Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, or whatever the +miserable coffin-shop is called?" + +"Well, not directly." + +"What do you mean by 'not directly'?" + +"Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, +then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case--a +girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and he +suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because we +were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of +lucky find--that's what he called it." + +Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of +Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like +that you have on?" + +"This--let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, of +course." + +He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown +cost--perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye. + +"Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty--maybe," she replied, with +a little burst of merriment. + +"And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and then +seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?" + +"Ruddy, do not be nasty--or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more +than twice--some of them a great many times, except when I detested +them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for +trade. That influences many ladies, of course." + +He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, or +something still harsher. + +"'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he answered. "It's +all such a hollow make-believe." + +"What is?" + +She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was +vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him--not exactly toward +her, but a change, nevertheless. + +"The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he +said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but +we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not +putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of +emptiness--of famine somewhere." + +He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow +contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of +life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, +and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to +do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind of +thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had forgotten. I +was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I was setting up +my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other fellows who +hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, Wilberforce and +I--well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into sets of people who +can afford to do certain things, and we leave such a lot of people +behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we would have clung to, +if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, or been so soddenly +selfish." + +A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges--oh, Boanerges Byng! +'Owever can you be so heloquent!" + +Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that +look which had fascinated him--and so many others--in their day. The +perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, +and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, +here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in +his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly. + +"You exquisite siren--you siren of all time," he said, with a note of +joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face +back from him.... "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did--who knows! And now you +come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my +jasmine-flower." + +His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, +belying the passion and rapture of his words. + +In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She had +heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big impulses +working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was something +moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps it was only +a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a strange impression +on her. It was remembered by them both long after, when life had +scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet and they had +passed through flood and fire. + +She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an +element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him +gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye +for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human +nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never +understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business--and +politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to +understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and +insight of which she had not thought him capable. + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers. Perhaps you did--who knows! ... And now you come down through +the centuries purified by Time--" + +The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a time +she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again and +again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in wild +dreams of her far past--once as a priestess of Isis, once as a +Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a +courtezan of Alexandria or Athens--many times as that: one of the +gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of +culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her +will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world were +well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but while +yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time had left +the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering look.... Often +and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had haunted her, +even before she was married; and she had been alternately humiliated +and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford of one of +the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens who saved her +people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her sing to him, in a +voice quite in keeping with her personality, delicate and fine and +wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its quality, with trills +like a lark--a little meretricious but captivating. He had also written +for her two verses which were as sharp and clear in her mind as the +letter he wrote when she had thrown him over so dishonourably: + + "Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; + It stilled the tumult and the overthrow + When Athens trembled to the people's will; + I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago. + + "I see the fountains, and the gardens where + You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; + I feel the quiver of the raptured air + I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now." + + +As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband +steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, +where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did he +understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really talk +to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled out of +any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened up to his +sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her thought, his +was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because it had not +been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really tried to +find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness and +subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and untrammelled +exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and adventure +upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of remorse, went +through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length and looked at +her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their natures a +chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth and +excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but had +the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full soul +of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the governing +influence in their marriage where she was concerned? + +Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years +of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone +together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which he +had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had come of +a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and heart. Even in +his faults he had ever been primitively simple and obvious. She had +been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in philanthropic +enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness preventing him from +being robbed right and left by adventurers of all descriptions; and +yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her activity in good +causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one forlorn soul whom she +had directly and personally helped, or sheltered from the storm for a +moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had dried by her own direct +personal sympathy? + +Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a +little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it +that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, +and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him +say hard things about their own two commendable selves? + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purified by +Time, to be my jasmine-flower"-- + +She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: "And +what were you a thousand years ago, my man?" + +He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose +fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting +Caesar." + +It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long +ago. + +Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened +wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared +to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have it. +This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we met. It's +the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the same style. +Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the opera. And you wore +blue the day I tried to propose to you and couldn't, and asked you down +to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" He laughed, happily almost. +"Yes, you wore blue the first time we met--like this." + +"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those +first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily smoothed +out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that day three +years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering that Ian +Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown just +before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue +this night--to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And +presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house--and +with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she +meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had +never met one--not one, neither bishop nor octogenarian. + +"Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, +lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down and +apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?" + +"Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll--" + +There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that Mr. +Stafford was in the drawing-room. + +"Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," +she added to her husband--"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel +sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house." + +Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her +arm. + +"Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over +things--over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of life +than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; but +perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together--eh?" There was +a strange, troubled longing in his look. + +She nodded and smiled. "Certainly--to-night when you get back," she +said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She +laughed, and so did he. + +As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a +shadow in her eyes and over her face. + +"Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said. + +Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and +looked back, she said: + +"Poor boy ... Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added with a +nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness she +entered to Ian Stafford. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST + + +As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and +existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He +was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's +houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, and +many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless +legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had built +for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of people whose +names counted for a good deal in the north of England, still, in newly +acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was something that +coarsened taste--an unmodulated, if not a garish, elegance which "hit +you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He asked himself why Byng +had not been content to buy one of the great mansions which could +always be had in London for a price, where time had softened all the +outlines, had given that subdued harmony in architecture which only +belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any money those wonderful +Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which had a glory quite their +own. There must, therefore, be an air of newness in the new mansion, +which was too much in keeping with the new money, the gold as yet not +worn smooth by handling, the staring, brand-new sovereigns looking like +impostors. + +As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of evening, +he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic sense. It was a +big building, severely simple in design, yet with the rich grace, +spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian palace: compact, +generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully proportionate. + +"Egad, Byng, you had a good architect--and good sense!" he said to +himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on the +scene too." + +The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the +essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see. + +When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and +outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be +seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was +noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, +and the old furniture--Italian, Spanish--which relieved the +spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence +to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill. + +As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which +maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the +hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring +of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency +to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate +artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine. + +The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It +was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking +exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its +nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its +half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the +arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much +like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew that +Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally flamboyant +taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it were. She had, like +a literary artist, polished and refined and stippled the effect, till +something of personal touch had gone, and there remained classic +elegance without the sting of life and the idiosyncrasy of its +creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room would not quite do, +though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment was not yet +complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's sitting-room his +breath came a little quicker, for here would be the real test; and +curiosity was stirring greatly in him. + +Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a +flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous audacity. +Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian lamps and +lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up cushions, +the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; but +everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with that +paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he picked +them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked by +marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all showing +the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, however, +that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them he had read +with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in one of them he +found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath which she had +written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing point. There +were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it was borne in on +him that not many of these annotated books belonged to the past three +years. The millions had come, the power and the place; but something +had gone with their coming. + +He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she entered; +and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of his +figure, the poise of the intellectual head--the type of a perfect, +well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and +executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but +she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of her +skirts and came forward. + +He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and +he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was +near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw her. She +watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was piqued to +observe that he who had in that far past always swept her with an +admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only gave her +deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the note to all +she said and did that evening--the daring, the brilliance, the light +allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment on the +present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by beauty and +by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild and desperate +revolt. + +For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's +association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of +punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing +that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a +combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not +happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet she +had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in a +sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written +her, when she turned from him to the man she married. + +The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for +his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old +place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago--ah, it was so +long!--came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, +still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world--in +that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes +had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her +realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual +passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical attraction +Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that he gave her +mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who knew the song +her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her and with so +cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not triumph in his +self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always by his careless +indifference to everything that had ever been between them. If he +treated her so because of what she had done to him, with what savagery +might not she be treated, if all that had happened in the last three +years were open as a book before him! + +Her husband--she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the +past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and +daring assault upon her heart--or emotions--from quarters of unusual +distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true +proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five +months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make +the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought a +change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard. + +"Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why +did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not realize +that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the forces +contending against her purity and devotion would never have gathered at +her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, if she had +loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have loved him, +ought to have loved him. + +The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men +instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the +imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call +upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without +intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if +not the censure, of the world--or so she thought; and in the main she +was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would +have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three +years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, +putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you--what you +are." + +Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily +greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to +dine with Wallstein. + +"But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said--"such old +friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that +kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he +continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope +Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a heavy +movement of good-nature and magnanimity. + +"Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford +to himself. "This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has +vanished, and other things are disappearing." + +At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite +appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare +simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and +stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a +mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat +with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for clever +women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his life, +save with men in his own profession chiefly. + +But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a +change, and the transition was made with much skill and sensitiveness. +Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more reflective note, and +the drift of the conversation changed. Books brought the new current; +and soon she had him moving almost unconsciously among old scenes, +recalling old contests of ideas, and venturing on bold reproductions of +past intellectual ideals. But though they were in this dangerous field +of the past, he did not once betray a sign of feeling, not even when, +poring over Coventry Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she +read the lines which they had read together so long ago, with no +thought of any significance to themselves: + + "With all my will, but much against my heart, + We two now part. + My very Dear, + Our solace is the sad road lies so clear... + Go thou to East, I West. + We will not say + There's any hope, it is so far away..." + + +He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he had +finished: + +"A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story +was--a hopeless love, of course. An affaire--an 'episode'--London +ladies now call such things." + +"You find London has changed much since you went away--in three years +only?" she asked. + +"Three years--why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged to +live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of +pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with the +clock." + +She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the mantel-piece. +"See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, the little silver +hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but what time is it +really--for you, for instance?" + +"In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so +intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger. + +"It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so exactly. You +did not miss it by a fraction." + +"It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight +o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been +dead to time--and the world." + +"You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically. + +"Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent." + +"Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?" + +"But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with +a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along +so coolly that it incensed her further. + +"Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to +still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I +could." + +Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as +she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, +childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied +the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her +more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed +him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not now +a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; that he +was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose +senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, +eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get--by +what devious ways had she travelled to find it! + +As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, +and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a +strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came from +her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her Nelson to +the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, and alone. +Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her sigh--his name, +Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and +clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had +kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and +had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she +was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and +tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born +coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, +to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng. +Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she +deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my exile, as sweet as my +revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to +whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of +that other best which time and love and life truly lived might +accomplish; and the wild thing died in him. + +The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of +Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for +the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so +much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary +taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in +so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that +she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward +renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep--that arrogant, +cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the +same sin as the person he despises-- + + "Sweet is the refuge of scorn." + +His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the +price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had +sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a +woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always +present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it +brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It +ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been +impeccable-- + + "The shaft of slander shot + Missed only the right blot!" + + +Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him +with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye. + +She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the +door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one +lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of +the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans the +veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the life. His +look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and Stafford +inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife whose hatred +was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized the antipathy. +Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had +endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to +South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to +Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved +invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt +and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured +to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary +his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had made light of +Jasmine's prejudices. + +"The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's +servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The +boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens." + +Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, +and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the +reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have +induced his servant to fetch the girl. + +"I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused. + +"Won't you see her here?" she asked. + +Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the +room. + +For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed +herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou--Jigger's sister," she said, with white +lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked +down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer a +promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but if +so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer himself. +'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all right--the best +as ever--the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and +streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best--my Gawd, 'e was +the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r gryce, wouldn't +y'r?" + +Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was +simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like +Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep +black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech +that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that +Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in +the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and +friendly help. + +"Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked. + +"It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, +Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it +ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, +not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year." + +Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her +impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to help. +Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three hours +ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they had +done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past three +years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, mothering, +passionately pitiful girl. + +"What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford. + +"I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to +Krool, who stood outside the door. + +"Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the +suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never miss +the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you'll not miss it--an' 'e ain't got +much left." + +"I will go, too--if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You +must let me go. I want to help--so much." + +"No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in +Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you +must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you will. +Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know." + +He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with +Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help. + +Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that +Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, +somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than in +all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all her +art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one tiny +stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous incident had +softened him, had broken down the barriers which had checked and +baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his smile as he said +good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the clasp of his hand. + +Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered +in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, +were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were +never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor +royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there +had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish? + +The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses +and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and +luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone +with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the +corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play softly. +Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things she knew +years before, improvising soft, passionate little movements. She took +no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, and still she sat +there playing. Then she began to sing a song which Alice Tynemouth had +written and set to music two years before. It was simply yet +passionately written, and the wail of anguished disappointment, of +wasted chances was in it-- + + "Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, + A word came to me, beautiful and good; + If I had spoken it, that message of the stars, + Love would have filled thy blood: + Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, + Thy heart a nestling bird; + A moment fled--it passed: + I seek in vain + For that forgotten word." + + +In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away into +an aching silence. + +She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead +on them. + +"When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that +strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the +beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were +brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing, +nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk +in it." + +With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went +over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in with +the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about to +drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a curious +stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to the door +that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light was still +burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was clumsily, +heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the balustrade. He was +singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin harmony with an +occasional laugh-- + + "For this is the way we do it on the veld, + When the band begins to play; + With one bottle on the table and one below the belt, + When the band begins to play--" + + +It was Rudyard, and he was drunk--almost helplessly drunk. + +A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped it. With +a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing herself on the +divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried her face in her +arms. The hours went by. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART + + +"Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own +lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden +days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything--all scientifically +measured." + +With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated +surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at +Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales. + +Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then +remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill +yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of +potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting razor? +You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world is the +same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices any +difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by jumping +into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all +concerned. That was what he wanted--to end his own life and exasperate +the foreman." + +"Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to +the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you mean. +It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives or +other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to detect +it?" + +The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert +couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; +but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly +verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of +injury artificially inflicted." + +"It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," +interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than +suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their +melodramatic indulgences--disfiguring themselves unnecessarily." + +Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" +of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose +handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the +conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it +can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll promise +not to use it." + +The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes passed +from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to Ian +Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased smile of +gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past three +years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain successful +operation in royal circles. + +Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and +held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he asked. +"Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there would be +little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done except by +the aroused expert." + +"If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the +needle above her palm. "Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, which +has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as surely as +though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would leave scarcely +the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny pin-prick, as it +were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average coroner's jury and +the average examination of the village doctor, who would die rather +than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart failure' as the +cause of death." + +Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being +so near the point," she said. + +"Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically. + +"How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, Mr. +Mappin?" asked Stafford. + +The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have a +favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the +minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men." + +He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes +held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the +needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so +far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high +price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, +perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very +reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their +friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a +great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the +thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament +Square." + +The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument will +be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, and +this is an ancient art." He tapped the case. "Turkey and the Mongol +lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for the dog!" +He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke. + +This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the +sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the +hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been +smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the dark +news had brought no personal shock. + +They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit +to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special carriage, +and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On the night +of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's house had +caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, saving the +lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it was almost +as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader than to take +him to a London hospital. + +Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and +Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and there +had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at breakfast in +St. James's Street. + +Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely +done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, Stafford +had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the surgeon said +that if the journey was successfully made, the after-results would be +all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had allowed himself to be +included in the house-party at Glencader. + +It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have +gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if +it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her +motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do +all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian +and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful pleasure. +Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together with her +duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that scene in the +silent house at midnight which had shocked her so--her husband reeling +up the staircase, singing a ribald song. + +The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to her. +She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that every +moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that Rudyard had +been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying to settle a +struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the mine itself, of +whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said before he left the +house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with Stafford, persistently +recurred to her mind. + +"What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got +everything--everything, and yet--!" Her eyes were not opened. She had +had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there +had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed--no more. +She did not see that the man she had married to love and to cherish was +slowly changing--was the change only a slow one now?--before her eyes; +losing that brave freshness which had so appealed to London when he +first came back to civilization. Something had been subtracted from his +personality which left it poorer, something had been added which made +it less appealing. Something had given way in him. There had been a +subsidence of moral energy, and force had inwardly declined, though to +all outward seeming he had played a powerful and notable part in the +history of the last three years, gaining influence in many directions, +without suffering excessive notoriety. + +On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand +rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from +drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo +and the Vaal. + +As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, +putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: + +"The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, +my locum tenens, will give him every care." + +"When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on +towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled. + +"To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can +help it." + +"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, graciously. +"Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening. +Is it not thrilling?" + +There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian +Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an +enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry +Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was +cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely +bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him. + +Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that +Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was +an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have +been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few +times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at +the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her +husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the +value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the +vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his +friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had +been set free. + +Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to +his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the opera, +where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around her +admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that first +production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she had seen +her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for society or for +social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine led had no +charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it suited +Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social environment +of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were well rewarded. + +When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had +hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at +length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see +Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with +her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her husband, +and he might return--and return still less a man than when he deserted +her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, because +of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively set, whose +transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous impulses. Last of +all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and influences where +his days had been constantly spent during the past three years. + +Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, +deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and +his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first time,--she +had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was given--a vague +suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled her. His letter had +arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her answer was +immediate--she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance first +through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long "acquaintance" with +the great singer. + +From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that +rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did not +occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a man of +the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no particular +fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's face to that +of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was nothing behind her +glance which had to do with Al'mah. + +In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley +still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, +and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded. + +Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the +Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, +and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a +vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really +was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the +limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex +who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had +provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able +and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to +treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant +wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities of +Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute +politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and +outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue and +of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the arena +of international politics. + +As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of +Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the +former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply +engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised +negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in +Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet pierced. +This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an almost +scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The author of the +profoundly planned international scheme was this young man, who had +already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look about them in +dismay; for its activities were like those of underground wires; and +every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most remote, was mined and +primed, so that each embassy played its part with almost startling +effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and France was not too near +to prevent the incalculably smooth working of a striking and +far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing that England's +Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with his equally +extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, delighted in; and +Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American high in place had +colloquially said, "that they were up against a proposition which would +take some moving." + +The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if +M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, +pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian Stafford's +coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame in +diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the +Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not +captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which +lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who +worked with him. + +With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was a +matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of +England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South +Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she +would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed to +the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, would +come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her knees. This +diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent the worst in +any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out +advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many +friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set +her higher than she was now by a political metre. + +Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to +Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through +Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was +mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed +save in a general way by the smoking-room fire. + +Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming +to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation +to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of +the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent +accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who had +saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still +garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a +place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of +his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she +knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she +married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written +him about Jasmine, again and again,--of what she did and what the world +said--and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the most +jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously jealous, +and, of course, had no right to be. + +She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy +which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court proceedings. +Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and Tynemouth gave +it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond of outdoor life, +of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and travel, to have his eye +unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. + +"Play the game--play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of +the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it +would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of +his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he +had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's interest +in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never learned. +Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by nice, +clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be +pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice +something to do, and prevented her from being lonely--and all that kind +of thing." + +Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round +according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of her +weakness for Ian Stafford--of her open and rather gushing friendship +for him--had an almost honest dislike to seeing him brought into close +relations again with the woman who had dishonourably treated him. +Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly for herself; but that selfish +consideration did not overshadow the feeling that Jasmine had cheated +at cards, as it were; and that Ian ought not to be compelled to play +with her again. + +"But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth +concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so +strong--sometimes." + +At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted +laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love +with you." + +To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's +aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" (he +made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you did." + +To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and was +told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This conversation had +occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; and henceforth Alice +had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and wherever possible. So +far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine had, not +ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed to Jasmine +that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was some new cause +to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The Jigger episode had +done much, had altered the latitudes of their association, but the +perihelion of their natures was still far off; and she was +apprehensive, watchful, and anxious. + +This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting +and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the +child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, +however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador +and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward +to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him. + +A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm +afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble +again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go +there--and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had hoped. +Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are ready. There's +the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the Murderer's Leap, and +Lover's Land--something for all tastes," he added, with a dry note to +his voice. + +"Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them +hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these +mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange the +afternoon. + +She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the only +ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it impossible +to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and welcome +Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she said. Adrian +stayed behind because he must superintend the arrangements of the +ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian Stafford stayed +because he had letters to write--ostensibly; for he actually meant to +go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message to the Prime +Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning. + +When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the +hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the +ball-room about those arrangements?" + +Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign +that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she +laughingly asked him if he would come also. + +"If you don't mind--!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he +walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at the +corridor leading to his own little sitting-room. + +A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down +into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the +servants' quarters. + +"He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but +he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words--"the best +ever!" + +Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and +presently made her way to the housekeeper's room. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE KEY IN THE LOCK + + +A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room +where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the +bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she +had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the +least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian +sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the +gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting +revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed. + +Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of +delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of +the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people +played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in making +believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She was +dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, but of +exquisite material--the soft green velvet which she had worn when she +met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a perfect gold, +wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were shining--so +blue, so deep, so alluring. + +The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and +interest. + +"It's her--me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him +like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, +delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those +flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a +holiday by some philanthropic society. + +Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the +tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical--almost +suspicious--then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden she +carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger she +had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which he +had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the old +days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the best +feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to grow at +the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried away by +a great temptation--the glitter and show of power and all that gold can +buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and vanity. If +she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be living in a +small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable quarter, with +just enough to enable them to keep their end up with people who had +five thousand a year--with no box at the opera, or house in the +country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a thriving nursery +which would be a promise of future expense--if she had married him! ... +A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in him, and he did not +despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw him coming nearer, as, +standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, one sees trailing over +the distant hills, with the light behind, a welcome and beloved figure +with face turned towards the home in the green glade. + +A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he said: +"This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see Mr. +Mappin about it." + +As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the +nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative +person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all right; +and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she added, +quizzically. + +"Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the bowl +of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly left +the room. + +"Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, +some without solution." + +"Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly. + +"Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was the +Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by +profession you were by nature." + +Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low +tone, "M. Mennaval--you know him well?" + +She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying +her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's +pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship +worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased +pleasures. + +"I know him well--yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes of +an afternoon, and if he had more time--or if I had--he would no doubt +come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I have +less of it than anything else." + +"A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind +was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though +its full significance did not possess him yet. + +"The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone +of meaning. + +"Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in +the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had +opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count +Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some +deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the +engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it was. Both +ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different way, and +M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain and somewhat +weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct so strong in +him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what Count +Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future hung in +the balance--dependent upon the success of his great diplomatic scheme. + +Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she +could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he +held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind +before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish +hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, of +an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she could +do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the unsettled +claim? If she could help to give him success, would not that, in the +end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon fade, the dust +would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; but his success +would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising through long years +to a great height, and remaining fixed and exalted. With a great belief +she believed in him and what he could do. He was a Sisyphus who could +and would roll the-huge stone to the top of the hill--and ever with +easier power. + +The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing +forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however +essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth +while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her +pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing +brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her +enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an +overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift--or curse--of +imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, +of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am +doomed--doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian Stafford +went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often in her +heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when Rudyard +reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties of her +temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the radiance which +broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and wonderful a +figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, that Fate +seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making pitfalls for her +feet. + +Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to +smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the +effort to know. + +"But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in +Moravia--which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study it." + +"If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little +difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he +himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not +got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his diplomacy. +Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian ambassador, had +checkmated him at every move towards the final victory. + +"It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling down +at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, suddenly +turning towards him again, she said: + +"But you are interested in Moravia--do you find it worth the time?" + +"Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked. + +"And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and least +consequential way," she replied. + +She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now--is it a kind of +telepathy'--that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the +power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and Slavonia. +Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning now, and I +feel"--she smiled significantly--"that I am standing on the brink of +some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, prevents me +from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a low voice. + +He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though +he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if +what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came +to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help him +as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was +trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be +the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and +better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; +could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not +dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes? + +It was for Britain--for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of +the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race +in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; +and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of +intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and +those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; +only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching +further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had +dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the +Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of +territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and the +settlement of outstanding difficulties. + +His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door +to possibilities of prodigious consequence. + +He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The crisis +was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it works +itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was spinning +hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and he must +presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called his Patent, +or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In three +months--in two months--in one month--it might be too late, for war was +coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not fulfilled +now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever abandoned. + +This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she was +skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually discreet. She +had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia had paid her the +compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would not grieve him to +see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable yet adroit +diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, and who had +a passion for philandering--unlike Count Landrassy, who had no +inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct attack in +great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the dead years +when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his existence, +they understood each other without words. + +"It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding +her with almost painful intensity. + +"Do you trust me--now--again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and her +small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, whose +eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration. + +A mournful smile stole to his lips--and stayed. "Come where we can be +quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe." + +"I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room +again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think he ought to sleep now"; +and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger comfortable. + +When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear +the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says +she's a fair wonder." + +"We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is +just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly." + +"Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed. + +"Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk +undisturbed." + +They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors +and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of +secret triumph. + +"We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they +entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between +her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her. + +"He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room +enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the +fire. + +Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing +into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful +enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened +with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on his +face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made dear by +the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low exclamation of +wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, turning to her as +though from some vision that had chained him, he saw the glow in her +eyes, the profound interest, which was like the passion of a spirit +moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as in the years gone +by--he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of himself he had now +given his very life into her hands, was making her privy to great +designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the chancelleries of +Europe. + +Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his +shoulder. "It is wonderful--wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help +you. Will let you let me win back your trust--Ian?" + +"I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last +turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally." + +"It shall be life," she said, softly. + +He turned slowly from her and went towards the door. + +"Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened--"before I drive to the +station for Al'mah?" + +He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the +corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought +Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said. + +"He did," was the reply. + +"Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his +glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added. + +"Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of +wonder. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +"I WILL NOT SING" + + +"I will not sing--it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid +with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in +determination. Her words came with low vehemence. + +Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing +and gentle. + +"Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred +people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear +you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement." + +"I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep--you understand!" +she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do what I please +with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the morning. I sang +before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," she added, with +bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng shall not be my +paying hostess." + +Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with excitement. +"I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said helplessly and +with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do that kind of +thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a social +standpoint, it isn't well-bred." + +"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry +disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the +washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in +manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile +Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?" + +"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a +desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous mood. Only +once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air charged with +catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at nothing a +dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking indigestion." + +Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of +humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained. + +"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with +a jerk of her shoulders, turned away. + +"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What +has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; +now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--" + +She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of +passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up +close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes. + +"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly. + +His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her +inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" +he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice. + +"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady voice. "Nothing. +But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me suddenly, at dinner, +as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had never before seen you in +surroundings like these. But I realized you then: I had a revelation. +You need not ask me what it was. I do not know quite. I cannot tell. It +is all vague, but it is startling, and it has gone through my heart +like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell you quite calmly, that if you +prove to be what, for the first time, I have a vision you are, I shall +never look upon your face again if I can help it. If I come to know +that you are false in nature and in act, that all you have said to me +is not true, that you have degraded me--Oh," she fiercely added, +breaking off and speaking with infinite anger and scorn--"it was only +love, honest and true, however mistaken, which could make what has been +between us endurable in my eyes! What I have thought was true love, and +its true passion, helped me to forget the degradation and the secret +shame--only the absolute honesty of that love could make me forget. But +suppose I find it only imitation; suppose I see that it is only +selfishness, only horrible, ugly self-indulgence; suppose you are a man +who plays with a human soul! If I find that to be so, I tell you I +shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more--a +thousand times more." + +She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in +her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of +sullen fire. + +"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this +later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I +will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--" + +"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I +had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It +left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a +moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of +Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come back. +Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something whispers, +'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to anything or +anybody.'" + +He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great +sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things +seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always +responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be tragical. +He essayed the old way now. + +"This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are mad. Your +home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I always was to +you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and your friend. I'll +talk it all over with you later. It's impossible now. They're ready for +you in the ball-room. The accompanist is waiting. Do, do, do be +reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late." + +A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther +away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards--late.' +No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, I +hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head in +the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make +no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false +with the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I +deceive no one, and I have no fears. But you--oh, why, why is it I feel +now, suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it +comes to me now I do not know; but it is here"--she pressed her hand +tremblingly to her heart--"and I will not act as though it wasn't here. +I'm not of this world." + +She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that +lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and +lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others--all unreal, +unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to act in +our own lives, but to be true--real and true. For one's own life as +well as one's work to be all grease-paint--no, no, no. I have hid all +that has been between us, because of things that have nothing to do +with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or +pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin--" + +"The sin of an angel--" + +She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more +from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before? + +"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued. + +"And you don't believe it now?" + +"To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I +shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their minds +or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing helplessness. "But +we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go back to London. I am +going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that I am not well enough +to sing--and indeed I am not well," she added, huskily. "I am sick at +heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched and angry and +dangerous--and bad." + +Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is +Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?" + +He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He was +kept at the mine. There's trouble--a strike. He was needed. He has +great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard Mrs. Byng +say why he had not returned." + +"No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted--I want to see him. +When will he be back?" + +"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel +about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in +there, a hundred of the best people of the county--" + +"The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted, +sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me +well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at +last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell +Mrs. Byng so." + +Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another voice, +a pleasant voice, which said: + +"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite right.... Fellowes, +won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be there in five minutes?" + +It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, +and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a +scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be +better arranged by a third disinterested person. + +After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, Fellowes +disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark inquisition. +Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of malice. Did this +elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had to do was to speak, +and she would succumb to his blandishment? He should see. + +He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair. + +"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she +remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the +chair, nevertheless. + +"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of the +five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world." + +"I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a +protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself. + +"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that low, +soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one +chancellerie of Europe.... "What are you going to sing to-night?" he +added. + +"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I +said to Mr. Fellowes." + +"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely +you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to +me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!" + +His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the +instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his assumption +of dominancy had its advantage. + +"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same thing. +I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately. + +"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is +a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the +five," he added, looking at his watch. + +"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her +firm lips did not soften. + +He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be +final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. + +"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine +that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that +ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down +there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and this +is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my life, +do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something quite +big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you had +let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give them +drink." + +"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution +slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her. + +"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between +ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as +it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on +humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a +service--" + +"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it +as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he +saved me from the flames, and since then--" + +Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a +far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised some +one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he should +hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--" + +"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from +her face and leaving a strange softness behind it. + +"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's an +original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have done +for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to +disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his +disappointment--he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and +he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's +essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much pain +you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your little +voice oh, madame la cantatrice?" + +Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. +"I've been upset and angry and disturbed--and I don't know what," she +said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once +in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." ... She stopped +and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in her eyes. +"You are very understanding and gentle--and sensible," she added, with +brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for Rudyard Byng +and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever diplomatist." She +gave a spasmodic laugh. + +"Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said you'd +sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way." + +He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he hurried +her to the ball-room. + +Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to +that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds and +curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang. + +Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well--with so much +feeling and an artist's genius--not even that night of all when she +made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour +had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling +power the story of a soul. + +Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there +came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, +enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned +towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the +light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, +after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's +memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the +audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone +before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great chamber. +Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the song, and the +soft night filled its soul with melody. + +A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly +of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were +those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide +of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now +flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the +strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World. + +Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of +Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child +lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the +misery of that time swept over her--its rebellion, its hideous fear, +its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, +now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her +then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her +own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound +save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke +back their tears. + +Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more +grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly up +the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were sunken +and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow voice: + +"At the mine--an accident. The Baas he go down to save--he not come up." + +With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her +in an instant. + +"The Baas--the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the +horses--come." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE BAAS + + +There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had +been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was +it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes all +men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful body, to +produce other men who will in due days return to the same great mother +to rest and be still? It mattered little whether malevolence had +planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident alone had been +responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, woebegone women wrung +their hands, and haggard, determined men stood by with bowed heads, +ready to offer their lives to save those other lives far down below, if +so be it were possible. + +The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars +and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night and +darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre was +travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made +beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities of +progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque +country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, +and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a +cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, fed +by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and level-headed +labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and threatening; +then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some foolishness on the +part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening the field, adding +bitterness profound to the discontent and strife. + +Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the +struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its +dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in +South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be +the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to +the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had +given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had +been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had +afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carrying +it better than any. + +If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a +settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had +it not been for a collision between a government official and a miners' +leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, when Byng +had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the quarrel. He had +laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest and threats of +violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking heavily--but +without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and there, mostly +among the men themselves, talking to them in little groups, arguing +simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and figures, quietly +showing them the economic injustice which lay behind their full +demands, and suggesting compromises. + +He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was +"class against class--labour against capital, the man against the +master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not +man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some were +disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort as that +sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained obstinate. The +most that he did during the long afternoon and evening was to prevent +the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a miner's kitchen, +there came the explosion: the accident or crime--which, like the lances +in an angry tumour, let out the fury, enmity, and rebellion, and gave +human nature its chance again. The shock of the explosion had been +heard at Glencader, but nothing was thought of it, as there had been +much blasting in the district for days. + +"There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the +news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups +running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as +curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on the +lower levels with life on the higher plateaux. + +Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against +the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade +him, he took his place with two miners with the words: + +"I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there knowing +the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so lower away, +lads." + +He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last +there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead +bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did not +come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the places +of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril of +falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men were +rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the surface +and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose husbands +or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without time to +strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left below, +and these were brothers who had married but three months before. They +were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just begun, and home +still welcome and alluring--warm-faced, bonny women to meet them at the +door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and cheer them away to +work in the morning. These four lovers had been the target for the +good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the whole field; for the +twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two peas, and their wives were +cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, and estate. These twin +toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng forcing his way to the place +where they had worked. With him was one other miner of great courage +and knowledge, who had gone with other rescue parties in other +catastrophes. + +It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small +explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the rescuer +of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and imprisoned near a +spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed. + +Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, +Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian +Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, +stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans +that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they had +not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking miner, +called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in command. His +look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on whom you could +rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable expression. Behind him +were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their faces showing nothing of +that pity in their hearts which drove them to risk all to save the +lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity and humanity? Was there +also something of that perdurable cohesion of class against class; the +powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, the shoulder-to-shoulder +combination of war; the tribal fanaticism which makes brave men out of +unpromising material? Maybe something of this element entered into the +heroism which had been displayed; but whatever the impulse or the +motive, the act and the end were the same--men's lives were in peril, +and they were risking their own to rescue them. + +When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself to +the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing Brengyn +approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart miner a +leader of men. + +"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose +white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with courage. +There was something akin in the expression of her face and that of +other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood apart, some +with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst with regnant +resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so much more +poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the weariness of +labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the same look in +them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this communion of suffering +and danger. + +"Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where +they are, but--" + +"You think they are--dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice. + +"I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring +them out. It's more lives to be wasted." + +Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a +thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, Mr. +Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you." + +Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to +say?" he asked, gloomily. + +"I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I +was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you about +mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've been +down, I know." + +Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," +he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, +and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is +taking it on?" + +"I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward. + +"I--I," answered three other men of the house-party. + +Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on +Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart +almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer? + +Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes +dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to +himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games +of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always. + +Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a +weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been suddenly +emptied. + +Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his eyes. +"There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How many +gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!" he added, as +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded. + +Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was happening. But +presently she understood that there was one near, owing everything to +her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save him--on the +thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken. + +"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at Adrian +Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame. + +Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who +sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty +shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he +asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?" + +Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's +back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which +filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the men. + +"Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's only +one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a small, +wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--"here, Jim Gawley, +you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, no," he +added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no missis, +nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small places, +and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to Stafford +and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said to +Stafford--"if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a try. +You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was set. + +"You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say." + +"My word goes?" + +"Right. Your word goes. Let's get on." + +Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth +laid a hand on her arm. + +"He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered. + +Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to +Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside +Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth. + +Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the chances +are?" he asked in a low tone. + +"Go to--bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice +was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left behind. +Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded to +Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the white +feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of class his +own class had suffered. + +"Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em +comfortable. You've got a gift that way." + +Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit +and watched the preparations for the descent. + +Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so +bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on +the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though +wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of +ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the valley. +All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the valley +were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled life--that +sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck terror to +the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when it has been +the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, discontented +toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, wrapped in a +warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and waited also, she +seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was being worked out +in these labour-centres where, between capital and the work of men's +hands, there was so apparent a gulf of disproportionate return. + +The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the +men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to +those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were houses +of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth had gone +from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and had left +everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt to soften +the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended on the +weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a dark +corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had suddenly +grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival at +Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on. + +Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by +Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved +living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men +near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried +to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy and +whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked at +her in wonder. + +Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being of +a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which +Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich and +the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit and +great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? Yes, +there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her husband's +life was in infinite danger,--had not Brengyn said that his chances +were only one in a thousand?--death stared her savagely in the face; +yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not afford the +luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing indolence; to +whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them into action. How +well they all behaved, these society butterflies--Jasmine, Lady +Tynemouth, and the others! But what a wonderful motherliness and +impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense did Al'mah the +singing-woman show! + +Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people +felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every +motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work +of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the +valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming hair +and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the hills to +the deep woods, insane with grief and woe. + +Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the coverings +from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for in her +life she had loved two men who had trampled on her self-respect, had +shattered all her pride of life, had made her ashamed to look the world +in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been despicable and cruel, a +liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen the man to whom she had +given all that was left of her heart and faith disgrace himself and his +class before the world by a cowardice which no woman could forgive. + +Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to +prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the +respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the +moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken +him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in a +few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done. + +About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage +where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous operation, +she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, whose peace +had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that distracted waif of +the world, fleeing from the pain of life. + +An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees +against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light. + +"No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing +for me--nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast in +pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star caught +her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness stole +over her. + +"My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered. + +Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, +the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with +sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she +thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe +him--ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he +had only been a man to-night--" + +At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's +mouth--a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past her. One +was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering her cloak +around her Al'mah sped after them. + +A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward +it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way +for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild +murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from the +tower of a mosque--a resonant monotony, in which a dominant principle +cries. + +A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, +gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride. + +Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies +carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men whom +fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them were the +young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured endearments +grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried Rudyard Byng, +who could command the less certain concentration of a heart. The men +whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater wealth, a more +precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of the interests of +these workers were limited, but their souls were commingled with other +souls bound to them by the formalities; and every minute of their days, +every atom of their forces, were moving round one light, the light upon +the hearthstone. These men were carried ahead of Byng now, as though by +the ritual of nature taking their rightful place in life's procession +before him. + +Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was +an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the +tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in part, +the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there was, too, +a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her heart,--pity for +Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly even to her own +soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of inevitableness, of the +continuance of things which she was too weak to alter. + +Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as she +walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office near +by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a tall +figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two dark eyes +were turned towards her ever and anon. + +Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that +was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have saved +Rudyard--you, Ian," it said. + +With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the +manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my +life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you." + +"I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's emotions. +The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness in its +train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their eyes or +feeling a flush in their cheeks. + +To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were +restored to them. + +"Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast and +nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye." + +That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down +his life for his friend--and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two +rescued men were in one sense--young socialists--enemies to the present +social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the aristocrat +and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their hands in the +same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same sense of +elementary justice, pity, courage, and love. + +"Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own--to their +capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was +theirs, complete and paying large dividends. + +To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim Gawley, +he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it prime. We +couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng as had +sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; an' there +was Mr. Stafford--him--" pointing to Ian, who, with misty eyes, was +watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit better nor +any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank their stars +that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done my duty, I +hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done more--Mr. Byng and Mr. +Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads--no, this ain't a time for +cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands." + +His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as old +as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same. + +The strike was over--at a price too big for human calculation; but it +might have been bigger still. + +Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and +waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his feet +and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to the +darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep as in +that of the singing-woman. + +"Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily. + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WORLD WELL LOST + + +People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived +before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were in +the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, and +the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and +otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high +command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of +title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels +of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; +high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or +commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of +contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic amateurs +who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian auxiliary +to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a home of +convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing for chance +of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, good for +anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit by hard +riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical culture, +that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was going. + +Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation +and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he +was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there +almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see +Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see +M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house, +but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable +restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been +difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the +lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman +and to diplomacy. + +Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning the +ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information as +to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also so +constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to +Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less +dangerous than impressionable. + +In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for +beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost +unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked +preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from +Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, +however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking +pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once became +possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all others in +London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a kind that +stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily dulled by +dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but there was +in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through it the +material became alive, buoyant and magnetic. + +Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her +she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was +keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real +power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled and +well-disciplined adroitness and evasions. + +Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to +intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of +rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he +allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery +inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its +ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international +relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which +might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of +international attachments not unlike treachery. + +Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of M. +Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no +intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him +strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, but +the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully protects +a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away from it; +which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive women +into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if they +climb at all. + +He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a +great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at the +Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude for +his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a passing +effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of making +light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their case an +evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it all. If they +had been less rich, if their house had been small, if their +acquaintances had been fewer, if ... + +It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with +the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his +success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been +obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got +beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life +itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged +her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had changed, +and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was now a +dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy circumstances, +might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all served to twist +her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she was engaged in a +game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the thread of +sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she started +aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the +deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home +life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of the +chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring kept +her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure. + +Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing +Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of +her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new +intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and thrived. Ian +scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between them. He only +realized that delight which comes from working with another for a +cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such deeper +significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They both +experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret knowledge +and a pact of mutual silence and purpose. + +"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been +able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had +turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with +him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose +influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there +still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the +removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would be +secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that case +Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office itself, +or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that splendid +sphere. + +"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near +reality as her own deceived soul could permit. + +With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in +which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied: + +"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and +you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of +youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of hope. I +feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood tree, +and--" + +"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a little +laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen them. They +were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a fever devouring +the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate or tragedy behind. + +Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her +eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned +his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions +marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of +vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he +gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, +with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition +smothered him. + +But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near the +end of the journey." + +"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered +her eyes, and then raised them again to his. + +The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any +one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he +had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable +force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping him +as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had reached +the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by thread, +the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the best as the +worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land enchanted--for a brief +moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a veil of plague over the +scene of beauty, passion, and madness. + +Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body +swayed slightly towards him. + +With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms +and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine, +my love!" he murmured. + +Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not done. +I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such pay." + +He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It +stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, +I--" + +He drew her closer. + +"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell +me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not +only because--" + +He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first to +what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for good +or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing." + +She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting +joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter." + +He looked at her questioningly. + +"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched +her arms up joyously, radiantly. + +"The world well lost!" she cried. + +Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which +intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole +being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment +in daring draughts of it. + +"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers. + +Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to +his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had won +back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its +millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and +skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers +again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for +this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her will +had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was possible +to mortal pleasure. + +Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a +new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon +the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no +abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those +joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and the +mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable. + +A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones +like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts +that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in +peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded. + +Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical +change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a +servant now entered with a note. + +Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of +excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was +sufficient. + +"Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into his +hands. + + +"Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The +Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be +ratified. May I dine with you to-night? + +"Yours, M. + +"P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our +young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.' + +"M." + + +"Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater +thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can +do our work without interference." + +"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was +clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during +the past few moments. + +Then he clasped her in his arms again. + +As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain +putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this +international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had +written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine +with you to-night? ... M." + +His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in the +tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and +humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this +intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the philanderer. +His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns. + +A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He +carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction. + +"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We will +clinch it instantly. Let us have the code." + +As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, +dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger +may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, +for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I +wonder how Landrassy will take it." + +He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a better +one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," he +added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to clinch +it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE COMING OF THE BAAS + + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" + +Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the doorway. +"Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the faithful, loyal +offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of the Baas.... For +God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled with an oath, and, +snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw the contents at the +half-caste. + +Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the face. +Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his cheeks, his +eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry Whalen and the +scene before him. + +The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation +pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was +thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs +of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were everywhere. +Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct satisfied for +the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; and the tables +where they had sat were in a state of disorder more suggestive of a +"dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor Square. + +No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the +establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host +and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De +Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he +was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by +being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous +to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was +hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of +that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and +his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance--save when he had +his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of +murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it +was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within +these walls "between drinks." + +The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or +the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at +which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer +took away a pocketful of gold--partly fee. Only a few of all the group, +great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves against +possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward anxiety, +because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, for the +wise act and the manoevre that would win. + +Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both +elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but +he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he had, +in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a +banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, +Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a +good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them--not without +some truth--valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the +early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to +most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their +general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose. + +Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any +real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a +doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health +fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, and +the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, from +his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the day +when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at +Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, and +Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the gallows +for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly resented the +change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had gripped the +situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, giving as much +help to the government of the day as to his colleagues and all British +folk on the Rand. + +But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this time. +The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng was not +the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour at the +Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain physical +degeneracy--he had been too slow in recovering from the few bad hours +spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still consulted +him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; but secret +as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not so secret +that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of Jasmine, +financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful of his +influence, did their best to present him in the worst light possible. +It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his wine, and that +his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times was not in keeping +with the English climate, but belonged to lands of drier weather and +more absorptive air. + +"What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool +dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his pocket. +The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own glasses, +and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their eyes. + +"Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle of +coins followed. + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the doorway. + +"Gone--went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What +is it, Krool?" + +"The Baas--" + +"The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is +gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at +Lichtenburg." + +Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry +Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," he +said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom." + +He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his +body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his +teeth showing like those of a wolf. + +"The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will have +your heart--and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved into +the darkness without, closing the door behind him. + +A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the weird +utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the gamblers +suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half furtively at +one another. + +The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered. + +"Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the +green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though by +common consent. + +"Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with irritation. +"What's the sense in saying things like that to a servant?" + +"How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I +didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you--to +any of you?" + +"Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen. + +"And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the Rand +had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but this +not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the +directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination +of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into the +hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him into--what +he was. + +"Yes, Byng thed good-night to me--deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so +damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to +me." + +"Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up +his arms and yawning. + +"Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier," interposed +De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice. + +"Why?" growled out Barry Whalen. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was +the slow reply. + +For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though +some one had heard what had been said--some one who ought not to have +heard. + +That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had +started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at +twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the +cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into +a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw +himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South Africa +must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an ultimatum +before the British government was ready to act; and that preparations +must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and consequences. +Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from day to day, +and what had been arranged yesterday morning required modification this +evening. + +He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the +gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be alone. +Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged by +Jasmine, though he liked to be with her--liked so much to be with her, +and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside her. +This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with her, to +dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find that she had +arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh he had begged +her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual depression, he +had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De Lancy Scovel's house. + +Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were +walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden +his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet +inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked +excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell +like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment wrong. +Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his attitude +toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a warmth which +more than surprised them. It was as though he was subconsciously aware +of some great impending change. It may be there whispered through the +clouded space that lies between the dwelling-house of Fate and the +place where a man's soul lives the voice of that Other Self, which +every man has, warning him of darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak +coming on. + +However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had +drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly +heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had fallen +asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room. + +Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble or +our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy Scovel +said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier." + +Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring--just a wide opening of +the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new sense +of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his friends +talked loudly in his very ears. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm." + +His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the +moment's silence following these suggestive words. + +"Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the +stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after ourselves, +and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us." + +"But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us but +'d put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature to +sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going right +for him in the place where things matter most. + +"Can't he see? Doesn't he see--anything?" asked a little wizened +lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of +three of their great companies. + +"See--of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell--at least," +replied Barry Whalen, scornfully. + +"He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming. + +"He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower--wrong for +him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name +is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism. + +"They they there's no doubt about it--she's throwing herself away. +Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed Clifford +Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen. "Diplomathy is all very well, +but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He laughed as +only one of his kidney can laugh. + +Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was +standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat +in every muscle. + +"Shut up--curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to +cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got +to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is +Byng--before the world. We've got to help him--got to help him, I say." + +"Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," +interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's +asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing." + +"And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, acidly. +"One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can put it +right." + +No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to +say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for +the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the +silence. + +De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards +the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all +stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little +room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared. + +For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did +not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make +way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway. + +At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, +impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips +opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of +their sight. + +No one followed. They knew their man. + +"My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at +the table, with his head between his hands. + +The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De +Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the night +remorsefully. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? + + +Slowly, heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through +the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some +engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and +lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his +humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was +not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been +essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized +surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to +come into his own--the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His +powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big +essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had little +intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the situation now +upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly paralyzed. Like some +huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its punishment with heavy, +sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it were, seen through a +ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance of repartee and skill +in the delicate contest of the mind had ever been a wonder to him, +though less so of late than earlier in their married life. Perhaps this +was because his senses were more used to it, more blunted; or was it +because something had gone from her--that freshness of mind and body, +that resilience of temper and spirit, without which all talk is travail +and weariness? He had never thought it out, though he was dimly +conscious of some great loss--of the light gone from the evening sky. + +Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his +girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial +stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and +turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had really +been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine had made +it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was the product +of her taste and design. It had been home because it was associated +with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to South Africa +without her the year before--there had come a change, at first almost +imperceptible, then broadening and deepening. + +At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a +feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which they +saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other people. His +primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not bitterly, but +confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it was; and he +thought that if he had patience he would come to understand it in time. +But the understanding did not come, and on that ominous, prophetic day +before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian Stafford had dined with +Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent Street, there had been a +wild, aching protest against it all. Not against Jasmine--he did not +blame her; he only realized that she was different from what he had +thought she was; that they were both different from what they had been; +and that--the light had gone from the evening sky. + +But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed +his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking, +intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply +never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which he +had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the +universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had +married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, +except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as +Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to the +woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and +there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not +a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration. + +Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had +involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in the +distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And now, +as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,--so did +the weight of slander drag him down--his thoughts suddenly saw a +picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was +after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives +lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the +Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in +arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face +danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open road +together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where the +great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a stray +lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on alone +to a spot in the Matoppos, since made famous and sacred. + +Where John Cecil Rhodes sleeps on that high plateau of convex hollow +stone, with the great natural pillars standing round like sentinels, +and all the rugged unfinished hills tumbling away to an unpeopled +silence, he came that time to rest his sorrowing soul. The woods, the +wild animal life, had been left behind, and only a peaceful middle +world between God and man greeted his stern eyes. + +Now, here in London, at that corner where the lonely white statue +stands by Londonderry House, as he moved in a dream of pain, with vast +weights like giant manacles hampering every footstep, inwardly raging +that into his sweet garden of home the vile elements of slander had +been thrown, yet with a terrible and vague fear that something had gone +terribly wrong with him, that far-off day spent at the Matoppos flashed +upon his sight. + +Through streets upon streets he had walked, far, far out of his way, +subconsciously giving himself time to recover before he reached his +home; until the green quiet of Hyde Park, the soft depths of its empty +spaces, the companionable and commendable trees, greeted his senses. +Then, here, suddenly there swam before his eyes the bright sky over +those scarred and jagged hills beyond the Matoppos, purple and grey, +and red and amethyst and gold, and his soul's sight went out over the +interminable distance of loneliness and desolation which only ended +where the world began again, the world of fighting men. He saw once +more that tumbled waste of primeval creation, like a crazed sea +agitated by some Horror underneath, and suddenly transfixed in its +plunging turmoil--a frozen concrete sorrow, with all active pain gone. +He heard the loud echo of his feet upon that hollow plateau of rock, +with convex skin of stone laid upon convex skin, and then suddenly the +solid rock which gave no echo under his tread, where Rhodes lies +buried. He saw all at once, in the shining horizon at different points, +black, angry, marauding storms arise and roar and burst: while all the +time above his head there was nothing but sweet sunshine, into which +the mists of the distant storms drifted, and rainbows formed above him. +Upon those hollow rocks the bellow of the storms was like the rumbling +of the wheels of a million gun-carriages; and yet high overhead there +were only the bright sun and faint drops of rain falling like mystic +pearls. + +And then followed--he could hear it again, so plainly, as his eyes now +sought the friendly shades of the beeches and the elms yonder in Hyde +Park!--upon the air made denser by the storm, the call of a lonely bird +from one side of the valley. The note was deep and strong and clear, +like the bell-bird of the Australian salt-bush plains beyond the +Darling River, and it rang out across the valley, as though a soul +desired its mate; and then was still. A moment, and there came across +the valley from the other side, stealing deep sweetness from the hollow +rocks, the answer of the bird which had heard her master's call. +Answering, she called too, the viens ici of kindred things; and they +came nearer and nearer and nearer, until at last their two voices were +one. + +In that wild space there had been worked out one of the great wonders +of creation, and under the dim lamps of Park Lane, in his black, +shocked mood, Rudyard recalled it all by no will of his own. Upon his +eye and brain the picture had been registered, and in its appointed +time, with an automatic suggestion of which he was ignorant and +innocent, it came to play its part and to transform him. + +The thought of it all was like a cool hand laid upon his burning brow. +It gave him a glimpse of the morning of life. + +The light was gone from the evening sky: but was it gone forever? + +As he entered his house now he saw upon a Spanish table in the big hall +a solitary bunch of white roses--a touch of simplicity in an area of +fine artifice. Regarding it a moment, black thoughts receded, and +choosing a flower from the vase he went slowly up the stairs to +Jasmine's room. + +He would give her this rose as the symbol of his faith and belief in +her, and then tell her frankly what he had heard at De Lancy Scovel's +house. + +For the moment it did not occur to him that she might not be at home. +It gave him a shock when he opened the door and found her room empty. +On her bed, like a mesh of white clouds, lay the soft linen and lace +and the delicate clothes of the night; and by the bed were her tiny +blue slippers to match the blue dressing-gown. Some gracious things for +morning wear hung over a chair; an open book with a little cluster of +violets and a tiny mirror lay upon a table beside a sofa; a footstool +was placed at a considered angle for her well-known seat on the sofa +where the soft-blue lamp-shade threw the light upon her book; and a +little desk with dresden-china inkstand and penholder had little +pockets of ribbon-tied letters and bills--even business had an air of +taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a +large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward the +pillow where she would lay her head. + +How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the +room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first time. +There was another photograph of himself on her dressing-table. It had +no companion there; but on another table near were many photographs; +four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, old friends like Ian +Stafford--and M. Mennaval. + +His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his +veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers +clinched. + +Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, +Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, +but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held +in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over +to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid +the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to +the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged, +his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he +laid with the rose on her pillow. + +As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat +of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue slippers, +blue dressing-gown--all blue, the colour in which he had first seen her. + +Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the picture +followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face suddenly +darkened it. + +"You not ring, Baas," Krool said. + +Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury +in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so? + +"Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed. + +Krool returned. + +"Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at +midnight, as I told you?" + +"Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, Baas. +There the cable--two." He pointed to the dressing-table. + +Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them. + +One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The +code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words. + +They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and +that the worst must be faced. + +He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, +covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny. + +"That will do, Krool; wake me at seven," he said, quietly, but with +suppressed malice in his tone. + +Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by +the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he +had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool--without +reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had +whispered something to his mind about Krool--something terrible and +malign? + +In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine till +the morning. How late she was! It was one o'clock, and yet this was not +the season. She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the months of +late parties. + +As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, +Krool's face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, +ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep. + +Perhaps the most troubled moment of the night came an hour after he +went to bed. + +Then it was that a face bent over him for a minute, a fair face, with +little lines contracting the ripe lips, which were redder than usual, +with eyes full of a fevered brightness. But how harmonious and sweetly +ordered was the golden hair above! Nothing was gone from its lustre, +nothing robbed it of its splendour. It lay upon her forehead like a +crown. In its richness it seemed a little too heavy for the tired face +beneath, almost too imperial for so slight and delicate a figure. + +Rudyard stirred in his sleep, murmuring as she leaned over him; and his +head fell away from her hand as she stretched out her fingers with a +sudden air of pity--of hopelessness, as it might seem from her look. +His face restlessly turned to the wall--a vexed, stormy, anxious face +and head, scarred by the whip of that overlord more cruel and tyrannous +than Time, the Miserable Mind. + +She drew back with a little shudder. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, as she had +said that evening when Ian Stafford came to her after the estranging +and scornful years, and she had watched Rudyard leave her--to her fate +and to her folly. + +"Poor Ruddy!" + +With a sudden frenzied motion of her hands she caught her breath, as +though some pain had seized her. Her eyes almost closed with the shame +that reached out from her heart, as though to draw the veil of her +eyelids over the murdered thing before her--murdered hope, slaughtered +peace: the peace of that home they had watched burn slowly before their +eyes in the years which the locust had eaten. + +Which the locust had eaten--yes, it was that. More than once she had +heard Rudyard tell of a day on the veld when the farmer surveyed his +abundant fields with joy, with the gay sun flaunting it above; and +suddenly there came a white cloud out of the west, which made a weird +humming, a sinister sound. It came with shining scales glistening in +the light and settled on the land acre upon acre, morgen upon morgen; +and when it rose again the fields, ready for the harvest, were like a +desert--the fields which the locust had eaten. So had the years been, +in which Fortune had poured gold and opportunity and unlimited choice +into her lap. She had used them all; but she had forgotten to look for +the Single Secret, which, like a key, unlocks all doors in the House of +Happiness. + +"Poor Ruddy!" she said, but even as she said it for the second time a +kind of anger seemed to seize her. + +"Oh, you fool--you fool!" she whispered, fiercely. "What did you know +of women! Why didn't you make me be good? Why didn't you master me--the +steel on the wrist--the steel on the wrist!" + +With a little burst of misery and futile rage she went from the room, +her footsteps uneven, her head bent. One of the open letters she +carried dropped from her hand onto the floor of the hall outside. She +did not notice it. But as she passed inside her door a shadowy figure +at the end of the hall watched her, saw the letter drop, and moved +stealthily forward towards it. It was Krool. + +How heavy her head was! Her worshipping maid, near dead with fatigue, +watched her furtively, but avoided the eyes in the mirror which had a +half-angry look, a look at once disturbed and elated, reckless and +pitiful. Lablanche was no reader of souls, but there was something here +beyond the usual, and she moved and worked with unusual circumspection +and lightness of touch. Presently she began to unloose the coils of +golden hair; but Jasmine stopped her with a gesture of weariness. + +"No, don't," she said. "I can't stand your touch tonight, Lablanche. +I'll do the rest myself. My head aches so. Good-night." + +"I will be so light with it, madame," Lablanche said, protestingly. + +"No, no. Please go. But the morning, quite early." + +"The hour, madame?" + +"When the letters come, as soon as the letters come, Lablanche--the +first post. Wake me then." + +She watched the door close, then turned to the mirror in front of her +and looked at herself with eyes in which brooded a hundred thoughts and +feelings: thoughts contradictory, feelings opposed, imaginings +conflicting, reflections that changed with each moment; and all under +the spell of a passion which had become in the last few hours the most +powerful influence her life had ever known. Right or wrong, and it was +wrong, horribly wrong; wise or unwise, and how could the wrong be wise! +she knew she was under a spell more tyrannous than death, demanding +more sacrifices than the gods of Hellas. + +Self-indulgent she had been, reckless and wilful and terribly modern, +taking sweets where she found them. She had tried to squeeze the orange +dry, in the vain belief that Wealth and Beauty can take what they want, +when they want it, and that happiness will come by purchase; only to +find one day that the thing you have bought, like a slave that revolts, +stabs you in your sleep, and you wake with wide-eyed agony only to die, +or to live--with the light gone from the evening sky. + +Suddenly, with the letters in her hand with which she had entered the +room, she saw the white rose on her pillow. Slowly she got up from the +dressing-table and went over to the bed in a hushed kind of way. With a +strange, inquiring, half-shrinking look she regarded the flower. One +white rose. It was not there when she left. It had been brought from +the hall below, from the great bunch on the Spanish table. Those white +roses, this white rose, had come from one who, selfish as he was, knew +how to flatter a woman's vanity. From that delicate tribute of flattery +and knowledge Rudyard had taken this flowering stem and brought it to +her pillow. + +It was all too malevolently cynical. Her face contracted in pain and +shame. She had a soul to which she had never given its chance. It had +never bloomed. Her abnormal wilfulness, her insane love of pleasure, +her hereditary impulses, had been exercised at the expense of the great +thing in her, the soul so capable of memorable and beautiful deeds. + +As she looked at the flower, a sense of the path by which she had come, +of what she had left behind, of what was yet to chance, shuddered into +her heart. + +That a flower given by Adrian Fellowes should be laid upon her pillow +by her husband, by Rudyard Byng, was too ghastly or too devilishly +humorous for words; and both aspects of the thing came to her. Her face +became white, and almost mechanically she put the letters she held on a +writing-table near; then coming to the bed again she looked at the rose +with a kind of horror. Suddenly, however, she caught it up, and +bursting into a laugh which was shrill and bitter she threw it across +the room. Still laughing hysterically, with her golden hair streaming +about her head, folding her round like a veil which reached almost to +her ankles, she came back to the chair at the dressing-table and sat +down. + +Slowly drawing the wonderful soft web of hair over her shoulders, she +began to weave it into one wide strand, which grew and grew in length +till it was like a great rope of spun gold. Inch by inch, foot by foot +it grew, until at last it lay coiled in her lap like a golden serpent, +with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must +have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is--or was--in +Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her +hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her +horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as +she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon +with which she had tied the shining rope. + +With the mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she +held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that +it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her +fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again--a low and +discordant laugh it was now. + +"Such imaginings--I think I must be mad," she murmured. + +Then she leaned her elbows on the dressing-table and looked at herself +in the glass. + +"Am I not mad?" she asked herself again. Then there stole across her +face a strange, far-away look, bringing a fresh touch of beauty to it, +and flooding it for a moment with that imaginative look which had been +her charm as a girl, a look of far-seeing and wonder and strange light. + +"I wonder--if I had had a mother!" she said, wistfully, her chin in her +hand. "If my mother had lived, what would I have been?" + +She reached out to a small table near, and took from it a miniature at +which she looked with painful longing. "My dear, my very dear, you were +so sweet, so good," she said. "Am I your daughter, your own +daughter--me? Ah, sweetheart mother, come back to me! For God's sake +come--now. Speak to me if you can. Are you so very far away? +Whisper--only whisper, and I shall hear. + +"Oh, she would, she would, if she could!" her voice wailed, softly. +"She would if she could, I know. I was her youngest child, her only +little girl. But there is no coming back. And maybe there is no going +forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops--all stops, for +ever and ever and ever, amen! ...Amen--so be it. Ah, I even can't +believe in that! I can't even believe in God and Heaven and the +hereafter. I am a pagan, with a pagan's heart and a pagan's ways." + +She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment. "Ruddy had a +glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back. Ruddy said +to me that day, 'If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers.' ... And it is true--by all the gods of all the +worlds, it is true. Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared +for--pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower. And Ian--and Ian, yes, +Ian! I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not +true." + +She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a +great burning. + +"But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even! I wonder.... Not then, +not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now--now? Do--do +I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, or is it +only beauty and pleasure and--me? ... Are they really happy who believe +in God and live like--like her?" She gazed at her mother's portrait +again. "Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then she was +gone--so soon. And I shall never see her, I who never saw her with eyes +that recall.... And if I could see her, would I? I am a pagan--would I +try to be like her, if I could? I never really prayed, because I never +truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and that was all +soul and understanding. And what is to come of it, or what will become +of me? ... I can't go back, and going on is madness. Yes, yes, it is +madness, I know--madness and badness--and dust at the end of it all. +Beauty gone, pleasure gone.... I do not even love pleasure now as I +did. It has lost its flavour; and I do not even love beauty as I did. +How well I know it! I used to climb hills to see a sunset; I used to +walk miles to find the wood anemones and the wild violets; I used to +worship a pretty child ... a pretty child!" + +She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly. "A pretty child.... +Other people's pretty children, and music and art and trees and the +sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild animals ... and +a pretty child. I wonder, I wonder if--" + +But she got no farther with that thought. "I shall hate everything on +earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is +going. The freshness of sense has gone, somehow. I am not stirred as I +used to be, not by the same things. If I lose that sense I shall kill +myself. Perhaps that would be the easiest way now. Just the overdose +of--" + +She took a little phial from the drawer of the dressing-table. "Just +the tiny overdose and 'good-bye, my lover, good-bye.'" Again that hard +little laugh of bitterness broke from her. "Or that needle Mr. Mappin +had at Glencader. A thrust of the point, and in an instant gone, and no +one to know, no one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to pile +shame upon shame. Just blackness--blackness all at once, and no light +or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the garden all +withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead--the pretty +children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were born, +that never lived in Jasmine's garden." + +As there had come to Rudyard premonition of evil, so to-night, in the +hour of triumph, when, beyond peradventure, she had got for Ian +Stafford what would make his career great, what through him gave +England security in her hour of truth, there came now to her something +of the real significance of it all. + +She had got what she wanted. Her pride had been appeased, her vanity +satisfied, her intellect flattered, her skill approved, and Ian was +hers. But the cost? + +Words from Swinburne's threnody on Baudelaire came to her mind. How +often she had quoted them for their sheer pagan beauty! It was the kind +of beauty which most appealed to her, which responded to the element of +fatalism in her, the sense of doom always with her since she was a +child, in spite of her gaiety, her wit, and her native eloquence. She +had never been happy, she had never had a real illusion, never aught +save the passion of living, the desire to conquer unrest: + + "And now, no sacred staff shall break in blossom, + No choral salutation lure to light + The spirit sick with perfume and sweet night, + And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. + There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar + Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make Death clear or make Life durable + But still with rose and ivy and wild vine, + And with wild song about this dust of thine, + At least I fill a place where white dreams dwell, + And wreathe an unseen shrine." + +"'And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom.... There is no help +for these things, none to mend and none to mar....'" A sob rose in her +throat. "Oh, the beauty of it, the beauty and the misery and the +despair of it!" she murmured. + +Slowly she wound and wound the coil of golden hair about her neck, +drawing it tighter, fold on fold, tighter and tighter. + +"This would be the easiest way--this," she whispered. "By my own hair! +Beauty would have its victim then. No one would kiss it any more, +because it killed a woman.... No one would kiss it any more." + +She felt the touch of Ian Stafford's lips upon it, she felt his face +buried in it. Her own face suffused, then Adrian Fellowes' white rose, +which Rudyard had laid upon her pillow, caught her eye where it lay on +the floor. With a cry as of a hurt animal she ran to her bed, crawled +into it, and huddled down in the darkness, shivering and afraid. + +Something had discovered her to herself for the first time. Was it her +own soul? Had her Other Self, waking from sleep in the eternal spaces, +bethought itself and come to whisper and warn and help? Or was it +Penalty, or Nemesis, or that Destiny which will have its toll for all +it gives of beauty, or pleasure, or pride, or place, or pageantry? + +"Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom"-- + +The words kept ringing in her ears. They soothed her at last into a +sleep which brought no peace, no rest or repose. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE + + +Midnight--one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Big Ben boomed the +hours, and from St. James's Palace came the stroke of the quarters, +lighter, quicker, almost pensive in tone. From St. James's Street below +came no sounds at last. The clatter of the hoofs of horses had ceased, +the rumble of drays carrying their night freights, the shouts of the +newsboys making sensation out of rumours made in a newspaper office, +had died away. Peace came, and a silver moon gave forth a soft light, +which embalmed the old thoroughfare, and added a tenderness to its +workaday dignity. In only one window was there a light at three +o'clock. It was the window of Ian Stafford's sitting-room. + +He had not left the Foreign Office till nearly ten o'clock, then had +had a light supper at his club, had written letters there, and after a +long walk up and down the Mall had, with reluctant feet, gone to his +chambers. + +The work which for years he had striven to do for England had been +accomplished. The Great Understanding was complete. In the words of the +secretary of the American Embassy, "Mennaval had delivered the goods," +and an arrangement had been arrived at, completed this very night, +which would leave England free to face her coming trial in South Africa +without fear of trouble on the flank or in the rear. + +The key was turned in the lock, and that lock had been the original +device and design of Ian Stafford. He had done a great work for +civilization and humanity; he had made improbable, if not impossible, a +European war. The Kaiser knew it, Franz Joseph knew it, the Czar knew +it; the White House knew it, and its master nodded with satisfaction, +for John Bull was waking up--"getting a move on." America might have +her own family quarrel with John Bull, but when it was John Bull versus +the world, not even James G. Blaine would have been prepared to see the +old lion too deeply wounded. Even Landrassy, ambassador of Slavonia, +had smiled grimly when he met Ian Stafford on the steps of the Moravian +Embassy. He was artist enough to appreciate a well-played game, and, in +any case, he had had done all that mortal man could in the way of +intrigue and tact and device. He had worked the international press as +well as it had ever been worked; he had distilled poison here and +rosewater there; he had again and again baffled the British Foreign +Office, again and again cut the ground from under Ian Stafford's feet; +and if he could have staved off the pact, the secret international +pact, by one more day, he would have gained the victory for himself, +for his country, for the alliance behind him. + +One day, but one day, and the world would never have heard of Ian +Stafford. England would then have approached her conflict with the cup +of trembling at her lips, and there would be a new disposition of power +in Europe, a new dominating force in the diplomacy and the relations of +the peoples of the world. It was Landrassy's own last battle-field of +wit and scheming, of intellect and ambition. If he failed in this, his +sun would set soon. He was too old to carry on much longer. He could +not afford to wait. He was at the end of his career, and he had meant +this victory to be the crown of his long services to Slavonia and the +world. + +But to him was opposed a man who was at the beginning of his career, +who needed this victory to give him such a start as few men get in that +field of retarded rewards, diplomacy. It had been a man at the end of +the journey, and a man at the beginning, measuring skill, playing as +desperate a game as was ever played. If Landrassy won--Europe a red +battle-field, England at bay; if Ian Stafford won--Europe at peace, +England secure. Ambition and patriotism intermingled, and only He who +made human nature knew how much was pure patriotism and how much pure +ambition. It was a great stake. On this day of days to Stafford destiny +hung shivering, each hour that passed was throbbing with unparalleled +anxiety, each minute of it was to be the drum-beat of a funeral march +or the note of a Te Deum. + +Not more uncertain was the roulette-wheel spinning in De Lancy Scovel's +house than the wheel of diplomacy which Ian Stafford had set spinning. +Rouge et noire--it was no more, no less. But Ian had won; England had +won. Black had been beaten. + +Landrassy bowed suavely to Ian as they met outside Mennaval's door in +the early evening of this day when the business was accomplished, the +former coming out, the latter going in. + +"Well, Stafford," Landrassy said in smooth tones and with a jerk of the +head backward, "the tables are deserted, the croupier is going home. +But perhaps you have not come to play?" + +Ian smiled lightly. "I've come to get my winnings--as you say," he +retorted. + +Landrassy seemed to meditate pensively. "Ah yes, ah yes, but I'm not +sure that Mennaval hasn't bolted with the bank and your winnings, too!" + +His meaning was clear--and hateful. Before Ian had a chance to reply, +Landrassy added in a low, confidential voice, saturated with sardonic +suggestion, "To tell you the truth, I had ceased to reckon with women +in diplomacy. I thought it was dropped with the Second Empire; but you +have started a new dispensation--evidemment, evidemment. Still Mennaval +goes home with your winnings. Eh bien, we have to pay for our game! +Allons gai!" + +Before Ian could reply--and what was there to say to insult couched in +such highly diplomatic language?--Landrassy had stepped sedately away, +swinging his gold-headed cane and humming to himself. + +"Duelling had its merits," Ian said to himself, as soon as he had +recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence. "There +is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have +done, in the business of life." + +He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to +soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the +arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; +and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his +club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his +pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign +Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force. + +Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in +his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so long +ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from the +first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, shouting to +the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on air, finding the +world a good, kind place made especially for him--his oyster to open, +his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh from the applause +of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, a gloom upon his +mind. + +Victory in his great fight--and love; he had them both and so he said +to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their +comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had +helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and +so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of water, +however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success and its +value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the love +was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, in +some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing +could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at +this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could +be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while +she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean +a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a +rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just +in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must +beat in his veins till the end of all things. + +Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her +wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the +instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and +himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and +Nemesis might demand--any price save one. + +As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, +his eyes half closed with shame. + +Rudyard Byng was his friend, whose bread he had eaten, whom he had +known since they were boys at school. He remembered acutely Rudyard's +words to him that fateful night when he had dined with Jasmine +alone--"You will have much to talk about, to say to each other, such +old friends as you are." He recalled how Rudyard had left them, +trusting them, happy in the thought that Jasmine would have a pleasant +evening with the old friend who had first introduced him to her, and +that the old friend would enjoy his eager hospitality. Rudyard had +blown his friend's trumpet wherever men would listen to him; had +proclaimed Stafford as the coming man: and this was what he had done to +Rudyard! + +This was what he had done; but what did he propose to do? What of the +future? To go on in miserable intrigue, twisting the nature, making +demands upon life out of all those usual ways in which walk love and +companionship--paths that lead through gardens of poppies, maybe, but +finding grey wilderness at the end? Never, never the right to take the +loved one by the hand before all the world and say: "We two are one, +and the reckoning of the world must be made with both." Never to have +the right to stand together in pride before the wide-eyed many and say: +"See what you choose to see, say what you choose to say, do what you +choose to do, we do not care." The open sharing of worldly success; the +inner joys which the world may not see--these things could not be for +Jasmine and for him. + +Yet he loved her. Every fibre in his being thrilled to the thought of +her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness +suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened +the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing +into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with +dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented +quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, +feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a +single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable in the vast +proportions of eternity. It had only little sips of happiness to give, +not long draughts of joy. Who drank deep, long draughts--who of all the +men and women he had ever known? Who had had the primrose path without +the rain of fire, the cinders beneath the feet, the gins and the nets +spread for them? + +Yet might it not be that here and there people were permanently happy? +And had things been different, might not he and Jasmine have been of +the radiant few? He desired her above all things; he was willing to +sacrifice all--all for her, if need be; and yet there was that which he +could not, would not face. All or nothing--all or nothing. If he must +drink of the cup of sorrow and passion mixed, then it would be from the +full cup. + +With a stifled exclamation he sat down and began to write. Again and +again he stopped to think, his face lined and worn and old; then he +wrote on and on. Ambition, hope, youth, the Foreign Office, the +chancelleries of Europe, the perils of impending war, were all +forgotten, or sunk into the dusky streams of subconsciousness. One +thought dominated him. He was playing the game that has baffled all +men, the game of eluding destiny; and, like all men, he must break his +heart in the playing. + + +"Jasmine," he wrote, "this letter, this first real letter of love which +I have ever written you, will tell you how great that love is. It will +tell you, too, what it means to me, and what I see before us. To-day I +surrendered to you all of me that would be worth your keeping, if it +was so that you might take and keep it. When I kissed you, I set the +seal upon my eternal offering to you. You have given me success. It is +for that I thank you with all my soul, but it is not for that I love +you. Love flows from other fountains than gratitude. It rises from the +well which has its springs at the beginning of the world, where those +beings lived who loved before there were any gods at all, or any +faiths, or any truths save the truth of being. + +"But it is because what I feel belongs to something in me deeper than I +have ever known that, since we parted a few hours ago, I see all in a +new light. You have brought to me what perhaps could only have come as +it did--through fire and cloud and storm. I did not will it so, indeed, +I did not wish it so, as you know; but it came in spite of all. And I +shall speak to you of it as to my own soul. I want no illusions, no +self-deception, no pretense to be added to my debt to you. With +wide-open eyes I want to look at it. I know that this love of mine for +you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my soul. And to have +known it with all its misery,--for misery there must be; misery, +Jasmine, there is--to have known it, to have felt it, the great +overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it so +terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's ambition. +With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came that which +gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to open doors +which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for me, but what +have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon me, which I must +do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to understand. + +"I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and give +myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, I +could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will be +paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable as it +would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small enough to +be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices of +intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a thousand +times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the stress and +meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you smiled; you +would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my hungry heart. +You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me help you. Yet, +Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine long ago, even +when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity to do what, +with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by it; but it has +not proved what it promised. You have not made the best of the power +into which you came, and you could not do so, because the spring from +which all the enriching waters of married life flow was dry. Poor +Jasmine--poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached out for the +golden city of the mirage! + +"But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I +must take--for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take +it--for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already +my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke +and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and +gather up the chances that are left. + +"You must come with me away--away, to start life afresh, somewhere, +somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not +return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the +world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing +that we had been at least true to each other, true at the last to the +thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because we +had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean that I +should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has possessed +me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have done the +one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the field. I have +made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It may be I have +done all I was meant to do in doing that--it may be. In any case, the +thing I did would stand as an accomplished work--it would represent one +definite and original thing; one piece of work in design all my own, in +accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go then--together--with +only the one big violence to the conventions of the world, and take the +law into our own hands? Rudyard, who understands Life's violence, would +understand that; what he could never understand would be perpetual +artifice, unseemly secretiveness. He himself would have been a great +filibuster in the olden days; he would have carried off the wives and +daughters of the chiefs and kings he conquered; but he would never have +stolen into the secret garden at night and filched with the hand of the +sneak-thief--never. + +"To go with me--away, and start afresh. There will be always work to +do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we +would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake +you made in not coming to me and so fulfilling the old promise. To set +that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great +stroke--that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease of +that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I seem +to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone forever, +saying that you had given me gifts--success and love; and now to go and +leave you in peace. + +"Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens +for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the +strife of the soul for peace, for fruition. + +"That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now, +before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in +chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, +binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something +accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last +effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and be +lost forever--do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to see +it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton--you know him. He +is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the necessary +thing so far as the knowledge of the world is concerned. With him, +then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces to find +peace--forever. + +"You? ... Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not fixed, +and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then the +comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things right. +Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to you, the +kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of a great +love ended--yours and mine--would help you to give what you can give +with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the last! +Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing pulse of +being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to you in +the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no more: to +some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a great +deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over long +years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may be, in +what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the business of +life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have had my +share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and peace I +can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was not +accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to save you +from the worst. But it must be the one or the other. + +"The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it +willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all that +makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and your +friend. I give you love and I give you friendship--whatever comes; +always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est. + +"In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; +but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in +life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow. + +"Your Man, + +"IAN. + +"P.S.--I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow. + +"IAN." + + +He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was +lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the +Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post. When he had put the letter +inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one +carrying the mark of the Club. By accident he had brought it with the +letters written there. He hesitated a moment, then refrained from +opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and +posted all his letters. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +TO-MORROW ... PREPARE! + + +Krool did not sleep. What he read in a letter he had found in a +hallway, what he knew of those dark events in South Africa, now to +culminate in a bitter war, and what, with the mysterious psychic +instinct of race, he divined darkly and powerfully, all kept his eyes +unsleeping and his mind disordered. More than any one, he knew of the +inner story of the Baas' vrouw during the past week and years; also he +had knowledge of what was soon to empty out upon the groaning earth the +entrails of South Africa; but how he knew was not to be discovered. +Even Rudyard, who thought he read him like a book, only lived on the +outer boundaries of his character. Their alliance was only the durable +alliance of those who have seen Death at their door, and together have +driven him back. + +Barry Whalen had regarded Krool as a spy; all Britishers who came and +went in the path to Rudyard's door had their doubts or their dislike of +him; and to every servant of the household he was a dark and isolated +figure. He never interfered with the acts of his fellow-servants, +except in so far as those acts affected his master's comfort; and he +paid no attention to their words except where they affected himself. + +"When you think it's a ghost, it's only Krool wanderin' w'ere he ain't +got no business," was the angry remark of the upper-housemaid, whom his +sudden appearance had startled in a dim passage one day. + +"Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where there's +no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs she had +enlarged upon his enormities greatly. + +"And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of +Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass--that is what Madame +think." + +Slowly the night passed for Krool. His disturbed brain was like some +dark wood through which flew songless birds with wings of night; +through which sped the furtive dwellers of the grass and the +earth-covert. The real and the imaginative crowded the dark purlieus. +He was the victim of his blood, his beginnings off there beyond the +Vaal, where the veld was swept by the lightning and the storm, the home +of wild dreams, and of a loneliness terrible and strange, to which the +man who once had tasted its awful pleasures returned and returned +again, until he was, at the last, part of its loneliness, its woeful +agitations and its reposeless quiet. + +It was not possible for him to think or be like pure white people, to +do as they did. He was a child of the kopje, the spruit, and the dun +veld, where men dwelt with weird beings which were not men--presences +that whispered, telling them of things to come, blowing the warnings of +Destiny across the waste, over thousands and thousands of miles. Such +as he always became apart and lonely because of this companionship of +silence and the unseen. More and more they withdrew themselves, +unwittingly and painfully, from the understanding and companionship of +the usual matter-of-fact, commonplace, sensible people--the settler, +the emigrant, and the British man. Sinister they became, but with the +helplessness of those in whom the under-spirit of life has been +working, estranging them, even against their will, from the rest of the +world. + +So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, +jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to him, +not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused utterances +and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion for him to +know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be in the +midst of them, an instrument of Fate. All night strange shapes trooped +past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he called +out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when that +master rescued him from death. + +Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither +and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy +himself with his master's clothes, boots, and belongings. At last he +stole into Byng's room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; then +reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, and +thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room. His face had a sombre +and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light the +discarded messages with their thunderous warnings--"To-morrow... +Prepare!" + +He knew their meaning well enough. "To-morrow" was here, and it would +bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against +the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of +sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek. + +"Prepare!" He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position +or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more. He +knew so much that was useful--to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not +himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and +grimly. All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and +knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing. + +Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the +reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be +the means and the messenger of betrayal. So he soothed his conscience. + +A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had +discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart +of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the +worst passions of an outcast mind. Since then there had been no +trafficking with the traitor--the double traitor, whom he was now +plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but +because he was a traitor to the Baas. In his evil way, he loved his +master as a Caliban might love an Apollo. That his devotion took forms +abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his +blood. That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas' country and +the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the +Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul. + +He had one obsession now--to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for +Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of +the Partners, as it were. But how should it be done? What should be the +means? On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, the +means came to his hand. + +"Prepare!" the cable to the Baas had read. The Baas would be prepared +for the thunderbolt to be hurled from Pretoria; but he would have no +preparation for the thunderbolt which would fall at his feet this day +in this house, where white roses welcomed the visitor at the door-way +and the beauty of Titians and Botticellis and Rubens' and Goyas greeted +him in the luxuriant chambers. There would be no preparation for that +war which rages most violently at a fireside and in the human heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE FURNACE DOOR + + +It was past nine o'clock when Rudyard wakened. It was nearly ten before +he turned to leave his room for breakfast. As he did so he stooped and +picked up an open letter lying on the floor near the door. + +His brain was dazed and still surging with the terrible thoughts which +had agonized him the night before. He was as in a dream, and was only +vaguely conscious of the fugitive letter. He was wondering whether he +would go at once to Jasmine or wait until he had finished breakfast. +Opening the door of his room, he saw the maid entering to Jasmine with +a gown over her arm. + +No, he would not go to her till she was alone, till she was dressed and +alone. Then he would tell her all, and take her in his arms, and talk +with her--talk as he had never talked before. Slowly, heavily, he went +to his study, where his breakfast was always eaten. As he sat down he +opened, with uninterested inquiry, the letter he had picked up inside +the door of his room. As he did so he vaguely wondered why Krool had +overlooked it as he passed in and out. Perhaps Krool had dropped it. +His eyes fell on the opening words... His face turned ashen white. A +harsh cry broke from him. + +At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion and +was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared on the +staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant away. Ian +was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's appearance. +His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place to a strange +blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor--the deathly look to +be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal disease. All +strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, leaving it tragic +with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was uppermost, while +desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The balance was gone +from the general character and his natural force was like some great +gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a sea-stricken ship. He +was no longer the stalwart Outlander who had done such great work in +South Africa and had such power in political London and in +international finance. The demoralization which had stealthily gone on +for a number of years was now suddenly a debacle of will and body. Of +the superb physical coolness and intrepid mind with which he had sprung +upon the stage of Covent Garden Opera House to rescue Al'mah nothing +seemed left; or, if it did remain, it was shocked out of its bearings. +His eyes were almost glassy as he looked at Ian Stafford, and +animal-like hatred was the dominating note of his face and carriage. + +"Come with me, Stafford: I want to speak to you," he said, hoarsely. +"You've arrived when I wanted you--at the exact time." + +"Yes, I said I would come at eleven," responded Stafford, mechanically. +"Jasmine expects me at eleven." + +"In here," Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room. + +As Stafford entered, he saw Krool's face, malign and sombre, show in a +doorway of the hall. Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a +look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning? Warning? There was +trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought +had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was +to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings. + +He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the +room--of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the +adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only +by Indian bead-curtains. He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, as +he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him. He was also +subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there with +such pleasant skill. Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, he +would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a love-song +from the light opera "A Lady of London," which had just caught the ears +of the people in the street. + +Of one thing he was sure: the end of things had come--the end of all +things that life meant to him had come. Rudyard knew! Rudyard, sitting +there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a face +where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion--he knew. + +The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching. As Ian +waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of the +silly, futile love-song: + + "Not like the roses shall our love be, dear + Never shall its lovely petals fade, + Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year + Happy as the song-birds in the glade." + +Through it all now came Rudyard's voice. + +"I have a letter here," the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take +it from his pocket. "I want you to read it, and when you have read it, +I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it." + +He threw a letter down on the table--a square white envelope with the +crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it. It lay face downward, waiting for +his hand. + +So it had come. His letter to Jasmine which told all--Rudyard had read +it. And here was the end of everything--the roses faded before they had +bloomed an hour. It was not for them to flourish "till the world's last +year." + +His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised +it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the +envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a +devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time--he must have +time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he +had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its +mists. + +So this was the end of it all--friendship gone with the man before him; +shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a home-life +shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished for +evermore. + +He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, +while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically. +Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness +stole through the burdened air: + +"Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year--" + +He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted +of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for +this handwriting was not his--this letter was not his; these wild, +passionate phrases--this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these +references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love together, +this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear one of his +white roses when he saw her the next day--would she not see him between +eleven and twelve o'clock?--all these words were not his. + +They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next +room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had +the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; +who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the +innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the +master of it. + +The letter was signed, Adrian. + +His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had +braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman +he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another +man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He was +face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, Jasmine, +to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give up +all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all, +caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how many +others? He choked back a cry. + +"Well--well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one +thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the +music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill +him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old +friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!" + +His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were +ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind fury. He +was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing on a sea +of disorder. + +"Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give +that to me." + +He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were +suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so +strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not +have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which +followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, +with exasperating insistence: + +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--" + +Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held +Rudyard's eyes. + +"You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this letter," +he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, regaining +his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you think--all +you think; but I would not do what you want to do." + +As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon +him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and +that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A +woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes +before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance +which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, +with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate +life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition +from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet +unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the +revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It +was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was +merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been +wronged--terribly wronged--by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved +Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came--in truth, he all +but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, if +no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it was +monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that +overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and +whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed +deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might make +up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To do--what? +Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him over for +Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had married +Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second betrayal? +His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business dated far +beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence. + +What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but +one thing to do--only one thing to do--save her at any cost, somehow +save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had +spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had +betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an +animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her +shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust +which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity--even as it +sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest +depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the +thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, +deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring +all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing--the +indestructible thing. + +He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw that +Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any moment. There was +in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, unseeing thing which +disregards consequences, which would rush blindly on the throne of God +itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: and just in time. + +"I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to do. +I would do something else." + +His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which +caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just left. +Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not pursue, all +would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense anger and +indignation. + +"Sit down, Byng," he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over +the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched hand. +"Kill him--," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which came +the maddening iteration of the jingling song--"you would kill him for +his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife +astray, but what good will it do to kill him?" + +"Not him alone, but her too," came the savage, uncontrolled voice from +the uncontrolled savagery of the soul. + +Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford's heart. His breath came in +sharp, breaking gasps. Had he--had he killed Jasmine? + +"You have not--not her?" + +"No--not yet." The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and +they shut with ominous certainty. + +An iron look came into Stafford's face. He had his chance now. One +word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost--sunk in +a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face +and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater +than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and +scornful surprise. + +"You think--you dare to think that she--that Jasmine--" + +"Think, you say! The letter--that letter--" + +"This letter--this letter, Byng--are you a fool? This letter, this +preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate +erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine--you know her. +Indiscreet--yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, and +always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; she +cannot help it. She doesn't even know it. She led him on from sheer +wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! She +led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and better +men--like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want to master +us? She has coquetted since--ah, you do not know as I do, her old +friend! She has coquetted since she was a little child. Coquetted, and +no more. We have all been her slaves--yes, long before you came--all of +us. Look at Mennaval! She--" + +With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. "The world believes the +worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel's house that +she and Mennaval--and now this--!" + +But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping +an eager look--not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that +were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in +the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the +strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing +castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved. + +"Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day--this!" Stafford held up +the letter. "This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, and +indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been what +he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has +dared--!" + +"He has dared, by God--!" + +All Byng's rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, +the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the +cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends--of De Lancy +Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the +rest. The pity of these for him--for Rudyard Byng, because the flower +in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! +He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath. + +But Stafford stepped in front of him. "Sit down, Byng, or damn yourself +forever. If she is innocent--and she is--do you think she would ever +live with you again, after you had dragged her name into the dust of +the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha'penny press? Do you +think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? If you want to +drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and tell her that you +suspect her. I know her--I have known her all her life, long before you +came. I care what becomes of her. She has many who care what becomes of +her--her father, her brother, many men, and many women who have seen +her grow up without a mother. They understand her, they believe in her, +because they have known her over all the years. They know her better +than you. Perhaps they care for her--perhaps any one of them cares for +her far more than you do." + +Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one +fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, +his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face. + +"She was more to me than all the world--than twenty worlds. She--" + +He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook +violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried to +reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward hands. + +Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went on +quickly. "You have neglected her "--Rudyard's head came up in angry +protest--"not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too +easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All +women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; +but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according +to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are +concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, +'This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and +come now.' She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while +you did not have her on the leash she went playing--playing. That is +it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her +to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult +this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you +suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She has +bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather--" + +"I know--I know." The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope stole +into the distorted face. + +"She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, +not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she +would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, +that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who +would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in +there, to Al'mah's lover--" + +"Good God, Stafford--wait!" + +"I don't mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the rest. +They are not her old friends, and they weren't yours once--that breed; +but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there in +Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people +lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, Byng. +Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter--" + +Byng reached out his hand for it. + +"No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your hands, +you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish thing, for +you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for such +stuff--an outburst of sensuality!" + +He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet +as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw Stafford +push it farther into the coals. + +Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and +women in courts of law. + +"Leave the whole thing--leave Fellowes to me," Stafford said, after a +slight pause. "I will deal with him. He shall leave the country +to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do +not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of +happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all +now." + +"He has keys, papers--" + +"I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There +is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul's war, will be on us to day. +Do you hear, Byng--to-day! And you have work to do for this your native +country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and the +Transvaal will be at each other's throat before night. You have work to +do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched business in my +hands. I will deal with Fellowes--adequately." + +The rage had faded from Byng's fevered eyes, and now there was a +moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in Jasmine, +that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not since he left +the white rose on her pillow last night--Adrian Fellowes' tribute; and +after he had read the letter, he had had no wish to see her till he had +had his will and done away with Fellowes forever. Then he would see +her--for the last time: and she should die, too,--with himself. That +had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He would not see her now, +not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he would come again, and say +no word which would let her think he knew what Fellowes had written. +Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, and they must start again, +begin life again together, a new understanding in his heart, new +purposes in their existence. In these few minutes Stafford had taught +him much, had showed him where he had been wrong, had revealed to him +Jasmine's nature as he never really understood it. + +At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took a +revolver from his pocket. + +"That's the proof of what I meant to do," he said; "and this is proof +of what I mean to do," he added, as he handed over the revolver and +Stafford's fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he +misinterpreted. + +"Ah yes," he exclaimed, sadly, "you don't quite trust me yet--not +quite, Stafford; and I don't wonder; but it's all right.... You've been +a good, good friend to us both," he added. "I wish Jasmine might know +how good a friend you've been. But never mind. We'll pay the debt +sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?" + +At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the distance. +"Rudyard--where are you, Ruddy?" it called. + +A light broke over Byng's haggard face. "Not yet?" he asked Stafford. + +"No, not yet," was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open door +into the street. + +"Ruddy--where are you, Ruddy?" sang the voice like a morning song. + +Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the +little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago. + +The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was +"Pagliacci"--that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours out +his soul in agony. + +Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had sat, +and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the +passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of +the character of the man who played--sensuous emotion, sensual delight. +There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the night, primary +prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a sensuous +organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the life is +never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy. + +In Stafford's pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He took +it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every nerve +of his body tingled. + +"That way out?" he thought. "How easy--and how selfish.... If one's +life only concerned oneself.... But it's only partly one's own from +first to last." ... Then his thoughts turned again to the man who was +playing "Pagliacci." "I have a greater right to do it than Byng, and +I'd have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not all +his fault." Again he shuddered. "No man makes love like that to a woman +unless she lets him, ... until she lets him." Then he looked at the +fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. "If it had +been read to a jury ... Ah, my God! How many he must have written her +like that ... How often...." + +With an effort he pulled himself together. "What does it matter now! +All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My letter +to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see her for +the last time, to make her understand...." + +He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood of +warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over him. +Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a stream +which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford remarked, +cynically, to himself. + +"A moment--Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +The music frayed into a discord and stopped. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE + + +There was that in Stafford's tone which made Fellowes turn with a +start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come +this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for his +master to find, after having read it himself with minute scrutiny. It +was in this room they had met so often in those days when Rudyard was +in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an intimacy +which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and curiosity, +the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that Krool's +antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been nurtured. +Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but he had been +disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine's part, which shook his +purpose again and again. + +It had all been a problem which Krool's furtive mind failed to master. +If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was that he +would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if he +warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had at +last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had +challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the +hated English. + +Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine's and Rudyard's +rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes' letter; and he +had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of +importance, for he had seen Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among +those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had +waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, +without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to +the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. + +He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he rose +in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, with his +ear against the door which led from the music-room, he strained to hear +what passed between Stafford and Fellowes. + +"Well, what is it?" asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, +though there was that in Stafford's face which gave him anxiety, he +knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was Stafford, +who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, had occupied +so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, and, when she +did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from intimate +consideration. + +His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark +intensity of Stafford's. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks faded +and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the +leather-trimming of the piano-stool. + +"Anything I can do for you, Stafford?" he added, with attempted +nonchalance. + +"There is nothing you can do for me," was the meaning reply, "but there +is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will think +it worth while." + +"Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?" + +"You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn in +not avoiding it." + +"Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles--cryptic, they call it, +don't they?" + +Stafford's chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed +over his face. + +"It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you to +do yourself a good turn." + +Now Fellowes' face turned white. "What letter?" he asked, in a sharp, +querulous voice. + +"The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday." + +Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. "What business is it of +yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng's letters?" + +"Only what I get from a higher authority." + +"Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?" + +"The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with +words, you fool." + +Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession. + +"What the devil ... why should I listen to you?" There was a peevish +stubbornness in the tone. + +"Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your life. +That should be sufficient reason for you to listen." + +"Damnation--speak out, if you've got anything to say! I don't see what +you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it--damned +officious." The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness. + +Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given +him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back +against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid. + +Stafford's lips curled with contempt. "Don't squirm so, Fellowes. I'm +not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use it. +He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him ... I will +tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was absolutely +innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, +presumptuous, and lecherous cad--which is true. I said that, though you +deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's +honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the +would-be betrayer of an honest girl--of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you +may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and +body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in +your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! +... I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to do +to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"--he handled the little steel +weapon with an eager fondness--"I think I'd do it. You are a pest." + +Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body +crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous discord. +Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made gestures of +appeal. + +"Don't--don't! Can't you see I'm willing! What is it you want me to do? +I'll do it. Put it away.... Oh, my God--Oh!" His bloodless lips were +drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror. + +With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his +pocket again. "Pull yourself together," he said. "Your life is safe for +the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved the +lady's innocence--you understand, after I had proved the lady's +innocence to him--" + +"Yes, I understand," came the hoarse reply. + +"After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be trusted +to do so. I said that you would leave England within twenty-four hours, +and that you would not return within three years. That was my pledge. +You are prepared to fulfil it?" + +"To leave England! It is impossible--" + +"Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, +either, might be worse," was the cold, savage reply. "Mr. Byng made his +terms." + +Fellowes shivered. "What am I to do out of England--but, yes, I'll go, +I'll go," he added, as he saw the look in Stafford's face and thought +of the revolver so near to Stafford's hand. + +"Yes, of course you will go," was the stern retort. "You will go, just +as I say." + +"What shall I do abroad?" wailed the weak voice. + +"What you have always done here, I suppose--live on others," was the +crushing reply. "The venue will be changed, but you won't change, not +you. If I were you, I'd try and not meet Jigger before you go. He +doesn't know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him +reckless." + +Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. "I have +some things up-stairs," he said. + +"They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the +desk in the secretary's room." + +"I'll go myself, and--" + +"You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after +you--everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your +letters and private papers will not be read.... You feel you can rely +on me for that--eh?" + +"Yes ... I'll go now ... abroad ... where?" + +"Where you please outside the United Kingdom." + +Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter +had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on +his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door. + +Stafford came up to him again. "You understand, there must be no +attempt to communicate here.... You will observe this?" + +Fellowes nodded. "Yes, I will.... Good-night," he added, absently. + +"Good-day," answered Stafford, mechanically. + +The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room where +so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so many +tears, divert so many streams of life. + +How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and +homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming +through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains shine +like gold. + +As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with +bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come--his +meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of a +truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep +behind him. It was Krool. + +Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; +but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool's impassive look. The +eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they +seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all. + +"Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say--" + +Krool, with a gesture, stopped him. + +"Mrs. Byng is come now," he said, making a gesture towards the +staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants' quarters of the +house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now await +consequences. + +Stafford turned to the staircase and saw--in blue, in the old +sentimental blue--Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of +apprehension in her face. + +Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she +had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes' letter. Hours before this +she had read and re-read Ian's letter, that document of pain and +purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly +conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it +that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes' +letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it +was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it--if Rudyard had found +it...! + +Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten the +breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? Where +was Rudyard? + +Ian's eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, +and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort +to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul. + +"Good-morning. Am I so very late?" she said, gaily, to him, though +there was a hollow note in her voice. + +"You are just in time," he answered in an even tone which told nothing. + +"Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There +seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place--and so early in the +day, too." + +"It is full noon--and past," he said, with acute meaning, as her +daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards him. +How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet! + +As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder +of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the +modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange +tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by +Greuze. All last night's agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose +lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there +as she looked at Ian now. + +She beat a foot nervously on the floor. "What is it--why this +Euripidean air in my simple home? There's something wrong, I see. What +is it? Come, what is it, Ian?" + +Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no +loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday--only +yesterday--had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now +hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard. + +"Will you come in here," he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the +door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of +the future and closed the book of the past. + +She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an +accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with +Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, and +looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing over +her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, giving +her eyes a staring and solicitous look. + +"Well, what is it? Can't you speak and have it over?" she asked, with +desperate impatience. + +"Fellowes' letter to you--Rudyard found it," he said, abruptly. + +She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered herself. +"You read it?" she gasped. + +"Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill +Fellowes." + +She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her +fingers stopped. + +"Kill him--why?" she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her +trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her. + +"The letter--Fellowes' letter to you." + +"I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely +impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I suppose." + +She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but to +be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, though +her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed the +lifeblood. + +Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. "He read it--Rudyard read a +letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to +me--he read my letter.... It gave me no chance." + +"No chance--?" + +A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her tones. +"Yes, I had a chance, a last chance--if he had not read the letter. But +now, there is no chance.... You read it, too. You read the letter which +was addressed to me. No matter what it was--my letter, you read it." + +"Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, 'Read that letter, and +then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.' ... I thought it +was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last night. I +thought it was my letter to you." + +Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking +in a trance. "I answered that letter--your letter. I answered it this +morning. Here is the answer ... here." She laid a letter on the table +before him, then drew it back again into her lap. "Now it does not +matter. But it gives me no chance...." + +There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was wan +and strained. "No chance, no chance," she whispered. + +"Rudyard did not kill him?" she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a +moment, as though repeating a lesson. "Why?" + +"I stopped him. I prevented him." + +"You prevented him--why?" Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion +and trouble. "Why did you prevent it--you?" + +"That would have hurt you--the scandal, the grimy press, the world." + +Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous poignancy. +"It would have hurt me--yes. Why did you not want to hurt me?" + +He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to +steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon of +steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, malignant +effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he was +suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same region +where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In it one +moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward things, +numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one's own agony, which seems +to neutralize the universe and reduce all life's problems to one +formula of solution. + +"What did you say to him that stopped him?" she asked in a whisper of +awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would +speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions. + +"I said the one thing to say," he answered after a moment, +involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him--doing it, as +it were, without conscious knowledge. + +It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of oblivion. Her +eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it transfixed; then +she recovered herself and spoke again. + +"What was the one thing to say?" she whispered. + +"That you were innocent--absolutely, that--" + +Suddenly she burst into wild laughter--shrill, acrid, cheerless, +hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, +her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying +agitation of a broken organism. + +He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his +words. + +"I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes' letter was +the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been +wilful and indiscreet, and that--" + +In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told +her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to him. Every +word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word was now +repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped on the +table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went from the +house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst again into +laughter, mocking, wilful, painful. + +"You were left to set things right, to be the lord high +executioner--you, Ian!" + +How strange his name sounded on her lips now--foreign, distant, +revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words +which had been said, than all that had been done. + +"Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose," she went on, +presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note +creeping into the voice. + +"No, I thought of that," he answered, quietly, "as you know." His eyes +sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. "That would have been +easy enough," he added. "I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, +but only of you--and Rudyard." + +"Only of me--and Rudyard," she repeated with drooping eyes, which +suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and wildness. +"Wasn't it rather late for that?" + +The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the +table towards her. + +"At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried +to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But +nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you--ever. I loved +you--ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! ... But you, you +might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the mistake +once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely more. I was +ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the winds, and +prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I was willing to +eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing to pay the +price--any price--just to stand by what was the biggest thing in my +life. But you were true to nothing--to nothing--to nobody." + +"If one is untrue--once, why be true at all ever?" she said with an +aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her +eyes. "If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?" + +Again a mocking laugh burst from her. "Don't you see? One kiss, a +wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment +that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the thousand +after." + +There came to her mind again--and now with what sardonic +force--Rudyard's words that day before they went to Glencader: "If you +had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers." + +"And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard," she added, +mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me--that I go on +living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him anything +has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, and to be +repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been arranged, has it, +that Rudyard is to believe in me?" + +"That has not been arranged." + +"It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that he +is to pretend to love me as before, and--" + +"He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, +was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter--" + +"Where is the letter?" + +He pointed to the fire. + +"Who put it in the fire?" she asked. "You?" + +He inclined his head. + +"Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to +suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the +evidence. Here is yours--your letter. Would you like to put it into the +fire also?" she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her dress. + +"But, no, no, no--" She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had a +look of agonized agitation. "When I have learned every word by heart, I +will burn it myself--for your sake." Her voice grew softer, something +less discordant came into it. "You will never understand. You could +never understand me, or that letter of Adrian Fellowes to me, and that +he could dare to write me such a letter. You could never understand it. +But I understand you. I understand your letter. It came while I +was--while I was broken. It healed me, Ian. Last night I wanted to kill +myself. Never mind why. You would not understand. You are too good to +understand. All night I was in torture, and then this letter of +yours--it was a revelation. I did not think that a man lived like you, +so true, so kind, so mad. And so I wrote you a letter, ah, a letter +from my soul! and then came down to this--the end of all. The end of +everything--forever." + +"No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you ..." + +She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake--oh, for God's sake, hush! ... +You think that now I could ..." + +"Begin again with new purpose." + +"Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool--you who are so wise +sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not want +me to begin again--with you?" + +He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily. + +"You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe +me--because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian +Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not +believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and +that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has +done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have +spoken to me about it if you had not warned him." + +"Then begin again--" + +"You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry of +the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted +yesterday--for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? You +hate me." + +His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment. + +In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she +caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it from +her hand. + +"Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in +his heart for her. "That would only hurt those who have been hurt +enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give others +a chance." + +"You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. "You +were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in that? +Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in me, of +course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was magnanimous--when +you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in order to cure her? +Oh, how little you know! ... But you do not want me now. You do not +believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter had not fallen into +Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on our way to begin life +again together. Does that look as though there was some one else that +mattered--that mattered?" + +He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one +way, and only one way," he said, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin +again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of +your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay +your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It would +bind you. A child ..." + +"Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday--and now... +No, no, no," she added, "I will not, cannot live with Rudyard. I cannot +wrench myself from one world into another like that. I will not live +with him any more.... There--listen." + +Outside the newsboys were calling: + +"Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra +speshul!" + +"War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard +and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way +of escape--the war." + +"The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of +determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight pause. +"There is nothing more to say." + +He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at her. + +"Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian +Fellowes--did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend me?" + +"He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly. + +Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last +half-hour, and they deepened still more. + +"He did not say one word to put me right?" + +Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said. + +She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, +something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of +her pain-worn, exquisite face. + +So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent +over her. + +"Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I--in +different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the +road--peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, +Jasmine." + +"He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying +to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her. + +He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and +me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard--you must help +him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy +Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all the +lie.... Good-bye." + +In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her feet. +"Ian--Ian--come back," she cried. "Ian, one word--one word." + +But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one +transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a +moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one +demented. + +Once the door opened quietly, and Krool's face showed, sinister and +furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly. + +At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the +world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery. + +"He did not defend me--the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a +sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the +mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But +before he leaves ... before he leaves England..." + +As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard's portrait on the wall met +her eyes. "I can't go on, Rudyard," she said to it. "I know that now." + +Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the +newsboys were calling: + +"War declared! All about the war!" + +"That is the way out for me," Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened on. +"That opens up the road.... I'm still an artillery officer." + +He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY + + +Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing +had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national +excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination. + +An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that +strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, +the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which +had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money +which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized +by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; +who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the principal +feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public objects. Men +who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or wool or silver +or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported schemes for the +public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely because the ladies +were fine; and they gave substantial sums--upon occasion--for these +fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed rich men, whose wives +never appeared, who were kept in secluded quarters in Bloomsbury or +Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the Carlton which the +scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these gave no dinners in +return. + +To get money to do things, no matter how,--or little matter how; to be +in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real +people--that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real +people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into +the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the +disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were +folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle-class, the labouring-man. Of +these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of responsibility +cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the one hand; the +professional man of all professions, the little merchant, the sailor, +the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on the other; and, in +between, those people in the shires who had not yet come to be material +and gross, who had old-fashioned ideas of the duty of the citizen and +the Christian. In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had +at the foot of the altar of sacrifice. + +This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, and +it served as the solvent of many a life-problem. + +Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered "the way out," who +went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he +stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed +into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, +"War declared!" had told him the path he must tread. + +He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the Front +with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished by the +instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he was on +his way to do two things--to see whether Adrian Fellowes was keeping +his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister. + +There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not +gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to +hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days +before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at +the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled +forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be +settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be +cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start +in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his +life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought +of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle it. +Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot. + +When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it +was a question as to what he--Jigger--should now do, in what sphere of +life his abnormally "cute" mind must run, he answered, instantly. + +"I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce," he said. "That's it--stryght. I'm goin' out +there wiv you." + +Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not for you, +Jigger. No, think again." + +"Ain't there work in Souf Afriker--maybe not in the army itself, y'r +gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I bet; +an' I could go as easy as can be." + +"Yes, Lou will be all right now," remarked Stafford, with a reflective +irony. + +"I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, +ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, or +cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about--couldn't I, y'r gryce? I'm +only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I was run +over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?" + +With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you +are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and artillery. +There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, or--" + +"Or bust, y'r gryce?" + +So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the +difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe +and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a +comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, +clever waif who had drifted across his path. + +To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed +him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life--of life +that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his life +before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life behind +him, all mile-stones passed except one. + +So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and +there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little distance +away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian Fellowes; and +with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in front of the +station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the jostle and the +crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw Krool stealing +along with a wide-awake hat well down over his eyes. Presently the +sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did not occur to him that +perhaps Krool might be making for the same destination as himself; but +the sight of the man threw his mind into an eddy of torturing thoughts. + +The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on +a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also--derelicts +of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of +life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon +women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish +and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the +thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending their +way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even the good, +looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, the crowd +were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in their +purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves forward, +moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and nowhere; +and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, made them +seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with shrill +voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere eager, +nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy sensational +rags. + +Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing +word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook his +head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led +nowhere--nowhere. + +"Coming home with me, darling?" she added in response to his meditative +look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to her blunted +sense. "Coming home with me--?" + +Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through +Stafford's brain. Home--where the business of this poor wayfarer's +existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the +inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and +hastened on. + +Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not +moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word +Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a +corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years +ago,--his mother had died when he was very young--and his eldest +brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in +the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in +her place at table. + +He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he +could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the +interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had +longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of +interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be. + +The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all +possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in +blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like +Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the +picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would read +the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events in +which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, +influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard--he loved orchards--the +hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey and chestnut +horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; the smell of +the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of the bracing +January wind across the moors or where the woodcock awaited its +spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over now. He had +seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert alone. + +A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of marching +men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, forced +him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, were +alongside of him--a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to see +"Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"--a six months' excursion, as they +thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the wall of +the shops, and presently he found himself forced down Buckingham +Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach Adrian Fellowes' +apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically thrown into the +street, that Krool was almost beside him. + +The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor +left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, if, +and when, he saw him. + +But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker +shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure +followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment +where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were; then it fell behind a little, for +here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way and +watched him as he approached the door of the big building where Adrian +Fellowes lived. + +Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before the +door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the pause, +the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got into +the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the man did +who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round and +rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far from the +entrance, however, another cab--a four-wheeler--discharged its occupant +at a point nearer to the building than where he waited. It was a woman. +She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with quick and grateful +emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, clattered away. The woman +glanced along the empty street swiftly, and then hurried to the doorway +which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers. + +Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black and +heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure--there was none other +like it; or the turn of her head--there was only one such head in all +England. She entered the building quickly. + +There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion +stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why she +had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had said no +word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let the worst +be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she thought of +him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, and they +must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when the crisis +of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all. + +One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know--the intimacy between +Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in +their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The +ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond her +endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the nature of +the interview which she must have, at the thought of the meeting at all. + +He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in +the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had used. +He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the cigars +for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not soothe +him. He had passed beyond the artificial. + +His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after +Jasmine's entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after a +hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she could, +and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her movements +had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her head down +into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain. + +The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone +abroad. He would soon find out. + +He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes' +door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked +again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It +turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked +at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the room. +He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and looked +round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of things +gathered together hastily. + +Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked +round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and +on it lay a figure--Adrian Fellowes, straight and still--and sleeping. + +Stafford went over. "Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" +he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely at +the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew. + +Adrian Fellowes was dead. + +Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once more +and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There was no +sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, only a +look of sleep--a pale, motionless sleep. + +But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched the +shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while. + +Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the +house with agitated footsteps. + +"He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud. + +He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and +then a lazy porter came. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +"MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" + + +Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this +October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered +the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten +the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed +preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She +was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her +footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the +butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave +with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, +when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at +the corner of Piccadilly. + +When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, +the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being laid +down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came up +the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the staircase +with marked deliberation. + +"Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an airin' +on shanks' hosses." + +"And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara," sniggered the +second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." + +"Swells, the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an Emperor--'struth!" + +"I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares +on the Rand, me boy." + +"I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come--not forgetting th' +grub and the fizz." + +"What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like tips +down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard--and a lot of +hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political grease does. +But what price a title--Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!" + +"Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a +coronet 'ers! W'y--" + +But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of +imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of the +household. + +Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of +the British royal family was, with the member of another great reigning +family, honouring her table--though the ladies of neither were to be +present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her cup. She had been +unaware of the gossip there had been of late,--though it was unlikely +the great ladies would have known of it--and she would have been slow +to believe what Ian had told her this day, that men had talked lightly +of her at De Lancy Scovel's house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful +nature had not been sensitive to the quality of the social air about +her. People came--almost "everybody" came--to her house, and would +come, of course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband +intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not +found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very +much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for +dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter at +all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to come +and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night of +nights. + +In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible thing, +though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as usual, and +with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty toilette. Her +face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots which took the +place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her cheeks, and in +its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most delicate +film--the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great pain +gives. + +Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her +husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted +sharply--something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was +uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did +now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which +came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not +the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of +Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in +broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her +marriage--that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a +cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two +would meet, and she knew how it would be--an outward semblance, a +superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of +intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be again; +only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit. + +Yet when she was dressed--in pure white, with only a string of pearls, +the smallest she had, round her neck--she was like that white flower +which had been placed on her pillow last night. + +Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure +again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other +woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that +transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone +slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did +not belong to her. + +As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a +knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a +pencilled note in Rudyard's handwriting. + +White violets--white violets! + +The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine." + +White violets--how strange that he should send them! These they send +for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to +her--from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet +he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was concerned. + +She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few +others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could +separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the past. +She had realized that the night before, when still that chance of which +she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the coil of her +wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that self-destruction +which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than herself. It was +melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the emotional, the +theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her tragedy, which is just +as real as that which comes to those of more spiritual vein, just as +real as that which comes to the more classical victim of fate. Jasmine +had the deep defects of her qualities. Her suffering was not the less +acute because it found its way out with impassioned demonstration. + +There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she +took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure that +Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that did +not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep for +tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb +endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little +routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of +convention are so powerful that life's great issues are often obscured +by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last +careful touch to her hair--the mechanical obedience to long habit. It +is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler +irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to +her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and +fastened it in her gown--the tyranny of habit. + +Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the +closed door of Rudyard's room. Only a step--and yet she was kept apart +from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not +penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could +not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be bridged. + +There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the +surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said +through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no +response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make +believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank within +herself at the idea of being alone with him. + +As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, +from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It +was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must +stay there forever. + +When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on +the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would +ask how he died--the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask how +he died. + +How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had +Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, +the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? +She shuddered. They might say that she killed him. + +She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had +dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and +there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all. + +Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as +though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment--her own +bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face turned +to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold voice +speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch of the +wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence which +grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and will.... And +then--music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from somewhere +inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song she had heard +once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, "More Was Lost at +Mohacksfield." It was a tale of love and loss and tragedy and despair. + +Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that +with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved +herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy +through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very softly +as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down the +staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music. + +It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized +exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a +music-box which could be timed to play at will--even days ahead, and he +had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a strange, +grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, nerveless as +though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased to play before +Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it began again as he +said over the dead body, "He did not die by his own hand." + +Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first +guest, Jasmine said to herself: "No, no, he had not the courage to kill +himself." + +Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed him--Rudyard--Ian--who? +But how? There was no sign of violence. That much she had seen. He lay +like one asleep. Who was it killed him? + +"Lady Tynemouth." + +Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler's voice broke the +spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her. + +"So handsome you look, my darling--and all in white. White violets, +too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it's +chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny +string of pearls, like a young under-secretary's wife, to show what she +might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful Jasmine!" + +"My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I compromised," +was Jasmine's reply, with a really good imitation of a smile. + +As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with swift +inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did to-night, so +ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under the eyes, the +curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish brightness and +far-awayness of the look. She was about to say something in comment, +but other guests entered, and it was impossible. She watched, however, +from a little distance, while talking gaily to other guests; she +watched at the dinner-table, as Jasmine, seated between her two +royalties, talked with gaiety, with pretty irony, with respectful +badinage; and no one could be so daring with such ceremonious respect +at the same time as she. Yet through it all Lady Tynemouth saw her +glance many times with a strange, strained inquiry at Rudyard, seated +far away opposite her; at another big, round table. + +"There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and +wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly +seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and +apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising. +Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed to herself, and +presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them. + +"What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng +doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval." + +"Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added, +with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: +"Where is the great man--where's Stafford to-night?" + +"Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew soft. +"He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he has +gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi +Falls!" + +Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite +happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying +herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to +spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by +her frank platonic affection. + +"Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion +after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still +might do. + +"The war--it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had +seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was +happening in this household. + +The other demurred. + +"But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He +didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed +upset too, so pale and anxious-looking." + +"I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is +anything," said Lady Tynemouth to herself. "I'll ask myself to stay +with her for a couple of days." + +Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, +and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much +as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at +Jasmine's face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an +undertone of misery: + +"She looks as if she needed a friend." + +After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, +and gave it an endearing pressure. "May I come to you for a few days, +Jasmine?" she asked. + +"I was going to ask if you would have me," answered Jasmine, with a +queer little smile. "Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, and +that's a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other +things together, isn't it?" + +She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from +Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be +arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go on +in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what he +knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but that +was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was that +which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a complete +revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of things. +Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of Fellowes' +death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be temporary +expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had its great +advantages. + +She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of +hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; +but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to +have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to get +his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, +magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable +reaction, which would be the real test and trial. + +Love and forgiveness--what had she to do with either! She did not wish +forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in +that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved +another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, +the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his +own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might +the next few days bring forth? + +Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own +life--who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said to +Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of revenge +and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from one moment +to another. + +The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, +one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had +kissed their wives and then killed them--fondled them, and then +strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to +kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now might +come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the first +flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers of life +and love. + +If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to +everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand +of steel to clutch him--what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean +finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing! + +And she would have been the cause of everything. + +The thought scorched her soul. + +Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from their +cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the range of +her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the handcuffs +on Rudyard's--or Ian's--wrists. + +Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and +Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they +spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal +relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a +matter-of-fact voice said: "I suppose Al'mah will be here. You haven't +heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical." + +There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far +entrances of the drawing-room Al'mah entered. Her manner was +composed--if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around +her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It contained +only a few words, and it ran: + + +"DEAR BYNG,--Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An +inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; neither +of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my rooms +after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours ever, + +"IAN STAFFORD." + + +Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over +his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his pocket. She +then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward to greet her. + +On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear +that Al'mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be +here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told Jasmine. +Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al'mah would not be where she +was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the letter for +which he had paid with his life. + +Al'mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both +Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing. + +"Yes, I think I am in good voice," she said to Jasmine, presently. Then +Rudyard went, giving his wife's arm a little familiar touch as he +passed, and said: + +"Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I'm sure Al'mah +will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall +need it--yes we shall need cheering very badly before we've done. We're +not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up is what we +want, and we must have it." + +Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al'mah, to which he got no +response, and to himself he said, grimly: "Well, it's better she should +not know it--here." + +His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he had +an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he +righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at +his neighbour. + +"It's true, then, what we hear about him," the neighbour said, and +suggestively raised fingers to his mouth. + +Al'mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an +abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which +captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she +sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of +country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to every +patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal to the +spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an invocation. Men's +eyes grew moist. + +And now another, a final song, a combination of all--of love, and loss +and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the +first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a +dream, and stood staring blindly at Al'mah. The great voice swelled out +in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that +gripped the heart. + +"But more was lost at Mohacksfield--" + +Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as +the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though +she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, she +gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell +heavily on the polished floor. + +Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was +beside him in an instant. + +"Yes, that's right--you come," he said to her, and he carried the limp +body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his +breast. + +"Poor child--the war, of course; it means so much to them." + +Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING + + +"A lady to see you, sir." + +"A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?" + +"I'm sure I have no use for them, sir," replied Gleg, sourly. He was in +no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master was +going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but that +he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of +receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner +which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not +even offered thanks. + +"Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?" + +"I don't know about that, sir. It's her ladyship, sir." + +"It's what 'ladyship,' Gleg?" + +"Her ladyship, sir--Lady Tynemouth." + +Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said +quietly: + +"Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've +forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten +yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a +small pension. Show her ladyship in." + +Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room. + +"Seven-and-six a week, I suppose," he said to himself as he went down +the stairs. "Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy." + +With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the +door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its +antipodes. + +Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand. + +"Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I +ought to be." + +"I am sure you are," answered Stafford, drily. + +"Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the lion's +mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped once," she +rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green leather-chair. +"Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world couldn't think +that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or that I would +pay for the candle without burning it." + +"On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them." + +She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as +ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after +Gleg's icy welcome." + +He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines of +Swinburne, alive with cynicism: + + "And the worst and the best of this is, + That neither is most to blame + If she has forgotten my kisses, + And I have forgotten her name." + +Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able to +endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny +past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our +friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent +flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a +needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian +Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle." + +"'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went +over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it +meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor +impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a +little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth. + +"The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good deal," +he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember Mr. +Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?" + +"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng +won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs +and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was +awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by--guess +whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to +find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as +he called it." + +"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to +make a needle-point dipped in it deadly." + +"I don't believe it a bit, but--" + +Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--she was all +in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But +tell me," she added, presently--"for it's one of the reasons why I'm +here now--what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are +not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose. +Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've never seen you look so +pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don't mind that from an old +friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so +well." + +"Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any +glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, +and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had +sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at +Mohacksfield." + +"Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say. +It makes me so proud to be your friend--even your neglected, if not +quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid +work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball +is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and +not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction +after all you've done?" + +"No doubt it's the reaction," he replied. + +"I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching +him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine +affair--shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and +taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that +all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the +verdict?" + +"Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut +short, and sympathy with the relatives." + +"I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative response. +"But--well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart stops +beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!" + +"It sounded rather worse than silly," was Ian's comment. + +"Did--did they cut him up, to see if he'd taken morphia, or an overdose +of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died of taking +quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long--a South American, +she was." + +He nodded. "It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, +they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been +what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not sufficient +strength for recovery." + +"I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn't present?" she asked, curiously. "I know it +is silly in a way, but don't you remember how interested Mr. Fellowes +was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?" + +"There was no reason why he should be there." + +"What witnesses were called?" + +"Myself and the porter of Fellowes' apartments, his banker, his +doctor--" + +"And Al'mah?" she asked, obliquely. + +He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly. + +"You needn't be afraid to speak about Al'mah," she continued. "I saw +something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me +that--well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al'mah there? Did +she give evidence?" + +"She was there to be called, if necessary," he responded, "but the +coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said +evidence was unnecessary, and--" + +"You arranged that, probably?" + +"Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid--and so kind." + +She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as if +with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale now, +and her eyes were greatly troubled. + +"Ian," she said, in a low voice, "I don't believe that Adrian Fellowes +died a natural death, and I don't believe that he killed himself. He +would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never +go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do so. +He--did--not--kill--himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did not die +a natural death, either." + +"Who killed him?" Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his eyes +remaining steady and quiet. + +She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. "Oh, it all seems so +horrible! I've tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, and +I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your face I +knew I couldn't have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not by the +same thoughts, but through the same people." + +"Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank," he said, heavily. "I +will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly +frank with me." + +"As I have always been. I can't be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so +much that you have the right to ask me what you will.... There it is, +the fatal thing," she added. + +Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her +over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls. + +"No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt," he responded, +gallantly. "I was merely selfish in saving you." + +Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little laugh. + +"Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want +me, while I didn't want you. That's the woman, and that's all women, +and there's no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had +saved me than any one else who wasn't bound, like Tynie, to do so." + +"Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a +sixpenny umbrella," he rejoined, drily. + +"How we play on the surface while there's so much that is wearing our +hearts out underneath," she responded, wearily. "Listen, Ian, you know +what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn't, I am sure that +Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill to +bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside hers. +The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or three +times she half waked, and--and it was very painful. It made my heart +ache, for I knew it wasn't all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian +Fellowes lying dead in his room.... Ian, it is awful, but for some +reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the +truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you--no, no, don't mind my saying +it. She didn't care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she +does care for you--cares for you. She oughtn't to, but she does, and +she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please +don't think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better +friend than I am. But there's something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is +looking like a giant that's had blood-letting, and he never goes near +Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It's a bad sign when two +people must have some third person about to insulate their +self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to be +just their own selves, and have it out." + +"You think there's been trouble between them?" His voice was quite +steady, his manner composed. + +"I don't think quite that. But there is trouble in that palace. Rudyard +is going to South Africa." + +"Well, that is not unnatural. I should expect him to do so. I am going +to South Africa also." + +For a moment she looked at him without speaking, and her face slowly +paled. "You are going to the Front--you?" + +"Yes--'Back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again.' I was +a gunner, you know, and not a bad one, either, if I do say it." + +"You are going to throw up a great career to go to the Front? When you +have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her voice +was choking a little. + +He made a little whimsical gesture. "There's another ladder to climb. +I'll have a try at it, and do my duty to my country, too. I'll have a +double-barrelled claim on her, if possible." + +"I know that you are going because you will not stay when Rudyard +goes," she rejoined, almost irritably. + +"What a quixotic idea! Really you are too impossible and wrong-headed." + +He turned an earnest look upon her. "No, I give you my word, I am not +going because Rudyard is going. I didn't know he was going till you +told me. I got permission to go three hours after Kruger's message +came." + +"You are only feckless--only feckless, as the Scotch say," she rejoined +with testy sadness. "Well, since everybody is going, I am going too. I +am going with a hospital-ship." + +"Well, that would pay off a lot of old debts to the Almighty," he +replied, in kindly taunt. + +"I haven't been worse than most women, Ian," she replied. "Women +haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up +bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them +off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so +few, and so uninteresting." + +Suddenly she took from her pocket a letter. "Here is a letter for you," +she said. "It was lying on Jasmine's table the night she was taken ill. +I don't know why I did it, but I suppose I took it up so that Rudyard +should not see it; and then I didn't say anything to Jasmine about it +at once. She said nothing, either; but to-day I told her I'd seen the +letter addressed to you, and had posted it. I said it to see how she +would take it. She only nodded, and said nothing at first. Then after a +while she whispered, 'Thank you, my dear,' but in such a queer tone. +Ian, she meant you to have the letter, and here it is." + +She put it into his hands. He remembered it. It was the letter which +Jasmine had laid on the table before him at that last interview when +the world stood still. After a moment's hesitation he put it in his +pocket. + +"If she wished me to have it--" he said in a low voice. + +"If not, why, then, did she write it? Didn't she say she was glad I +posted it?" + +A moment followed, in which neither spoke. Lady Tynemouth's eyes were +turned to the window; Stafford stood looking into the fire. + +"Tynie is sure to go to South Africa with his Yeomanry," she continued +at last. "He'll be back in England next week. I can be of use out +there, too. I suppose you think I'm useless because I've never had to +do anything, but you are quite wrong. It's in me. If I'd been driven to +work when I was a girl, if I'd been a labourer's daughter, I'd have +made hats--or cream-cheeses. I'm not really such a fool as you've +always thought me, Ian; at any rate, not in the way you've thought me." + +His look was gentle, as he gazed into her eyes. "I've never thought you +anything but a very sensible and alluring woman, who is only wilfully +foolish at times," he said. "You do dangerous things." + +"But you never knew me to do a really wrong thing, and if you haven't, +no one has." + +Suddenly her face clouded and her lips trembled. "But I am a good +friend, and I love my friends. So it all hurts. Ian, I'm most upset. +There's something behind Adrian Fellowes' death that I don't +understand. I'm sure he didn't kill himself; but I'm also sure that +some one did kill him." Her eyes sought his with an effort and with +apprehension, but with persistency too. "I don't care what the jury +said--I know I'm right." + +"But it doesn't matter now," he answered, calmly. "He will be buried +to-morrow, and there's an end of it all. It will not even be the usual +nine days' wonder. I'd forget it, if I were you." + +"I can't easily forget it while you remember it," she rejoined, +meaningly. "I don't know why or how it affects you, but it does affect +you, and that's why I feel it; that's why it haunts me." + +Gleg appeared. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said, and handed Ian a +card. + +"Where is he?" + +"In the dining-room, sir." + +"Very good. I will see him in a moment." + +When they were alone again, Lady Tynemouth held out her hand. "When do +you start for South Africa?" she asked. + +"In three days. I join my battery in Natal." + +"You will hear from me when I get to Durban," she said, with a shy, +inquiring glance. + +"You are really going?" + +"I mean to organize a hospital-ship and go." + +"Where will you get the money?" + +"From some social climber," she replied, cynically. His hand was on the +door-knob, and she laid her own on it gently. "You are ill, Ian," she +said. "I have never seen you look as you do now." + +"I shall be better before long," he answered. "I never saw you look so +well." + +"That's because I am going to do some work at last," she rejoined. +"Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great deal, and +perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you if you get +fever or anything," she added, laughing nervously--"you and Tynie." + +When she was gone he stood looking at the card in his hand, with his +mind seeing something far beyond. Presently he rang for Gleg. + +"Show Mr. Mappin in," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND + + +In a moment the great surgeon was seated, looking reflectively round +him. Soon, however, he said brusquely, "I hope your friend Jigger is +going on all right?" + +"Yes, yes, thanks to you." + +"No, no, Mr. Stafford, thanks to you and Mrs. Byng chiefly. It was care +and nursing that did it. If I could have hospitals like Glencader and +hospital nurses like Mrs. Byng and Al'mah and yourself, I'd have few +regrets at the end of the year. That was an exciting time at Glencader." + +Stafford nodded, but said nothing. Presently, after some reference to +the disaster at the mine at Glencader and to Stafford's and Byng's +bravery, Mr. Mappin said. "I was shocked to hear of Mr. Fellowes' +death. I was out of town when it happened--a bad case at Leeds; but I +returned early this morning." He paused, inquiringly but Ian said +nothing, and he continued, "I have seen the body." + +"You were not at the inquest, I think," Ian remarked, casually. + +"No, I was not in time for that, but I got permission to view the body." + +"And the verdict--you approve?" + +"Heart failure--yes." Mr. Mappin's lip curled. "Of course. But he had +no heart trouble. His heart wasn't even weak. His life showed that." + +"His life showed--?" Ian's eyebrows went up. + +"He was very much in society, and there's nothing more strenuous than +that. His heart was all right. Something made it fail, and I have been +considering what it was." + +"Are you suggesting that his death was not natural?" + +"Quite artificial, quite artificial, I should say." + +Ian took a cigarette, and lighted it slowly. "According to your theory, +he must have committed suicide. But how? Not by an effort of the will, +as they do in the East, I suppose?" + +Mr. Mappin sat up stiffly in his chair. "Do you remember my showing you +all at Glencader a needle which had on its point enough poison to kill +a man?" + +"And leave no trace--yes." + +"Do you remember that you all looked at it with interest, and that Mr. +Fellowes examined it more attentively than any one else?" + +"I remember." + +"Well, I was going to kill a collie with it next day." + +"A favourite collie grown old, rheumatic--yes, I remember." + +"Well, the experiment failed." + +"The collie wasn't killed by the poison?" + +"No, not by the poison, Mr. Stafford." + +"So your theory didn't work except on paper." + +"I think it worked, but not with the collie." + +There was a pause, while Stafford looked composedly at his visitor, and +then he said: "Why didn't it work with the collie?" + +"It never had its chance." + +"Some mistake, some hitch?" + +"No mistake, no hitch; but the wrong needle." + +"The wrong needle! I should not say that carelessness was a habit with +you." Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. + +"Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. + +"You were over-confident then?" + +"Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." + +There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some +cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of +reproach do you apply to Glencader?" + +"Thieving." + +"That sounds reprehensible--and rude." + +"If you were not beyond reproach, it would be rude, Mr. Stafford." + +Stafford chafed at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit +of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; +but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was +hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from +making mischief. The compliment had been smug, and smugness irritated +Stafford. + +"Well, thanks for your testimonial," he said, presently, and then he +determined to cut short the tardy revelation, and prick the bubble of +mystery which the great man was so slowly blowing. + +"I take it that you think some one at Glencader stole your needle, and +so saved your collie's life," he said. + +"That is what I mean," responded Mr. Mappin, a little discomposed that +his elaborate synthesis should be so sharply brought to an end. + +There was almost a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the +collie--were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you +prepare another needle, or do it in the humdrum way?" + +"I let the collie live." + +"Hoping to find the needle again?" asked Stafford, with a smile. + +"Perhaps to hear of it again." + +"Hello, that is rather startling! And you have done so? + +"I think so. Yes, I may say that." + +"Now how do you suppose you lost that needle?" + +"It was taken from my pocket-case, and another substituted. + +"Returning good for evil. Could you not see the difference in the +needles?" + +"There is not, necessarily, difference in needles. The substitute was +the same size and shape, and I was not suspicious." + +"And what form does your suspicion take now?" + +The great man became rather portentously solemn--he himself would have +said "becomingly grave." "My conviction is that Mr. Fellowes took my +needle." + +Stafford fixed the other with his gaze. "And killed himself with it?" + +Mr. Mappin frowned. "Of that I cannot be sure, of course." + +"Could you not tell by examining the body?" + +"Not absolutely from a superficial examination." + +"You did not think a scientific examination necessary?" + +"Yes, perhaps; but the official inquest is over, the expert analysis or +examination is finished by the authorities, and the superficial proofs, +while convincing enough to me, are not complete and final; and so, +there you are." + +Stafford got and held his visitor's eyes, and with slow emphasis said: +"You think that Fellowes committed suicide with your needle?" + +"No, I didn't say that." + +"Then I fear my intelligence must be failing rapidly. You said--" + +"I said I was not sure that he killed himself. I am sure that he was +killed by my needle; but I am not sure that he killed himself. Motive +and all that kind of thing would come in there." + +"Ah--and all that kind of thing! Why should you discard motive for his +killing himself?" + +"I did not say I discarded motive, but I think Mr. Fellowes the last +man in the world likely to kill himself." + +"Why, then, do you think he stole the needle?" + +"Not to kill himself." + +Stafford turned his head away a little. "Come now; this is too tall. +You are going pretty far in suggesting that Fellowes took your needle +to kill some one else." + +"Perhaps. But motive might not be so far to seek." + +"What motive in this case?" Stafford's eyes narrowed a little with the +inquiry. + +"Well, a woman, perhaps." + +"You know of some one, who--" + +"No. I am only assuming from Mr. Fellowes' somewhat material nature +that there must be a woman or so." + +"Or so--why 'or so?'" Stafford pressed him into a corner. + +"There comes the motive--one too many, when one may be suspicious, or +jealous, or revengeful, or impossible." + +"Did you see any mark of the needle on the body?" + +"I think so. But that would not do more than suggest further delicate, +detailed, and final examination." + +"You have no trace of the needle itself?" + +"None. But surely that isn't strange. If he had killed himself, the +needle would probably have been found. If he did not kill himself, but +yet was killed by it, there is nothing strange in its not being +recovered." + +Stafford took on the gravity of a dry-as-dust judge. "I suppose that to +prove the case it would be necessary to produce the needle, as your +theory and your invention are rather new." + +"For complete proof the needle would be necessary, though not +indispensable." + +Stafford was silent for an instant, then he said: "You have had a look +for the little instrument of passage?" + +"I was rather late for that, I fear." + +"Still, by chance, the needle might have been picked up. However, it +would look foolish to advertise for a needle which had traces of atric +acid on it, wouldn't it?" + +Mr. Mappin looked at Stafford quite coolly, and then, ignoring the +question, said, deliberately: "You discovered the body, I hear. You +didn't by any chance find the needle, I suppose?" + +Stafford returned his look with a cool stare. "Not by any chance," he +said, enigmatically. + +He had suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this +astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of +Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry +could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin had +surmised, there was more than one woman,--there may have been a dozen, +of course--but chance might just pitch on the one whom investigation +would injure most. + +If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his +grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general +excitement and agitation of the nation. The war-drum would drown any +small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence. Suppose some one +did kill Adrian Fellowes? He deserved to die, and justice was +satisfied, even if the law was marauded. There were at least four +people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse. There was +Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile +flower-girl--and himself. It was necessary that Mappin, however, should +be silenced, and sent about his business. + +Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with +an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural +irritability behind all, said "Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not +gone elsewhere with your suspicions?" + +The other shook his head in negation. + +"Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as an +expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche +occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes. Your suspicions may have +some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, tact, and +knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive clues and, +when finding them, making them fit in with fact--only a man like +yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it. You are +not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in causing +pain and annoyance beyond calculation. Just imagine a Scotland Yard +detective with such a delicate business to do. We have no Hamards here, +no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of special +sense. Can you not see the average detective blundering about with his +ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never traced a +motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue? Well, it is the +business of the Law to detect and punish crime. Let the Law do it in +its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to solve. +Why should you complicate things? The official fellows could never do +what you could do, if you were a detective. They haven't the brains or +initiative or knowledge. And since you are not a detective, and can't +devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be any problem +at all, I would suggest--I imitate your own rudeness--that you mind +your own business." + +He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes. + +At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but +under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of +Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke made +by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended dignity +and feebly returned the smile. + +"You are at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; +"but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is beneath +contempt. I know of cases--but I will not detain you with them now. +They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective should be +a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of human nature. +In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find motives, to +construct them and put them into play, as though they were real--work +till a clue was found. Then, if none is found, find another motive and +work on that. The French do it. They are marvels. Hamard is a genius, +as you say. He imagines, he constructs, he pursues, he squeezes out +every drop of juice in the orange.... You see, I agree with you on the +whole, but this tragedy disturbed me, and I thought that I had a real +clue. I still believe I have, but cui bono?" + +"Cui bono indeed, if it is bungled. If you could do it all yourself, +good. But that is impossible. The world wants your skill to save life, +not to destroy it. Fellowes is dead--does it matter so infinitely, +whether by his own hand or that of another?" + +"No, I frankly say I don't think it does matter infinitely. His type is +no addition to the happiness of the world." + +They looked at each other meaningly, and Mappin responded once again to +Stafford's winning smile. + +It pleased him prodigiously to feel Stafford lay a firm hand on his arm +and say: "Can you, perhaps, dine with me to-night at the Travellers' +Club? It makes life worth while to talk to men like you who do really +big things." + +"I shall be delighted to come for your own reasons," answered the great +man, beaming, and adjusting his cuffs carefully. + +"Good, good. It is capital to find you free." Again Stafford caught the +surgeon's arm with a friendly little grip. + +Suddenly, however, Mr. Mappin became aware that Stafford had turned +desperately white and worn. He had noticed this spent condition when he +first came in, but his eyes now rediscovered it. He regarded Stafford +with concern. + +"Mr. Stafford," he said, "I am sure you do not realize how much below +par you are.... You have been under great strain--I know, we all know, +how hard you have worked lately. Through you, England launches her ship +of war without fear of complications; but it has told on you heavily. +Nothing is got without paying for it. You need rest, and you need +change." + +"Quite so--rest and change. I am going to have both now," said Stafford +with a smile, which was forced and wan. + +"You need a tonic also, and you must allow me to give you one," was the +brusque professional response. + +With quick movement he went over to Stafford's writing-table, and threw +open the cover of the blotter. + +In a flash Stafford was beside him, and laid a hand upon the blotter, +saying with a smile, of the kind which had so far done its work-- + +"No, no, my friend, I will not take a tonic. It's only a good sleep I +want; and I'll get that to-night. But I give my word, if I'm not all +right to-morrow, if I don't sleep, I'll send to you and take your tonic +gladly." + +"You promise?" + +"I promise, my dear Mappin." + +The great man beamed again: and he really was solicitous for his +new-found friend. + +"Very well, very well--Stafford," he replied. "It shall be as you say. +Good-bye, or, rather, au revoir!" + +"A la bonne heure!" was the hearty response, as the door opened for the +great surgeon's exit. + +When the door was shut again, and Stafford was alone, he staggered over +to the writing-desk. Opening the blotter, he took something up +carefully and looked at it with a sardonic smile. + +"You did your work quite well," he said, reflectively. + +It was such a needle as he had seen at Glencader in Mr. Mappin's hand. +He had picked it up in Adrian Fellowes' room. + +"I wonder who used you," he said in a hard voice. "I wonder who used +you so well. Was it--was it Jasmine?" + +With a trembling gesture he sat down, put the needle in a drawer, +locked it, and turned round to the fire again. + +"Was it Jasmine?" he repeated, and he took from his pocket the letter +which Lady Tynemouth had given him. For a moment he looked at it +unopened--at the beautiful, smooth handwriting so familiar to his eyes; +then he slowly broke the seal, and took out the closely written pages. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JASMINE'S LETTER + + +"Ian, oh, Ian, what strange and dreadful things you have written to +me!" Jasmine's letter ran--the letter which she told him she had +written on that morning when all was lost. "Do you realize what you +have said, and, saying it, have you thought of all it means to me? You +have tried to think of what is best, I know, but have you thought of +me? When I read your letter first, a flood of fire seemed to run +through my veins; then I became as though I had been dipped in ether, +and all the winds of an arctic sea were blowing over me. + +"To go with you now, far away from the world in which we live and in +which you work, to begin life again, as you say--how sweet and terrible +and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I know you! I +am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am not foolish, +I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that visionary world +where you and I could live and work and wander, and be content with all +that would be given us--joy, seeing, understanding, revealing, doing. + +"But Ian, it is only a visionary world, that world of which you speak. +It does not exist. The overmastering love, the desire for you that is +in me, makes for me the picture as it is in your mind; but down beneath +all, the woman in me, the everlasting woman, is sure there is no such +world. + +"Listen, dear child--I call you that, for though I am only twenty-five +I seem as aged as the Sphinx, and, like the Sphinx that begets mockery, +so my soul, which seems to have looked out over unnumbered centuries, +mocks at this world which you would make for you and me. Listen, Ian. +It is not a real world, and I should not--and that is the pitiful, +miserable part of it--I should not make you happy, if I were in that +world with you. To my dire regret I know it. Suddenly you have roused +in me what I can honestly say I have never felt before--strange, +reckless, hungry feelings. I am like some young dweller of the jungle +which, cut off from its kind tries, with a passion that eats and eats +and eats away his very flesh to get back to its kind, to his mate, to +that other wild child of nature which waits for the one appeasement of +primeval desire. + +"Ian, I must tell you the whole truth about myself as I understand it. +I am a hopeless, painful contradiction; I have always been so. I have +always wanted to be good, but something has always driven me where the +flowers have a poisonous sweetness, where the heart grows bad. I want +to cry to you, Ian, to help me to be good; and yet something drives me +on to want to share with you the fruit which turns to dust and ashes in +the long end. And behind all that again, some tiny little grain of +honour in me says that I must not ask you to help me; says that I ought +never to look into your eyes again, never touch your hand, nor see you +any more; and from the little grain of honour comes the solemn whisper, +'Do not ruin him; do not spoil his life.' + +"Your letter has torn my heart, so that it can never again be as it was +before, and because there is some big, noble thing in you, some little, +not ignoble thing is born in me. Ian, you could never know the +anguished desire I have to be with you always, but, if I keep sane at +all, I will not go--no, I will not go with you, unless the madness +carries me away. It would kill you. I know, because I have lived so +many thousands of years. My spirit and my body might be satisfied, the +glory in having you all my own would be so great; but there would be no +joy for you. To men like you, work is as the breath of life. You must +always be fighting for something, always climbing higher, because you +see some big thing to do which is so far above you. + +"Yes, men like you get their chance sooner or later, because you work, +and are ready to take the gifts of Fate when they appear and before +they pass. You will be always for climbing, if some woman does not drag +you back. That woman may be a wife, or it may be a loving and living +ghost of a wife like me. Ian, I could not bear to see what would come +at last--the disappointment in your face the look of hope gone from +your eyes; your struggle to climb, and the struggle of no avail. +Sisyphus had never such a task as you would have on the hill of life, +if I left all behind here and went with you. You would try to hide it; +but I would see you growing older hourly before my eyes. You would +smile--I wonder if you know what sort of wonderful, alluring thing your +smile is, Ian?--and that smile would drive me to kill myself, and so +hurt you still more. And so it is always an everlasting circle of +penalty and pain when you take the laws of life you get in the +mountains in your hands and break them in pieces on the rocks in the +valleys, and make new individual laws out of harmony with the general +necessity. + +"Isn't it strange, Ian, that I who can do wrong so easily still know so +well and value so well what is right? It is my mother in me and my +grandfather in me, both of them fighting for possession. Let me empty +out my heart before you, because I know--I do not know why, but I do +know, as I write--that some dark cloud lowers, gathers round us, in +which we shall be lost, shall miss the touch of hand and never see each +other's face again. I know it, oh so surely! I did not really love you +years ago, before I married Rudyard; I did not love you when I married +him; I did not love him, I could not really love any one. My heart was +broken up in a thousand pieces to give away in little bits to all who +came. But I cared for you more than I cared for any one else--so much +more; because you were so able and powerful, and were meant to do such +big things; and I had just enough intelligence to want to understand +you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its meaning, however +dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick and rather +clever--sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, too. I have +made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I think and talk +and write, I only give out in a new light what others like you have +taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; blow a drop of +water into a bushel of bubbles. No, I did not love you, in the big way, +in those old days, and maybe it is not love I feel for you now; but it +is a great and wonderful thing, so different from the feeling I once +had. It is very powerful, and it is also very cruel, because it +smothers me in one moment, and in the next it makes me want to fly to +you, heedless of consequences. + +"And what might those consequences be, Ian, and shall I let you face +them? The real world, your world, England, Europe, would have no more +use for all your skill and knowledge and power, because there would be +a woman in the way. People who would want to be your helpers, and to +follow you, would turn away when they saw you coming; or else they +would say the superficial things which are worse than blows in the face +to a man who wants to feel that men look to him to help solve the +problems perplexing the world. While it may not be love I feel for you, +whatever it is, it makes me a little just and unselfish now. I will +not--unless a spring-time madness drives me to it to-day--I will not go +with you. + +"As for the other solution you offer, deceiving the world as to your +purposes, to go far away upon some wild mission, and to die! + +"Ah, no, you must not cheat the world so; you must not cheat yourself +so! And how cruel it would be to me! Whatever I deserve--and in leaving +you to marry Rudyard I deserved heavy punishment--still I do not +deserve the torture which would follow me to the last day of my life +if, because of me, you sacrificed that which is not yours alone, but +which belongs to all the world. I loathe myself when I think of the old +wrong that I did you; but no leper woman could look upon herself with +such horror as I should upon myself, if, for the new wrong I have done +you, you were to take your own life. + +"These are so many words, and perhaps they will not read to you as +real. That is perhaps because I am only shallow at the best; am only, +as you once called me, 'a little burst of eloquence.' But even I can +suffer, and I believe that even I can love. You say you cannot go on as +things are; that I must go with you or you must die; and yet you do not +wish me to go with you. You have said that, too. But do you not wonder +what would become of me, if either of these alternatives is followed? A +little while ago I could deceive Rudyard, and put myself in pretty +clothes with a smile, and enjoy my breakfast with him and look in his +face boldly, and enjoy the clothes, and the world and the gay things +that are in it, perhaps because I had no real moral sense. Isn't it +strange that out of the thing which the world would condemn as most +immoral, as the very degradation of the heart and soul and body, there +should spring up a new sense that is moral--perhaps the first true +glimmering of it? Oh, dear love of my life, comrade of my soul, +something has come to me which I never had before, and for that, +whatever comes, my lifelong gratitude must be yours! What I now feel +could never have come except through fire and tears, as you yourself +say, and I know so well that the fire is at my feet, and the tears--I +wept them all last night, when I too wanted to die. + +"You are coming at eleven to-day, Ian--at eleven. It is now eight. I +will try and send this letter to reach you before you leave your rooms. +If not, I will give it to you when you come--at eleven. Why did you not +say noon--noon--twelve of the clock? The end and the beginning! Why did +you not say noon, Ian? The light is at its zenith at noon, at twelve; +and the world is dark at twelve--at midnight. Twelve at noon; twelve at +night; the light and the dark--which will it be for us, Ian? Night or +noon? I wonder, oh, I wonder if, when I see you I shall have the +strength to say, 'Yes, go, and come again no more.' Or whether, in +spite of everything, I shall wildly say, 'Let us go away together.' +Such is the kind of woman that I am. And you--dear lover, tell me truly +what kind of man are you? + +"Your JASMINE." + + +He read the letter slowly, and he stopped again and again as though to +steady himself. His face became strained and white, and once he poured +brandy and drank it off as though it were water. When he had finished +the letter he went heavily over to the fire and dropped it in. He +watched it burn, until only the flimsy carbon was left. + +"If I had not gone till noon," he said aloud, in a nerveless voice--"if +I had not gone till noon ... Fellowes--did she--or was it Byng?" + +He was so occupied with his thoughts that he was not at first conscious +that some one was knocking. + +"Come in," he called out at last. + +The door opened and Rudyard Byng entered. + +"I am going to South Africa, Stafford," he said, heavily. "I hear that +you are going, too; and I have come to see whether we cannot go out +together." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +KROOL + + +"A message from Mr. Byng to say that he may be a little late, but he +says will you go on without him? He will come as soon as possible." + +The footman, having delivered himself, turned to withdraw, but Barry +Whalen called him back, saying, "Is Mr. Krool in the house?" + +The footman replied in the affirmative. "Did you wish to see him, sir?" +he asked. + +"Not at present. A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a glance +round the group, who eyed him curiously. + +At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily +Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr.' Krool +to be called into consultation?" + +"Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask the +question for nothing." + +"These aren't days when anybody guesses much," remarked Fleming. "And +I'd like to know from Mr. Kruger, who knows a lot of things, and +doesn't gas, whether he means the mines to be safe." + +They all looked inquiringly at Wallstein, who in the storms which +rocked them all kept his nerve and his countenance with a power almost +benign. His large, limpid eye looked little like that belonging to an +eagle of finance, as he had been called. + +"It looked for a while as though they'd be left alone," said Wallstein, +leaning heavily on the table, "but I'm not so sure now." He glanced at +Barry Whalen significantly, and the latter surveyed the group +enigmatically. + +"There's something evidently waiting to be said," remarked Wolff, the +silent Partner in more senses than one. "What's the use of waiting?" + +Two or three of those present looked at Ian Stafford, who, standing by +the window, seemed oblivious of them all. Byng had requested him to be +present, with a view to asking his advice concerning some international +aspect of the situation, and especially in regard to Holland and +Germany. The group had welcomed the suggestion eagerly, for on this +side of the question they were not so well equipped as on others. But +when it came to the discussion of inner local policy there seemed +hesitation in speaking freely before him. Wallstein, however, gave a +reassuring nod and said, meaningly: + +"We took up careful strategical positions, but our camp has been +overlooked from a kopje higher than ours." + +"We have been the victims of treachery for years," burst out Fleming, +with anger. "Nearly everything we've done here, nearly everything the +Government has done here, has been known to Kruger--ever since the +Raid." + +"I think it could have been stopped," said the once Sobieski, with an +ugly grimace, and an attempt at an accent which would suit his new +name. "Byng's to blame. We ought to have put down our feet from the +start. We're Byng-ridden." + +"Keep a civil tongue, Israel," snarled Barry Whalen. "You know nothing +about it, and that is the state in which you most shine--in your +natural state of ignorance, like the heathen in his blindness. But +before Byng comes I'd better give you all some information I've got." + +"Isn't it for Byng to hear?" asked Fleming. + +"Very much so; but it's for you all to decide what's to be done. +Perhaps Mr. Stafford can help us in the matter, as he has been with +Byng very lately." Wallstein looked inquiringly towards Stafford. + +The group nodded appreciatively, and Stafford came forward to the +table, but without seating himself. "Certainly you may command me," he +said. "What is the mystery?" + +In short and abrupt sentences Barry Whalen, with an occasional +interjection and explanation from Wallstein, told of the years of +leakage in regard to their plans, of moves circumvented by information +which could only have been got by treacherous means either in South +Africa or in London. + +"We didn't know for sure which it was," said Barry, "but the proof has +come at last. One of Kruger's understrappers from Holland was +successfully tapped, and we've got proof that the trouble was here in +London, here in this house where we sit--Byng's home." + +There was a stark silence, in which more than one nodded significantly, +and looked round furtively to see how the others took the news. + +"Here is absolute proof. There were two in it here--Adrian Fellowes and +Krool." + +"Adrian Fellowes!" + +It was Ian Stafford's voice, insistent and inquiring. + +"Here is the proof, as I say." Barry Whalen leaned forward and pushed a +paper over on the table, to which were attached two or three smaller +papers and some cablegrams. "Look at them. Take a good look at them and +see how we've been done--done brown. The hand that dipped in the same +dish, as it were, has handed out misfortune to us by the bucketful. +We've been carted in the house of a friend." + +The group, all standing, leaned over, as Barry Whalen showed them the +papers, one by one, then passed them round for examination. + +"It's deadly," said Fleming. "Men have had their throats cut or been +hanged for less. I wouldn't mind a hand in it myself." + +"We warned Byng years ago," interposed Barry, "but it was no use. And +we've paid for it par and premium." + +"What can be done to Krool?" asked Fleming. + +"Nothing particular--here," said Barry Whalen, ominously. + +"Let's have the dog in," urged one of the group. + +"Without Byng's permission?" interjected Wallstein. + +There was a silence. The last time any of them, except Wallstein, had +seen Byng, was on the evening when he had overheard the slanders +concerning Jasmine, and none had pleasant anticipation of this meeting +with him now. They recalled his departure when Barry Whalen had said, +"God, how he hates us." He was not likely to hate them less, when they +proved that Fellowes and Krool had betrayed him and them all. They had +a wholesome fear of him in more senses than one, because, during the +past few years, while Wallstein's health was bad, Byng's position had +become more powerful financially, and he could ruin any one of them, if +he chose. A man like Byng in "going large" might do the Samson +business. Besides, he had grown strangely uncertain in his temper of +late, and, as Barry Whalen had said, "It isn't good to trouble a +wounded bull in the ring." + +They had him on the hip in one way through the exposure of Krool, but +they were all more or less dependent on his financial movements. They +were all enraged at Byng because he had disregarded all warnings +regarding Krool; but what could they do? Instinctively they turned now +to Stafford, whose reputation for brains and diplomacy was so great and +whose friendship with Byng was so close. + +Stafford had come to-day for two reasons: to do what he could to help +Byng--for the last time; and to say to Byng that they could not travel +together to South Africa. To make the long journey with him was beyond +his endurance. He must put the world between Rudyard and himself; he +must efface all companionship. With this last act, begotten of the +blind confidence Rudyard had in him, their intercourse must cease +forever. This would be easy enough in South Africa. Once at the Front, +it was as sure as anything on earth that they would never meet again. +It was torture to meet him, and the day of the inquest, when Byng had +come to his rooms after his interview with Lady Tynemouth and Mr. +Mappin, he had been tried beyond endurance. + +"Shall we have Krool in without Byng's permission? Is it wise?" asked +Wallstein again. He looked at Stafford, and Stafford instantly replied: + +"It would be well to see Krool, I think. Your action could then be +decided by Krool's attitude and what he says." + +Barry Whalen rang the bell, and the footman came. After a brief waiting +Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed the door +behind him. + +He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure +which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage. + +"Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so +Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel. + +Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and +inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as +Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry voice. +"You've been too long without the sjambok." + +"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The +Law--here!" + +"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski, +with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular. + +"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, +motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't move, +here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders again, +or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing." + +He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a +rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here," +he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion. + +"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for +he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the whip. +Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and melancholy +interest. + +While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched +like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became venomous +and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes. + +The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and +the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool. + +Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear crept +over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir with fear +the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the sjambok. He had +native tendencies and predispositions out of proportion to the native +blood in him--maybe because he had ever been treated more like a native +than a white man by his Boer masters in the past. + +As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange +was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some +land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these +men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how +much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of +war. + +To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the dulled +noises of London there came to their ears the click of the wheels of a +cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of the +disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in the +East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok flying +across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the rheebok, or a +cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the green lands. +Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the scent of the +wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the reek of a native +kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the aromatic air of the +karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild herbs. Through the +drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild thunderbolt tear the +trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was the livid lightning that +searched in spasms of anger for its prey, while there swept over the +brown, aching veld the flood which filled the spruits, which made the +rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels through the soil. The luxury +of this room, with its shining mahogany tables, its tapestried walls, +its rare fireplace and massive overmantel brought from Italy, its +exquisite stained-glass windows, was only part of a play they were +acting; it was not their real life. + +And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the +whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry +Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme +naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol +of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in the +wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the long +train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, would +never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot would +have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, it +punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the derringer +of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was the lock to +the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the territories where +native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing tyrant to the commune. +It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of barbarism. It was the +sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate human flesh, it secured +order where there was no law, and it did the work of prison and +penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the wilderness. + +It was race. + +Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the +scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and +Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise +and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of the +veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between a +krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly +transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, though +the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into by-paths +for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence and the +knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed--the sjambok his +scimitar. + +In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He understood. +This was not London; the scene had shifted to Potchefstroom or +Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The sjambok had, like a +wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from England to spaces where +he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for the glint of an assegai or +the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had done both in his day. + +"We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some time +at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have you--" + +"Like that--like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and +shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession. + +"What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his head. +"What?" + +"You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the papers. +"We have here the proof at last." + +"You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the +English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, +harshly, handling the sjambok. + +"What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?" + +With great deliberation Wallstein explained. + +"Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly. + +"We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted +and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought. + +An insolent smile crossed Krool's face. + +"You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but the +work is done. It not matter now. It is all done--altogether. Oom Paul +speaks now, and everything is his--from the Cape to the Zambesi, +everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity +showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English both +sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea with +Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and Christ. +The God of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks." + +In spite of the fierce passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed a +side of his nature hitherto hidden--the savage piety of the copper Boer +impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford almost +laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it seemed so +droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of Israel, and +link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great liberator as +partners in triumph. + +In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a +place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at +once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his class, had +acted as a pagan. + +Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the situation, +while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of the +traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian +Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, +serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's +anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety. + +There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the +silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry Whalen. +He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, as he +would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel. + +"Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One +minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If +Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him go. +Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get out. Is +it agreed?" + +"I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth showed +glassily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not want." + +"The Baas--you have forgotten him," said Wallstein. + +A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, +but he said, morosely: + +"The Baas--I will do what I like." + +There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment +seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with fury. +Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's ear, and +then said: + +"Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool +before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course +to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my +business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, +if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in +his tone. + +"For Byng's sake--his wife--you understand," was all Stafford had said +under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who +whispered to Stafford. + +"Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now." + +By his glance and by his word of assent, Wallstein set the cue for the +rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry +Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon +it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding. + +"Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to +Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's worth +in Krool's eyes." + +When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his +fingers played idly with the sjambok. + +"You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, in +a low, even tone. + +"If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt." + +"You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the +Limpopo." + +A flush stole across Krool's face, and when it passed again he was +paler than before. "I have save the Baas," he answered, sullenly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +With a powerful effort, Stafford controlled himself. He dreaded what +was now to be said, but he felt inevitably what it was. + +"How--from me?" + +"If that Fellowes' letter come into his hands first, yours would not +matter. She would not go with you." + +Stafford had far greater difficulty in staying his hand than had Barry +Whalen, for the sjambok seemed the only reply to the dark suggestion. +He realized how, like the ostrich, he had thrust his head into the +sand, imagining that no one knew what was between himself and Jasmine. +Yet here was one who knew, here was one who had, for whatever purpose, +precipitated a crisis with Fellowes to prevent a crisis with himself. + +Suddenly Stafford thought of an awful possibility. He fastened the +gloomy eyes of the man before him, that he might be able to see any +stir of emotion, and said: "It did not come out as you expected?" + +"Altogether--yes." + +"You wished to part Mr. and Mrs. Byng. That did not happen." + +"The Baas is going to South Africa." + +"And Mr. Fellowes?" + +"He went like I expec'." + +"He died--heart failure, eh?" + +A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into +Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. + +"Who killed him?" + +Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the +sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers. "There was +yourself. He had hurt you--you went to him.... Good! There was the +Baas, he went to him. The dead man had hurt him.... Good!" + +Stafford interrupted him by an exclamation. "What's that you say--the +Baas went to Mr. Fellowes?" + +"As I tell the vrouw, Mrs. Byng, when she say me go from the house +to-day--I say I will go when the Baas send me." + +"The Baas went to Mr. Fellowes--when?" + +"Two hours before you go, and one hour before the vrouw, she go." + +Like some animal looking out of a jungle, so Krool's eyes glowed from +beneath his heavy eyebrows, as he drawled out the words. + +"The Baas went--you saw him?" + +"With my own eyes." + +"How long was he there?" + +"Ten minutes." + +"Mrs. Byng--you saw her go in?" + +"And also come out." + +"And me--you followed me--you saw me, also?" + +"I saw all that come, all that go in to him." + +With a swift mind Stafford saw his advantage--the one chance, the one +card he could play, the one move he could make in checkmate, if, and +when, necessary. "So you saw all that came and went. And you came and +went yourself!" + +His eyes were hard and bright as he held Krool's, and there was a +sinister smile on his lips. + +"You know I come and go--you say me that?" said Krool, with a sudden +look of vague fear and surprise. He had not foreseen this. + +"You accuse yourself. You saw this person and that go out, and you +think to hold them in your dirty clutches; but you had more reason than +any for killing Mr. Fellowes." + +"What?" asked Krool, furtively. + +"You hated him because he was a traitor like yourself. You hated him +because he had hurt the Baas." + +"That is true altogether, but--" + +"You need not explain. If any one killed Mr. Fellowes, why not you? You +came and went from his rooms, too." + +Krool's face was now yellowish pale. "Not me ... it was not me." + +"You would run a worse chance than any one. Your character would damn +you--a partner with him in crime. What jury in the world but would +convict you on your own evidence? Besides, you knew--" + +He paused to deliver a blow on the barest chance. It was an insidious +challenge which, if it failed, might do more harm to others, might do +great harm, but he plunged. "You knew about the needle." + +Krool was cowed and silent. On a venture Stafford had struck straight +home. + +"You knew that Mr. Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at +Glencader," he added. + +"How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. + +"I saw him steal it--and you?" + +"No. He tell me." + +"What did he mean to do with it?" + +A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. + +"Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man or +a woman want kill." + +There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill to +Stafford's heart. + +"No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, Krool. +You think you've got a hold over me--over Mrs. Byng. You threaten. +Well, I have passed through the fire of the coroner's inquest. I have +nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as you watched. You +came behind me--" + +He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure +behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from +Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more. + +"I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did +not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had spoken, +you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances were worse +than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends in there, +or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are the vile +scum of the earth,"--he determined to take a strong line now, since he +had made a powerful impression on the creature before him--"and you +will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved your life. Bad +as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, and what he wants +to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into yours, you will +think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he hates you, you +will die; if he curses you, you will wither." + +He played upon the superstitious element, the native strain again. It +was deeper in Krool than anything else. + +"Do you think you can defy them?" Stafford went on, jerking a finger +towards the other room. "They are from the veld. They will have you as +sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the +veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak +against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas' +vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?" + +There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul +struggling in the dark, as it were--a struggle as of black spirits in +the grey dawn. + +"I wait the Baas speak," Krool said at last, with a shiver. + +There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room +hurriedly. "Byng has come. He has been told about him," he said in +French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool. + +Stafford rose. "It's all right," he answered in the same language. "I +think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas." + +He turned to Krool. "If you say to the Baas what you have said to me +about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad time. +You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If you have +sense, you will do what I tell you." + +Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His +gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some +strange superstitious element. He was like a creature of a lower order +awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the +door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and +terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent +forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes +almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long +eyelashes touch the grey cheek. + +"There's no fight in him now," he said to Byng in French. "He was +getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember +that, Byng." + +Byng's look was as that of a man who had passed through some chamber of +torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and even +from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth and +scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there was a +look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there--a new look of +deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability and +force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with the +hidden things--the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of +human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge +without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses +and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their +character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective +in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive +organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still +only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to +races such as those of which Krool had come. + +A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had +rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; +these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage kind, +a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer purpose. +In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at his lips +was iron resolution. + +In reply to Stafford he said quietly: "All right, I understand. I know +how to deal with Krool." + +As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at +the end of the table opposite to Krool. + +Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes. + +"I know all, Krool," he said. "You sold me and my country--you tried to +sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I snatched from the +tiger death, not once but twice." + +"It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I +would have die for you, but--" + +"But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I +would twenty lives--my country--you tried to sell me and all who worked +with me." + +"It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal," said the +half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. "But it +matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for +himself. I am half Boer. That is why." + +"You defend it--tell me, you defend it?" + +There was that in the voice, some terrible thing, which drew Krool's +eyes in spite of himself, and he met a look of fire and wrath. + +"I tell why. If it was bad, it was bad. But I tell why, that is all. If +it is not good, it is bad, and hell is for the bad; but I tell why." + +"You got money from Oom Paul for the man--Fellowes?" It was hard for +him to utter the name. + +Krool nodded. + +"Every year--much?" + +Again Krool nodded. + +"And for yourself--how much?" + +"Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." + +"Only Oom Paul's love!" + +Krool nodded again. + +"But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you +with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving him. +I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life twice. I +gave you good money. I kept you in luxury--you that fed in the +cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong when +you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you were +so wild for meat ... I took you out of that, and gave you this." + +He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out of +my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the same +dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim--god of gods, how +slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native in +you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul did. It's +the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you straight and +true, my sweet Krool." + +Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and +slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through +his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before laying +on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept which never +had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul had flayed +him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the veld-dweller with +skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and endurance. And this +was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, whose wife he had +sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into a traitor. Oom +Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a master whose very +tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; whom, at bottom, he +loved in his way as he had never loved anything; whom he had betrayed, +not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; having argued that it was +against England his treachery was directed, and that was a virtue in +his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could come to Byng through it. +He had not seen, he had not understood, he was still uncivilized; he +had only in his veins the morality of the native, and he had tried to +ruin his master's wife for his master's sake; and when he had finished +with Fellowes as a traitor, he was ready to ruin his confederate--to +kill him--perhaps did kill him! + +"It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!" + +The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of punishment. What +else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there was no other way +to punish the traitor, but if there had been another way he would still +have done this. This Krool understood; behind every command the Baas +had ever given him this thing lay--the sjambok, the natural engine of +authority. + +Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped +that letter on my bedroom floor--that letter, you understand?... Speak." + +"I did it, Baas." + +Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly +took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched +man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again. + +"You know what I am going to do with you?" + +"Yes, Baas." + +It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to +Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was +the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do--to obey. + +"You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go." + +"She was not my Baas." + +"You would have done her harm, if you could?" + +"So, Baas." + +With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, and +the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste. + +Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to +resist. + +Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open. + +"You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a +passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?" + +Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no +heart for that enterprise--thirty feet to the pavement below. + +"The sjambok, Baas," he said. + +Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang +out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture. + +In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and +understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank away +to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed pleasure in +the sound of the whip and the moaning. + +It went on and on. + +Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently +his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might kill +the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to him. + +"You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't, +I will. Listen...." + +It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It +belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law, +where every pioneer was his own cadi. + +With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an instant +and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely realized him. + +"Open that door," he said, presently, and Barry Whalen opened the door +which led into the big hall. + +"Open all down to the street," Byng said, and Barry Whalen went forward +quickly. + +Like some wild beast Krool crouched and stumbled and moaned as he ran +down the staircase, through the outer hall, while a servant with scared +face saw Byng rain savage blows upon the hated figure. + +On the pavement outside the house, Krool staggered, stumbled, and fell +down; but he slowly gathered himself up, and turned to the doorway, +where Byng stood panting with the sjambok in his hand. + +"Baas!--Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully +away along the street wall. + +A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent +purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and +told him to call that evening and he would hear all about it. Meanwhile +a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of good faith. + +Presently a half-dozen people began to gather near the door, but the +benevolent policeman moved them on. + +At the top of the staircase Jasmine met her husband. She shivered as he +came up towards her. + +"Will you come to me when you have finished your business?" she said, +and she took the sjambok gently from his hand. + +He scarcely realized her. He was in a dream; but he smiled at her, and +nodded, and passed on to where the others awaited him. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +"THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" + + +Slowly Jasmine returned to her boudoir. Laying the sjambok on the table +among the books in delicate bindings and the bowls of flowers, she +stood and looked at it with confused senses for a long time. At last a +wan smile stole to her lips, but it did not reach her eyes. They +remained absorbed and searching, and were made painfully sad by the +wide, dark lines under them. Her fair skin was fairer than ever, but it +was delicately faded, giving her a look of pensiveness, while yet there +was that in her carriage and at her mouth which suggested strength and +will and new forces at work in her. She carried her head, weighted by +its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern woman carries a goulah of +water. There was something pathetic yet self-reliant in the whole +figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, however, might at any +moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment of control and +self-restraint. + +"He did what I should have liked to do," she said aloud. "We are not so +different, after all. He is primitive at bottom, and so am I. He gets +carried away by his emotions, and so do I." + +She took up the whip, examined it, felt its weight, and drew it with a +swift jerk through the air. + +"I did not even shrink when Krool came stumbling down the stairs, with +this cutting his flesh," she said to herself. "Somehow it all seemed +natural and right. What has come to me? Are all my finer senses dead? +Am I just one of the crude human things who lived a million years ago, +and who lives again as crude as those; with only the outer things +changed? Then I wore the skins of wild animals, and now I do the same, +just the same; with what we call more taste perhaps, because we have +ceased to see the beauty in the natural thing." + +She touched the little band of grey fur at the sleeve of her clinging +velvet gown. "Just a little distance away--that is all." + +Suddenly a light flashed up in her eyes, and her face flushed as though +some one had angered her. She seized the whip again. "Yes, I could have +seen him whipped to death before my eyes--the coward, the abject +coward. He did not speak for me; he did not defend me; he did not deny. +He let Ian think--death was too kind to him. How dared he hurt me so! +... Death is so easy a way out, but he would not have taken it. No, no, +no, it was not suicide; some one killed him. He could never have taken +his own life--never. He had not the courage.... No; he died of poison +or was strangled. Who did it? Who did it? Was it Rudyard? Was it...? +Oh, it wears me out--thinking, thinking, thinking!" + +She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "I am doomed--doomed," +she moaned. "I was doomed from the start. It must always have been so, +whatever I did. I would do it again, whatever I did; I know I would do +it again, being what I was. It was in my veins, in my blood from the +start, from the very first days of my life." + +All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so +many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as it +was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: + +"There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not +all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life +durable...." + +"'There is no help for these things,'" she repeated with a sigh which +seemed to tear her heart in twain. "All gone--all. What is there left +to do? If death could make it better for any one, how easy! But +everything would be known--somehow the world would know, and every one +would suffer more. Not now--no, not now. I must live on, but not here. +I must go away. I must find a place to go where Rudyard will not come. +There is no place so far but it is not far enough. I am twenty-five, +and all is over--all is done for me. I have nothing that I want to +keep, there is nothing that I want to do except to go--to go and to be +alone. Alone, always alone now. It is either that, or be Jezebel, or--" + +The door opened, and the servant brought a card to her. "His +Excellency, the Moravian ambassador," the footman said. + +"Monsieur Mennaval?" she asked, mechanically, as though scarcely +realizing what he had said. + +"Yes, ma'am, Mr. Mennaval." + +"Please say I am indisposed, and am sorry I cannot receive him to-day," +she said. + +"Very good, ma'am." The footman turned to go, then came back. + +"Shall I tell the maid you want her?" he asked, respectfully. + +"No, why should you?" she asked. + +"I thought you looked a bit queer, ma'am," he responded, hastily. "I +beg your pardon, ma'am." + +She rewarded him with a smile. "Thank you, James, I think I should like +her after all. Ask her to come at once." + +When he had gone she leaned back and shut her eyes. For a moment she +was perfectly motionless, then she sat up again and looked at the card +in her hand. + +"M. Mennaval--M. Mennaval," she said, with a note so cynical that it +betrayed more than her previous emotion, to such a point of despair her +mind had come. + +M. Mennaval had played his part, had done his service, had called out +from her every resource of coquetry and lure; and with wonderful art +she had cajoled him till he had yielded to influence, and Ian had +turned the key in the international lock. M. Mennaval had been used +with great skill to help the man who was now gone from her forever, +whom perhaps she would never see again; and who wanted never to see her +again, never in all time or space. M. Mennaval had played his game for +his own desire, and he had lost; but what had she gained where M. +Mennaval had lost? She had gained that which now Ian despised, which he +would willingly, so far as she was concerned, reject with contempt.... +And yet, and yet, while Ian lived he must still be grateful to her +that, by whatever means, she had helped him to do what meant so much to +England. Yes, he could not wholly dismiss her from his mind; he must +still say, "This she did for me--this thing, in itself not commendable, +she did for me; and I took it for my country." + +Her eyes were open, and her garden had been invaded by those +revolutionaries of life and time, Nemesis, Penalty, Remorse. They +marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They came +with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self now. +Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on her, +blocking her path. + +M. Mennaval--what did she care for him! Yet here he was at her door +asking payment for the merchandise he had sold to her: his judgment, +his reputation as a diplomatist, his freedom, the respect of the +world--for how could the world respect a man at whom it laughed, a man +who had hoped to be given the key to a secret door in a secret garden! + +As Jasmine sat looking at the card, the footman entered again with a +note. + +"His Excellency's compliments," he said, and withdrew. + +She opened the letter hesitatingly, held it in her hand for a moment +without reading it, then, with an impulsive effort, did so. When she +had finished, she gave a cry of anger and struck her tiny clinched hand +upon her knee. + +The note ran: + +"Chere amie, you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all +too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow a +migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world +understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of explanation. +Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought you could not +be upset so easily--no, it cannot be the war; so I must try and think +what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five o'clock, I will call +again to ask you. Perhaps the migraine will be better. But, if you will +that migraine to be far away, it will fly, and then I shall be near. Is +it not so? You will tell me to-morrow at five, will you not, belle amie? + +"A toi, M. M." + + +The words scorched her eyes. They angered her, scourged her. One of +life's Revolutionaries was insolently ravaging the secret place where +her pride dwelt. Pride--what pride had she now? Where was the room for +pride or vanity? ... And all the time she saw the face of a dead man +down by the river--a face now beneath the sod. It flashed before her +eyes at moments when she least could bear it, to agitate her soul. + +M. Mennaval--how dare he write to her so! "Chere amie" and "A toi"--how +strange the words looked now, how repulsive and strange! It did not +seem possible that once before he had written such words to her. But +never before had these epithets or others been accompanied by such +meaning as his other words conveyed. + +"I will not see him to-morrow. I will not see him ever again, if I can +help it," she said bitterly, and trembling with agitation. "I shall go +where I shall not be found. I will go to-night." + +The door opened. Her maid entered. "You wanted me, madame?" asked the +girl, in some excitement and very pale. + +"Yes, what is the matter? Why so agitated?" Jasmine asked. + +The maid's eyes were on the sjambok. She pointed to it. "It was that, +madame. We are all agitated. It was terrible. One had never seen +anything like that before in one's life, madame--never. It was like the +days--yes, of slavery. It was like the galleys of Toulon in the old +days. It was--" + +"There, don't be so eloquent, Lablanche. What do you know of the +galleys of Toulon or the days of slavery?" + +"Madame, I have heard, I have read, I--" + +"Yes, but did you love Krool so?" + +The girl straightened herself with dramatic indignation. "Madame, that +man, that creature, that toad--!" + +"Then why so exercised? Were you so pained at his punishment? Were all +the household so pained?" + +"Every one hated him, madame," said the girl, with energy. + +"Then let me hear no more of this impudent nonsense," Jasmine said, +with decision. + +"Oh, madame, to speak to me like this!" Tears were ready to do needful +service. + +"Do you wish to remain with me, Lablanche?" + +"Ah, madame, but yes--" + +"Then my head aches, and I don't want you to make it worse.... And, +see, Lablanche, there is that grey walking-suit; also the mauve +dressing-gown, made by Loison; take them, if you can make them fit you; +and be good." + +"Madame, how kind--ah, no one is like you, madame--!" + +"Well, we shall see about that quite soon. Put out at once every gown +of mine for me to see, and have trunks ready to pack immediately; but +only three trunks, not more." + +"Madame is going away?" + +"Do as I say, Lablanche. We go to-night. The grey gown and the mauve +dressing-gown that Loison made, you will look well in them. Quick, now, +please." + +In a flutter Lablanche left the room, her eyes gleaming. + +She had had her mind on the grey suit for some time, but the mauve +dressing-gown as well--it was too good to be true. + +She almost ran into Lady Tynemouth's arms as the door opened. With a +swift apology she sped away, after closing the door upon the visitor. + +Jasmine rose and embraced her friend, and Lady Tynemouth subsided into +a chair with a sigh. + +"My dear Jasmine, you look so frail," she said. "A short time ago I +feared you were going to blossom into too ripe fruit, now you look +almost a little pinched. But it quite becomes you, mignonne--quite. You +have dark lines under your eyes, and that transparency of skin--it is +quite too fetching. Are you glad to see me?" + +"I would have seen no one to-day, no one, except you or Rudyard." + +"Love and duty," said Lady Tynemouth, laughing, yet acutely alive to +the something so terribly wrong, of which she had spoken to Ian +Stafford. + +"Why is it my duty to see you, Alice?" asked Jasmine, with the dry +glint in her tone which had made her conversation so pleasing to men. + +"You clever girl, how you turn the tables on me," her friend replied, +and then, seeing the sjambok on the table, took it up. "What is this +formidable instrument? Are you flagellating the saints?" + +"Not the saints, Alice." + +"You don't mean to say you are going to scourge yourself?" + +Then they both smiled--and both immediately sighed. Lady Tynemouth's +sympathy was deeply roused for Jasmine, and she meant to try and win +her confidence and to help her in her trouble, if she could; but she +was full of something else at this particular moment, and she was not +completely conscious of the agony before her. + +"Have you been using this sjambok on Mennaval?" she asked with an +attempt at lightness. "I saw him leaving as I came in. He looked rather +dejected--or stormy, I don't quite know which." + +"Does it matter which? I didn't see Mennaval today." + +"Then no wonder he looked dejected and stormy. But what is the history +of this instrument of torture?" she asked, holding up the sjambok again. + +"Krool." + +"Krool! Jasmine, you surely don't mean to say that you--" + +"Not I--it was Rudyard. Krool was insolent--a half-caste, you know." + +"Krool--why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a +policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that Rudyard--" + +She pushed the sjambok away from her. + +"Yes--terribly." + +"Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." + +"Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. + +"But of course it is not usual--in these parts." + +"Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either. It was a touch +of the Vaal." + +Lady Tynemouth gave a little shudder. "I hope it won't become +fashionable. We are altogether too sensational nowadays. But, +seriously, Jasmine, you are not well. You must do something. You must +have a change." + +"I am going to do something--to have a change." + +"That's good. Where are you going, dear?" + +"South.... And how are you getting on with your hospital-ship?" + +Lady Tynemouth threw up her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set +my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done +it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now +Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding a +wife to come to him." + +"Well, perhaps it's better than a husband forbidding his wife to leave +him." + +"Jasmine, I believe you would joke if you were dying." + +"I am dying." + +There was that in the tone of Jasmine's voice which gave her friend a +start. She eyed her suddenly with a great anxiety. + +"And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell me +what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what Tynemouth +says. Of course you will do as you like." + +"Of course; but still Tynie has never 'issued instructions' before, and +if there was any time I ought to humour him it is now. He's so intense +about the war! But I can't explain everything on paper to him, so I've +written to say I'm going to South Africa to explain, and that I'll come +back by the next boat, if my reasons are not convincing." + +In other circumstances Jasmine would have laughed. "He will find you +convincing," she said, meaningly. + +"I said if he found my reasons convincing." + +"You will be the only reason to him." + +"My dear Jasmine, you are really becoming sentimental. Tynie would +blush to discover himself being silly over me. We get on so well +because we left our emotions behind us when we married." + +"Yours, I know, you left on the Zambesi," said Jasmine, deliberately. + +A dull fire came into Lady Tynemouth's eyes, and for an instant there +was danger of Jasmine losing a friend she much needed; but Lady +Tynemouth had a big heart, and she knew that her friend was in a mood +when anything was possible, or everything impossible. + +So she only smiled, and said, easily: "Dearest Jasmine, that umbrella +episode which made me love Ian Stafford for ever and ever without even +amen came after I was married, and so your pin doesn't prick, not a +weeny bit. No, it isn't Tynie that makes me sad. It's the Climbers who +won't pay." + +"The Climbers? You want money for--" + +"Yes, the hospital-ship; and I thought they'd jump at it; but they've +all been jumping in other directions. I asked the Steuvenfeldts, the +Boulters, the Felix Fowles, the Brutons, the Sheltons, and that fellow +Mackerel, who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it and +twenty others; and Mackerel was the only one who would give me anything +at all large. He gave me ten thousand pounds. But I want fifty--fifty, +my beloved. I'm simply broken-hearted. It would do so much good, and I +could manage the thing so well, and I could get other splendid people +to help me to manage it--there's Effie Lyndhall and Mary Meacham. The +Mackerel wanted to come along, too, but I told him he could come out +and fetch us back--that there mustn't be any scandal while the war was +on. I laugh, my dear, but I could cry my eyes out. I want something to +do--I've always wanted something to do. I've always been sick of an +idle life, but I wouldn't do a hundred things I might have done. This +thing I can do, however, and, if I did it, some of my debt to the world +would be paid. It seems to me that these last fifteen years in England +have been awful. We are all restless; we all have been going, +going--nowhere; we have all been doing, doing--nothing; we have all +been thinking, thinking, thinking--of ourselves. And I've been a +playbody like the rest; I've gone with the Climbers because they could +do things for me; I've wanted more and more of everything--more +gadding, more pleasure, more excitement. It's been like a brass-band +playing all the time, my life this past ten years. I'm sick of it. It's +only some big thing that can take me out of it. I've got to make some +great plunge, or in a few years more I'll be a middle-aged peeress with +nothing left but a double chin, a tongue for gossip, and a string of +pearls. There must be a bouleversement of things as they are, or +good-bye to everything except emptiness. Don't you see, Jasmine, +dearest?" + +"Yes yes, I see." Jasmine got up, went to her desk, opened a drawer, +took out a book, and began to write hastily. "Go on," she said as she +wrote; "I can hear what you are saying." + +"But are you really interested?" + +"Even Tynemouth would find you interesting and convincing. Go on." + +"I haven't anything more to say, except that nothing lies between me +and flagellation and the sack cloth,"--she toyed with the +sjambok--"except the Climbers; and they have failed me. They won't +play--or pay." + +Jasmine rose from the desk and came forward with a paper in her hand. +"No, they have not failed you, Alice," she said, gently. "The Climbers +seldom really disappoint you. The thing is, you must know how to talk +to them, to say the right thing, the flattering, the tactful, and the +nice sentimental thing,--they mostly have middle-class +sentimentality--and then you get what you want. As you do now. +There...." + +She placed in her friend's hand a long, narrow slip of paper. Lady +Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to +her feet, pale and agitated. + +"Jasmine--you--this--sixty thousand pounds!" she cried. "A cheque for +sixty thousand pounds--Jasmine!" + +There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine's eyes, a hectic flush on her +cheek. + +"It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money +will be there." + +Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine's shoulders in her trembling yet strong +fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and +solicitude. + +"But, Jasmine, it isn't possible. Will Rudyard--can you afford it?" + +"That will not be Rudyard's money which you will get. It will be all my +own." + +"But you yourself are not rich. Sixty thousand pounds--why?" + +"It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is my +own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess. And if all is needed +before we have finished, then all shall go." + +Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes +which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into some +world of the soul or imagination. "Jasmine, you are not crazy, are +you?" she asked, excitedly. "You will not repent of this? It is not a +sudden impulse?" + +"Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once. But when it +came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I will not +repent of it. Have no fear. It is final. It is sure. It means that, +like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which +sweeps me on to the rapids." + +"Jasmine, do you mean that you will--that you are coming, too?" + +"Yes, I am going with you. We will do it together. You shall lead, and +I shall help. I have a gift for organization. My grandfather? he--" + +"All the world knows that. If you have anything of his gift, we shall +not fail. We shall feel that we are doing something for our +country--and, oh, so much for ourselves! And we shall be near our men. +Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for +anything if necessary. But Rudyard, will he approve?" She held up the +cheque. + +Jasmine made a passionate gesture. "There are times when we must do +what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the consequences. I +am myself. I am not a slave. If I take my own way in the pleasures of +life, why should I not take it in the duties and the business of life?" + +Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on +the large, capable hand of her friend. "Isn't work the secret of life? +My grandfather used to say it was. Always, always, he used to say to +me, 'Do something, Jasmine. Find a work to do, and do it. Make the +world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you do. +Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble'--that is what +he said. And I must work or go mad. I tell you I must work, Alice. We +will work together out there where great battles will be fought." + +A sob caught her in the throat, and Alice Tynemouth wrapped her round +with tender arms. "It will do you good, darling," she said, softly. "It +will help you through--through it all, whatever it is." + +For an instant Jasmine felt that she must empty out her heart; tell the +inner tale of her struggle; but the instant of weakness passed as +suddenly as it came, and she only said--repeating Alice Tynemouth's +words: "Yes, through it all, through it all, whatever it is." Then she +added: "I want to do something big. I can, I can. I want to get out of +this into the open world. I want to fight. I want to balance things +somehow--inside myself...." + +All at once she became very quiet. "But we must do business like +business people. This money: there must be a small committee of +business men, who--" + +Alice Tynemouth finished the sentence for her. "Who are not Climbers?" + +"Yes. But the whole organization must be done by ourselves--all the +practical, unfinancial work. The committee will only be like careful +trustees." + +There was a new light in Jasmine's eyes. She felt for the moment that +life did not end in a cul de sac. She knew that now she had found a way +for Rudyard and herself to separate without disgrace, without +humiliation to him. She could see a few steps ahead. When she gave +Lablanche instructions to put out her clothes a little while before, +she did not know what she was going to do; but now she knew. She knew +how she could make it easier for Rudyard when the inevitable hour +came,--and it was here--which should see the end of their life +together. He need not now sacrifice himself so much for her sake. + +She wanted to be alone, and, as if divining her thought, Lady Tynemouth +embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the room save +the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. + +How silent it was! The world seemed very far away. Peace seemed to have +taken possession of the place, and Jasmine's stillness as she sat by +the fire staring into the embers was a part of it. So lost was she that +she was not conscious of an opening door and of a footstep. She was +roused by a low voice. + +"Jasmine!" + +She did not start. It was as though there had come a call, for which +she had waited long, and she appeared to respond slowly to it, as one +would to a summons to the scaffold. There was no outward agitation now, +there was only a cold stillness which seemed little to belong to the +dainty figure which had ever been more like a decoration than a living +utility in the scheme of things. The crisis had come which she had +dreaded yet invited--that talk which they two must have before they +went their different ways. She had never looked Rudyard in the eyes +direct since the day when Adrian Fellowes died. They had met, but never +quite alone; always with some one present, either the servants or some +other. Now they were face to face. + +On Rudyard's lips was a faint smile, but it lacked the old bonhomie +which was part of his natural equipment; and there were still sharp, +haggard traces of the agitation which had accompanied the expulsion of +Krool. + +For an instant the idea possessed her that she would tell him +everything there was to tell, and face the consequences, no matter what +they might be. It was not in her nature to do things by halves, and +since catastrophe was come, her will was to drink the whole cup to the +dregs. She did not want to spare herself. Behind it all lay something +of that terrible wilfulness which had controlled her life so far. It +was the unlovely soul of a great pride. She did not want to be forgiven +for anything. She did not want to be condoned. There was a spirit of +defiance which refused to accept favours, preferring punishment to the +pity or the pardon which stooped to make it easier for her. It was a +dangerous pride, and in the mood of it she might throw away everything, +with an abandonment and recklessness only known to such passionate +natures. + +The mood came on her all at once as she stood and looked at Rudyard. +She read, or she thought she read in his eyes, in his smile, the +superior spirit condescending to magnanimity, to compassion; and her +whole nature was instantly up in arms. She almost longed on the instant +to strip herself bare, as it were, and let him see her as she really +was, or as, in her despair, she thought she really was. The mood in +which she had talked to Lady Tynemouth was gone, and in its place a +spirit of revolt was at work. A certain sullenness which Rudyard and no +one else had ever seen came into her eyes, and her lips became white +with an ominous determination. She forgot him and all that he would +suffer if she told him the whole truth; and the whole truth would, in +her passion, become far more than the truth: she was again the egoist, +the centre of the universe. What happened to her was the only thing +which mattered in all the world. So it had ever been; and her beauty +and her wit and her youth and the habit of being spoiled had made it +all possible, without those rebuffs and that confusion which fate +provides sooner or later for the egoist. + +"Well," she said, sharply, "say what you wish to say. You have wanted +to say it badly. I am ready." + +He was stunned by what seemed to him the anger and the repugnance in +her tone. + +"You remember you asked me to come, Jasmine, when you took the sjambok +from me." + +He nodded towards the table where it lay, then went forward and picked +it up, his face hardening as he did so. + +Like a pendulum her mood swung back. By accident he had said the one +thing which could have moved her, changed her at the moment. The savage +side of him appealed to her. What he lacked in brilliance and the +lighter gifts of raillery and eloquence and mental give-and-take, he +had balanced by his natural forces--from the power-house, as she had +called it long ago. Pity, solicitude, the forced smile, magnanimity, +she did not want in this black mood. They would have made her cruelly +audacious, and her temper would have known no license; but now, +suddenly, she had a vision of him as he stamped down the staircase, his +coat off, laying the sjambok on the shoulders of the man who had +injured her so, who hated her so, and had done so over all the years. +It appealed to her. + +In her heart of hearts she was sure he had done it directly or +indirectly for her sake; and that was infinitely more to her than that +he should stoop from the heights to pick her up. He was what he was +because Heaven had made him so; and she was what she was because Heaven +had forgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or +understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she +could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain +on Abel. She softened, changed at once. + +"Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and +I ordered him to go. He would not." + +"I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he +was--a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was +pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That +counts for much with the most of us." + +"Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and +take him away. Will there be trouble?" + +A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are +reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to +Kruger, he and--" + +He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence. + +"Yes, he and--and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She had +a sudden intuition. + +He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes--what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and +one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great +deal." + +The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance +had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken was +he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to him. Afterwards, +however, as the Partners all talked together up-stairs, the enormity of +the dead man's crime had fastened on him, and his brain had been +stunned by the terrible thought that directly or indirectly Jasmine had +abetted the crime. Things he had talked over with her, and with no one +else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the information from South +Africa showed. She had at least been indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes +with some freedom or he could not have known what he did. But directly, +knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of course, she had not done that; but her +foolish confidences had abetted treachery, had wronged him, had helped +to destroy his plans, had injured England. + +He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his +treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last half-hour. +Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment had taken +possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important and +critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of his +wife. + +Upon her now this announcement came with crushing force. Adrian +Fellowes had gained from her--she knew it all too well now--that which +had injured her husband; from which, at any rate, he ought to have been +immune. Her face flushed with a resentment far greater than that of +Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed +her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one who +ruled, had been used like a--she could not form the comparison in her +mind--by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it was +through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in life +by Rudyard. + +"I am sorry," she said, calmly, as soon as she could get her voice. "I +was the means of your employing him." + +"That did not matter," he said, rather nervously. "There was no harm in +that, unless you knew his character before he came to me." + +"You think I did?" + +"I cannot think so. It would have been too ruthless--too wicked." + +She saw his suffering, and it touched her. "Of course I did not know +that he could do such a thing--so shameless. He was a low coward. He +did not deserve decent burial," she added. "He had good fortune to die +as he did." + +"How did he die?" Rudyard asked her, with a face so unlike what it had +always been, so changed by agitation, that it scarcely seemed his. His +eyes were fixed on hers. + +She met them resolutely. Did he ask her in order to see if she had any +suspicion of himself? Had he done it? If he had, there would be some +mitigation of her suffering. Or was it Ian Stafford who had done it? +One or the other--but which? + +"He died without being made to suffer," she said. "Most people who do +wrong have to suffer." + +"But they live on," he said, bitterly. + +"That is no great advantage unless you want to live," she replied. "Do +you know how he died?" she added, after a moment, with sharp scrutiny. + +He shook his head and returned her scrutiny with added poignancy. "It +does not matter. He ceases to do any more harm. He did enough." + +"Yes, quite enough," she said, with a withered look, and going over to +her writing-table, stood looking at him questioningly. He did not speak +again, however. + +Presently she said, very quietly, "I am going away." + +"I do not understand." + +"I am going to work." + +"I understand still less." + +She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to him. +He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had given +to Alice Tynemouth. + +He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked. + +"It is for a hospital-ship." + +"Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have." + +"It is two-thirds of what I have." + +"Why--in God's name, why?" + +"To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase. + +"Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. + +He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last +hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was deepest +in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?" + +"Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that +something was wrong with it all,--the day that Ian Stafford dined after +his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong--cruelly wrong. We +haven't made the best of things together, when everything was with us +to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you expected." + +"Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply. + +"Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that." + +Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and +sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that +is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside +that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine? +Answer that." + +He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be +recognized. + +His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the +midst of all this--of everything that has nothing to do with love?" she +asked. + +What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her again +it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which looked +on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, singing to a +travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the song: + +"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers +around her are sighing--" + +The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own experience +or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her veins like +tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with eyes +shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her tremble and +her face go white. + +"No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And +because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never +truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself--that is all that I +can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I +saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok." + +She flung up her hands. "For God's sake, let me be truthful at last. I +don't want to hurt you--I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; +and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together +to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible." + +He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness. + +"No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must +be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I +must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is." + +She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table +again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because +it is the thing I feel I must do." + +"You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice. + +She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, my +very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your +work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no scandal, +because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world will not +misunderstand." + +"There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly. + +"No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged. + +"I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was +going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I +am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist +on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of them. +I will get him down now, I--" + +"Ian Stafford is here--in this house?" she asked, with staring eyes. +What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked with that +laughter which is more painful far than tears. + +"Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us--he knows the +international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend--you +will know how good some day." + +She went white and leaned against the table. + +"No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee." + +"But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can--" + +"Oh--oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting. + +He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair. + +"You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent +over her. "You will be sane some day." + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN + + +Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and +ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of +men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a +giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while +over his grey quiet, generations of men pass. First came savage, +warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races +with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard +and hair--men restless and coarse and brave, and with ancient sins upon +them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the +prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their +race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the +clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were +housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, +adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to +win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer +in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, having +room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had left only +the ashes of past energies. + +Up there, these mountains which, like Marathon, look on the sea. But +lower the gaze from the austere hills, slowly to the plains below. +First the grey of the mountains, turning to brown, then the bare bronze +rock giving way to a tumbled wilderness of boulders, where lizards lie +in the sun, where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then the bronze +merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a blanket +spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and lonely, +rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and still +below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly rift +turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till lost in +the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river in the +waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks baked and +sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to the veld, as some gloomy +giver of good gifts would pay a debt of atonement. + +On certain Dark Days of 1899-1900, if you had watched these turgid +waters flow by, your eyes would have seen tinges of red like blood; and +following the stain of red, gashed lifeless things, which had been torn +from the ranks of sentient beings. + +Whereupon, lifting your eyes from the river, you would have seen the +answer to your question--masses of men mounted and unmounted, who +moved, or halted, or stood like an animal with a thousand legs +controlled by one mind. Or again you would have observed those myriad +masses plunging across the veld, still in cohering masses, which shook +and broke and scattered, regathering again, as though drawn by a +magnet, but leaving stark remnants in their wake. + +Great columns of troops which had crossed the river and pushed on into +a zone of fierce fire, turn and struggle back again across the stream; +other thousands of men, who had not crossed, succour their wounded, and +retreat steadily, bitterly to places of safety, the victims of blunders +from which come the bloody punishment of valour. + +Beyond the grey mountains were British men and women waiting for +succour from forces which poured death in upon them from the malevolent +kopjes, for relief from the ravages of disease and hunger. They waited +in a straggling town of the open plain circled by threatening hills, +where the threat became a blow, and the blow was multiplied a million +times. Gaunt, fighting men sought to appease the craving of starvation +by the boiled carcasses of old horses; in caves and dug-outs, feeble +women, with undying courage, kept alive the flickering fires of life in +their children; and they smiled to cheer the tireless, emaciated +warriors who went out to meet death, or with a superior yet careful +courage stayed to receive or escape it. + +When night came, across the hills and far away in the deep blue, white +shaking streams of light poured upward, telling the besieged forces +over there at Lordkop that rescue would come, that it was moving on to +the mountain. How many times had this light in the sky flashed the same +grave pledge in the mystic code of the heliograph, "We are gaining +ground--we will reach you soon." How many times, however, had the +message also been, "Not yet--but soon." + +Men died in this great camp from wounds and from fever, and others went +mad almost from sheer despair; yet whenever the Master Player called, +they sprang to their places with a new-born belief that he who had been +so successful in so many long-past battles would be right in the end +with his old rightness, though he had been wrong so often on the +Dreitval. + +Others there were who were sick of the world and wished "to be well out +of it"--as they said to themselves. Some had been cruelly injured, and +desire of life was dead in them; others had given injury, and remorse +had slain peace. Others still there were who, having done evil all +their lives, knew that they could not retrace their steps, and yet +shrank from a continuance of the old bad things. + +Some indeed, in the red futile sacrifice, had found what they came to +find; but some still were left whose recklessness did not avail. +Comrades fell beside them, but, unscathed, they went on fighting. +Injured men were carried in hundreds to the hospitals, but no wounds +brought them low. Bullets were sprayed around them, but none did its +work for them. Shells burst near, yet no savage shard mutilated their +bodies. + +Of these was Ian Stafford. + +Three times he had been in the fore-front of the fight where Death came +sweeping down the veld like rain, but It passed him by. Horses and men +fell round his guns, yet he remained uninjured. + +He was patient. If Death would not hasten to meet him, he would wait. +Meanwhile, he would work while he could, but with no thought beyond the +day, no vision of the morrow. + +He was one of the machines of war. He was close to his General, he was +the beloved of his men, still he was the man with no future; though he +studied the campaign with that thoroughness which had marked his last +years in diplomacy. + +He was much among his own wounded, much with others who were comforted +by his solicitude, by the courage of his eye, and the grasp of his +firm, friendly hand. It was at what the soldiers called the Stay Awhile +Hospital that he came in living touch again with the life he had left +behind. + +He knew that Rudyard Byng had come to South Africa; but he knew no +more. He knew that Jasmine had, with Lady Tynemouth, purchased a ship +and turned it into a hospital at a day's notice; but as to whether +these two had really come to South Africa, and harboured at the Cape, +or Durban, he had no knowledge. He never looked at the English +newspapers which arrived at Dreitval River. He was done with that old +world in which he once worked; he was concerned only for this narrow +field where an Empire's fate was being solved. + +Night, the dearest friend of the soldier, had settled on the veld. A +thousand fires were burning, and there were no sounds save the +murmuring voices of myriads of men, and the stamp of hoofs where the +Cavalry and Mounted Infantry horses were picketed. Food and fire, the +priceless comfort of a blanket on the ground, and a saddle or kit for a +pillow gave men compensation for all the hardships and dangers of the +day; and they gave little thought to the morrow. + +The soldier lives in the present. His rifle, his horse, his boots, his +blanket, the commissariat, a dry bit of ground to sleep on--these are +the things which occupy his mind. His heroism is incidental, the +commonplace impulse of the moment. He does things because they are +there to do, not because some great passion, some exaltation, seizes +him. His is the real simple life. So it suddenly seemed to Stafford as +he left his tent, after he had himself inspected every man and every +horse in his battery that lived through the day of death, and made his +way towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. + +"This is the true thing," he said to himself as he gazed at the wide +camp. He turned his face here and there in the starlight, and saw human +life that but now was moving in the crash of great guns, the shrieking +of men terribly wounded, the agony of mutilated horses, the bursting of +shells, the hissing scream of the pom-pom, and the discordant cries of +men fighting an impossible fight. + +"There is no pretense here," he reflected. "It is life reduced down to +the bare elements. There is no room for the superficial thing. It's all +business. It's all stark human nature." + +At that moment his eye caught one of those white messages of the sky +flashing the old bitter promise, "We shall reach you soon." He forgot +himself, and a great spirit welled up in him. + +"Soon!" The light in the sky shot its message over the hills. + +That was it--the present, not the past. Here was work, the one thing +left to do. + +"And it has to be done," he said aloud, as he walked on swiftly, a +spring to his footstep. Presently he mounted and rode away across the +veld. Buried in his thoughts, he was only subconsciously aware of what +he saw until, after near an hour's riding, he pulled rein at the door +of the Stay Awhile Hospital, which was some miles in the rear of the +main force. + +As he entered, a woman in a nurse's garb passed him swiftly. He +scarcely looked at her; he was only conscious that she was in great +haste. Her eyes seemed looking at some inner, hidden thing, and, though +they glanced at him, appeared not to see him or to realize more than +that some one was passing. But suddenly, to both, after they had +passed, there came an arrest of attention. There was a consciousness, +which had nothing to do with the sight of the eyes, that a familiar +presence had gone by. Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back +from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face +to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. + +Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it +stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the +darkness beyond. + +"Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship. + +Of all those he had left behind, this was the one being whom to meet +was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle +of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her +tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his own. The +same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian Fellowes had +injured them both through the same woman, had shaken, if not shattered, +the fabric of their lives. However much they two were blameworthy, they +had been sincere, they had been honourable in their dishonour, they had +been "falsely true." They were derelicts of life, with the comradeship +of despair as a link between them. + +"Al'mah," he said again, gently. Then, with a bitter humour, he added, +"You here--I thought you were a prima donna!" + +The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is +grand opera," she said. "It is the Nibelungen Ring of England." + +"To end in the Twilight of the Gods?" he rejoined with a hopeless kind +of smile. + +They turned to the outer door of the hospital and stepped into the +night. For a moment they stood looking at the great camp far away to +right and left, and to the lone mountains yonder, where the Boer +commandoes held the passes and trained their merciless armament upon +all approaches. Then he said at last: "Why have you come here? You had +your work in England." + +"What is my work?" she asked. + +"To heal the wounded," he answered. + +"I am trying to do that," she replied. + +"You are trying to heal bodies, but it is a bigger, greater thing to +heal the wounded mind." + +"I am trying to do that too. It is harder than the other." + +"Whose minds are you trying to heal?" he questioned, gently. + +"'Physician heal thyself' was the old command, wasn't it? But that is +harder still." + +"Must one always be a saint to do a saintly thing?" he asked. + +"I am not clever," she replied, "and I can't make phrases. But must one +always be a sinner to do a wicked thing? Can't a saint do a wicked +thing, and a sinner do a good thing without being called the one or the +other?" + +"I don't think you need apologize for not being able to make phrases. I +suppose you'd say there is neither absolute saintliness nor absolute +wickedness, but that life is helplessly composite of both, and that +black really may be white. You know the old phrase, 'Killing no +murder.'" + +She seemed to stiffen, and her lips set tightly for a minute; then, as +though by a great effort, she laughed bitterly. + +"Murder isn't always killing," she replied. "Don't you remember the +protest in Macbeth, 'Time was, when the brains were out the man would +die'?" Then, with a little quick gesture towards the camp, she added, +"When you think of to-day, doesn't it seem that the brains are out, and +yet that the man still lives? I'm not a soldier, and this awful +slaughter may be the most wonderful tactics, but it's all beyond my +little mind." + +"Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice," he replied +with kindly irony. "There is almost an epidemic of it. Let us hope we +shall have an antidote soon." + +There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital. Al'mah shut her eyes +for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she +recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though +waiting for some one to come out. + +"What is the matter?" he asked. "Some bad case?" + +"Yes--very bad," she replied. + +"One you've been attending?" + +"Yes." + +"What arm--the artillery?" he asked with sudden interest. + +"Yes, the artillery." + +He turned towards the door of the hospital again. "One of my men? What +battery? Do you know?" + +"Not yours--Schiller's." + +"Schiller's! A Boer?" + +She nodded. "A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back." + +"When was that?" + +"This morning early." + +"The little business at Wortmann's Drift?" + +She nodded. "Yes, there." + +"I don't quite understand. Was he in our lines--a Boer spy?" + +"Yes. But he wore British uniform, he spoke English. He was an +Englishman once." + +Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face steadily. +"I will tell you all," she said scarce above a whisper. "He came to +spy, but he came also to see his wife. She had written to ask him not +to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, to leave +them and join his own people. He came, but not to join his +fellow-countrymen. He came to get money from his wife; and he came to +spy." + +An illuminating thought shot into Stafford's mind. He remembered +something that Byng once told him. + +"His wife is a nurse?" he asked in a low tone. + +"She is a nurse." + +"She knew, then, that he was a spy?" he asked. + +"Yes, she knew. I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial. She +did not expose him. She gave him a chance to escape. But he was shot as +he tried to reach the Boer lines." + +"And was brought back here to his wife--to you! Did he let them"--he +nodded towards the hospital--"know he was your husband?" + +When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not tremble. +"Of course. He would not spare me. He never did. It was always like +that." + +He caught her hand in his. "You have courage enough for a hundred," he +said. + +"I have suffered enough for a hundred," she responded. + +Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards +the door. + +"I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way," she +replied. "It came to me that he might need me." + +"You paid the price of his life once to Kruger--after the Raid, I've +heard," he said. + +"Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible," she responded +with a dark, pained look. + +"His life is in danger--an operation?" he questioned. + +"Yes. There is one chance; but they could not give him an anaesthetic, +and they would not let me stay with him. They forced me away--out +here." She appeared to listen again. "That was his voice--that crying," +she added presently. + +"Wouldn't it be better he should go? If he recovers there would only +be--" + +"Oh yes, to be tried as a spy--a renegade Englishman! But he would +rather live in spite of that, if it was only for an hour." + +"To love life so much as that--a spy!" Stafford reflected. + +"Not so much love of life as fear of--" She stopped short. + +"To fear--silence and peace!" he remarked darkly, with a shrug of his +shoulders. Then he added: "Tell me, if he does not die, and if--if he +is pardoned by any chance, do you mean to live with him again?" + +A bitter laugh broke from her. "How do I know? What does any woman know +what she will do until the situation is before her! She may mean to do +one thing and do the complete opposite. She may mean to hate, and will +end by loving. She may mean to kiss and will end by killing. She may +kiss and kill too all in one moment, and still not be inconsistent. She +would have the logic of a woman. How do I know what I would do--what I +will do!" + +The door of the hospital opened. A surgeon came out, and seeing Al'mah, +moved towards the two. Stafford went forward hurriedly, but Al'mah +stood like one transfixed. There was a whispered word, and then +Stafford came back to her. + +"You will not need to do anything," he said. + +"He is gone--like that!" she whispered in an awed voice. "Death, +death--so many die!" She shuddered. + +Stafford passed her arm through his, and drew her towards the door of +the hospital. + +A half-hour later Stafford emerged again from the hospital, his head +bent in thought. He rode slowly back to his battery, unconscious of the +stir of life round him, of the shimmering white messages to the +besieged town beyond the hills. He was thinking of the tragedy of the +woman he had left tearless and composed beside the bedside of the man +who had so vilely used her. He was reflecting how her life, and his +own, and the lives of at least three others, were so tangled together +that what twisted the existence of one disturbed all. In one sense the +woman he had just left in the hospital was nothing to him, and yet now +she seemed to be the only living person to whom he was drawn. + +He remembered the story he had once heard in Vienna of a man and a +woman who both had suffered betrayal, who both had no longer a single +illusion left, who had no love for each other at all, in whom indeed +love was dead--a mangled murdered thing; and yet who went away to Corfu +together, and there at length found a pathway out of despair in the +depths of the sea. Between these two there had never been even the +faint shadow of romance or passion; but in the terrible mystery of pain +and humiliation, they had drawn together to help each other, through a +breach of all social law, in pity of each other. He apprehended the +real meaning of the story when Vienna was alive with it, but he +understood far, far better now. + +A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he +stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it +seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the +desert together, and minister to each other's despair. It was only the +swift thought of a moment, which faded even as it saw the light; but it +had its origin in that last flickering sense of human companionship +which dies in the atmosphere of despair. "Every man must live his dark +hours alone," a broken-down actor once said to Stafford as he tried to +cheer him when the last thing he cared for had been taken from him--his +old, faded, misshapen wife; when no faces sent warm glances to him +across the garish lights. "It is no use," this Roscius had said, "every +man must live his dark hours alone." + +That very evening, after the battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, Stafford's +trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord that rang +in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting +disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the +blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what his trouble +was. + +In reply Jigger had said, "When it 'it 'm 'e curled up like a bit o' +shaving. An' when I done what I could 'e says, 'It's a speshul for one +now, an' it's lonely goin',' 'e says. When I give 'im a drink 'e says, +'It 'd do me more good later, little 'un'; an' 'e never said no more +except, 'One at a time is the order--only one.'" + +Not even his supper had lifted the cloud from Jigger's face, and +Stafford had left the lad trying to compose a letter to the mother of +the dead man, who had been an especial favourite with the trumpeter +from the slums. + +Stafford was roused from his reflections by the grinding, rumbling +sound of a train. He turned his face towards the railway line. + +"A troop-train--more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He +could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the +locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the last +incline to the camp. + +"Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a +premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible +forces were converging upon him. But did it matter? He knew in his soul +that he was now doing the right thing, that he had come out in the open +where all the archers of penalty had a fair target for their arrows. He +wished to be "Free among the dead that are wounded and that lie in the +grave and are out of remembrance;" but he would do no more to make it +so than tens of thousands of other men were doing on these +battle-fields. + +"Who comes there!" he said again, his eyes upon the white, round light +in the distance, and he stood still to try and make out the black, +winding, groaning thing. + +Presently he heard quick footsteps. + +A small, alert figure stopped short, a small, abrupt hand saluted. "The +General Commanding 'as sent for you, sir." + +It was trumpeter Jigger of the Artillery. + +"Are you the General's orderly, then?" asked Stafford quizzically. + +"The orderly's gone w'ere 'e thought 'e'd find you, and I've come w'ere +I know'd you'd be, sir." + +"Where did he think he'd find me?" + +"Wiv the 'osses, sir." + +A look of gratification crossed Stafford's face. He was well known in +the army as one who looked after his horses and his men. "And what made +you think I was at the hospital, Jigger?" + +"Becos you'd been to the 'osses, sir." + +"Did you tell the General's orderly that?" + +"No, your gryce--no, sir," he added quickly, and a flush of +self-reproach came to his face, for he prided himself on being a real +disciplinarian, a disciple of the correct thing. "I thought I'd like +'im to see our 'osses, an' 'ow you done 'em, an' I'd find you as quick +as 'e could, wiv a bit to the good p'r'aps." + +Stafford smiled. "Off you go, then. Find that orderly. Say, Colonel +Stafford's compliments to the General Commanding and he will report +himself at once. See that you get it straight, trumpeter." + +Jigger would rather die than not get it straight, and his salute made +that quite plain. + +"It's made a man of him, anyhow," Stafford said to himself, as he +watched the swiftly disappearing figure. "He's as straight as a nail, +body and mind--poor little devil.... How far away it all seems!" + +A quarter of an hour later he was standing beside the troop-train which +he had seen labouring to its goal. It was carrying the old regiment of +the General Officer Commanding, who had sent Stafford to its Colonel +with an important message. As the two officers stood together watching +the troops detrain and make order out of the chaos of baggage and +equipment, Stafford's attention was drawn to a woman some little +distance away, giving directions about her impedimenta. + +"Who is the lady?" he asked, while in his mind was a sensible stir of +recognition. + +"Ah, there's something like the real thing!" his companion replied. +"She is doing a capital bit of work. She and Lady Tynemouth have got a +hospital-ship down at Durban. She's come to link it up better with the +camp. It's Rudyard Byng's wife. They're both at it out here." + +"Who comes there!" Stafford had exclaimed a moment before with a sense +of premonition. + +Jasmine had come. + +He drew back in the shadow as she turned round towards them. + +"To the Stay Awhile--right!" he heard a private say in response to her +directions. + +He saw her face, but not clearly. He had glimpse of a Jasmine not so +daintily pretty as of old, not so much of a dresden-china shepherdess; +but with the face of a woman who, watching the world with understanding +eyes, and living with an understanding heart, had taken on something of +the mysterious depths of the Life behind life. It was only a glimpse he +had, but it was enough. It was more than enough. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked his fellow-officer. + +"He's been up there with Tain's Brigade for a fortnight. He was in +Kimberley, but got out before the investment, went to Cape Town, and +came round here--to be near his wife, I suppose." + +"He is soldiering, then?" + +"He was a Colonel in the Rand Rifles once. He's with the South African +Horse now in command of the regiment attached to Tain. Tain's out of +your beat--away on the right flank there." + +Presently Stafford saw Jasmine look in their direction; then, on seeing +Stafford's companion, came forward hastily. The Colonel left Stafford +and went to meet her. + +A moment afterwards, she turned and looked at Stafford. Her face was +now deadly pale, but it showed no agitation. She was in the light of an +electric lamp, and he was in the shadow. For one second only she gazed +at him, then she turned and moved away to the cape-cart awaiting her. +The Colonel saw her in, then returned to Stafford. + +"Why didn't you come and be introduced?" the Colonel asked. "I told her +who you were." + +"Hospital-ships are not in my line," Stafford answered casually. "Women +and war don't go together." + +"She's a nurse, she's not a woman," was the paradoxical reply. + +"She knows Byng is here?" + +"I suppose so. It looks like a clever bit of strategy--junction of +forces. There's a lot of women at home would like the chance she +has--at a little less cost." + +"What is the cost?" + +"Well, that ship didn't cost less than a hundred thousand pounds." + +"Is that all?" + +The Colonel looked at Stafford in surprise: but Stafford was not +thinking of the coin. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +"AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" + + +As the cape-cart conveying Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the +station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the +helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed as +though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for so +long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair of +Argentines, said to her sympathetically: + +"It's all right, ma'am. We'll be there in a jiffy. Don't give way." + +This friendly solicitude had immediate effect. Jasmine sat up, and +thereafter held herself as though she was in her yellow salon yonder in +London. + +"Thank you," she replied serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long, +tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment." + +"A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he ventured. Then +he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel Rudyard Byng?" + +She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng." + +"Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big +B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship--they +told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a +mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana +Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely--just like the 4.7's flay the +kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long +way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all right +to us." + +"Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression lifting. + +He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia +onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was +both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal leash, +so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, shearing +and sun-downing--all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit o' luck +and found a mob of warrigals--horses run wild, you know. We stalked 'em +for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got 'em, and coaxed +'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and with the hard tin +shipped for to see the world. So it was as of old. And by and by we +found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, puttin' in a bit o' +time for the Flag." + +Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many +friends in the past--a smile none the less alluring because it had lost +that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, had +been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight drooping of +the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and natural. + +"It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the +world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where +life is so simple and so large." + +His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he said +to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But he felt +too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give it--a +friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so simple +and so large." + +"Well, that might be so 'long o' some continents," he remarked, "but it +wasn't so where Joey Clynes and me was nourished, so to speak. I +tripped up on a good many mean things from Bendigo to Thargomindah and +back around. The back-blocks has its tricks as well as the towns, as +you would see if you come across a stock-rider with a cheque to be +broke in his hand. I've seen six months' wages go bung in a day with a +stock-rider on the gentle jupe. But again, peradventure, I've seen a +man that had lost ten thousand sheep tramp fifty miles in a blazing sun +with a basket of lambs on his back, savin' them two switherin' little +papillions worth nothin' at all, at the risk of his own life--just as +mates have done here on this salamanderin' veld; same as Colonel Byng +did to-day along o' Wortmann's Drift." + +Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever +since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do so. +She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left +England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so far +as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as +Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo. She had been busy as she +had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful way. +It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the +negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to +render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee +appointed, for form's sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that +the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring +her. This had become almost an obsession with her. Her grandfather had +had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she +had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her confidence +and a key to what she had to do. It was the first real work; for what +she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing upon the +weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an +instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them. The +first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul. + +Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else--than +either Rudyard or Ian Stafford. Towards both of these her mind had +slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about +neither. There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic +experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a +crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and on. +From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life's +elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart. She tried to +smother every thought concerning the past. She did not seek to find her +bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the emotions +she was travelling. + +One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her +in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree--a +sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment. Against whom? Against +all. Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a thousand +times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of life, leaving +behind a memory which could sting murderously. + +Now, when she heard of Rudyard's bravery at Wortmann's Drift, a curious +thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be truer to say +that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her blood. She had heard +many tales of valour in this war, and more than one hero of the +Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but as a child's heart +might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful story, so she felt +a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding eyes took on a +brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale of Wortmann's +Drift. + +"Tell me about it," she said, yet turned her head away from her eager +historian. + +Corporal Shorter's words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he had +ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of that. He +was full of a man's pride in a man's deed. + +"Well, it was like this," he recited. "Gunter's horse bolted--Dick +Gunter's in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng--his lot. Old +Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd +been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at +last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see +him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again. And while we +was lookin' and tossin' pennies like as to his chances out there, a +grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin' every string. +We knowed her all right, that grey mare--a regular Mrs. Mephisto, w'ich +belongs to Colonel Byng. Do the Boojers fire at him? Don't they! We +could see the spots of dust where the bullets struck, spittin', +spittin', spittin', and Lord knows how many hunderd more there was that +didn't hit the ground. An' the grey mare gets there. As cool as a +granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old Gunter; down goes the +grey mare--Colonel Byng had taught her that trick, like the Roosian +Cossack hosses. Then up on her rolls old Gunter, an' up goes Colonel +Byng, and the grey mare switchin' her bobtail, as if she was havin' a +bit of mealies in the middle o' the day. But when they was both on, +then the band begun to play. Men was fightin' of course, but it looked +as if the whole smash stopped to see what the end would be. It was a +real pretty race, an' the grey mare takin' it as free as if she was +carryin' a little bit of a pipkin like me instead of twenty-six stone. +She's a flower, that grey mare! Once she stumbled, an' we knowed it +wasn't an ant-bear's hole she'd found in the veld, and that she'd been +hurt. But they know, them hosses, that they must do as their Baases do; +and they fight right on. She come home with the two all right. She +switched round a corner and over a nose of land where that crossfire +couldn't hit the lot; an' there was the three of 'em at 'ome for a cup +o' tea. Why, ma'am, that done the army as much good to-day, that little +go-to-the-devil, you mud-suckers! as though we'd got Schuster's Hill. +'Twas what we needed--an' we got it. It took our eyes off the nasty +little fact that half of a regiment was down, an' the other half with +their job not done as it was ordered. It made the S.A.'s and the +Lynchesters and the Gessex lot laugh. Old Gunter's all right. He's in +the Stay Awhile now. You'll be sure to see him. And Colonel Byng's all +right, too, except a little bit o' splinter--" + +"A bit of splinter--" Her voice was almost peremptory. + +"A chip off his wrist like, but he wasn't thinkin' of that when he got +back. He was thinkin' of the grey mare; and she was hit in three +places, but not to mention. One bullet cut through her ear and through +Colonel Byng's hat as he stooped over her neck; but the luck was with +them. They was born to do a longer trek together. A little bit of the +same thing in both of 'em, so to speak. The grey mare has a temper like +a hunderd wildcats, and Colonel Byng can let himself go too, as you +perhaps know, ma'am. We've seen him let loose sometimes when there was +shirkers about, but he's all right inside his vest. And he's a good +feeder. His men get their tucker all right. He knows when to shut his +eyes. He's got a way to make his bunch--and they're the hardest-bit +bunch in the army--do anything he wants 'em to. He's as hard himself as +ever is, but he's all right underneath the epidermotis." + +All at once there flashed before Jasmine's eyes the picture of Rudyard +driving Krool out of the house in Park Lane with a sjambok. She heard +again the thud of the rhinoceros-whip on the cringing back of the Boer; +she heard the moan of the victim as he stumbled across the threshold +into the street; and again she felt that sense of suffocation, that +excitement which the child feels on the brink of a wonderful romance, +the once-upon-a-time moment. + +They were nearing the hospital. The driver silently pointed to it. He +saw that he had made an impression, and he was content with it. He +smiled to himself. + +"Is Colonel Byng in the camp?" she asked. + +"He's over--'way over, miles and miles, on the left wing with Kearey's +brigade now. But old Gunter's here, and you're sure to see Colonel Byng +soon--well, I should think." + +She had no wish to see Colonel Byng soon. Three days would suffice to +do what she wished here, and then she would return to Durban to her +work there--to Alice Tynemouth, whose friendship and wonderful +tactfulness had helped her in indefinable ways, as a more obvious +sympathy never could have done. She would have resented one word which +would have suggested that a tragedy was slowly crushing out her life. + +Never a woman in the world was more alone. She worked and smiled with +eyes growing sadder, yet with a force hardening in her which gave her +face a character it never had before. Work had come at the right moment +to save her from the wild consequences of a nature maddened by a series +of misfortunes and penalties, for which there had been no warning and +no preparation. + +She was not ready for a renewal of the past. Only a few minutes before +she had been brought face to face with Ian Stafford, had seen him look +at her out of the shadow there at the station, as though she was an +infinite distance away from him; and she had realized with overwhelming +force how changed her world was. Ian Stafford, who but a few short +months ago had held her in his arms and whispered unforgettable things, +now looked at her as one looks at the image of a forgotten thing. She +recalled his last words to her that awful day when Rudyard had read the +fatal letter, and the world had fallen: + +"Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he had +said. "But there is Rudyard. You must help him through. He heard +scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't +believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie. Good-bye." + +That had been the end--the black, bitter end. Since then Ian had never +spoken a word to her, nor she to him; but he had stood there in the +shadow at the station like a ghost, reproachful, unresponsive, +indifferent. She recalled now the day when, after three years' parting, +she had left him cool, indifferent, and self-contained in the doorway +of the sweet-shop in Regent Street; how she had entered her carriage, +had clinched her hands, and cried with wilful passion: "He shall not +treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall! He shall!" + +Here was indifference again, but of another land. Hers was not a +woman's vanity, in fury at being despised. Vanity, maybe, was still +there, but so slight that it made no contrast to the proud turmoil of a +nature which had been humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its +mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they had +been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had been +an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or +impelling habits. + +And over all there hung the shadow of a man's death, with its black +suspicion. When Ian Stafford looked at her from the shadow of the +railway-station, the question had flashed into his mind, Did she kill +him? Around Adrian Fellowes' death there hung a cloud of mystery which +threw a sinister shadow on the path of three people. In the middle of +the night, Jasmine started from her sleep with the mystery of the man's +death torturing her, and with the shuddering question, Which? on her +fevered lips. Was it her husband--was it Ian Stafford? As he galloped +over the veld, or sat with his pipe beside the camp-fire, Rudyard Byng +was also drawn into the frigid gloom of the ugly thought, and his mind +asked the question, Did she kill him? It was as though each who had +suffered from the man in life was destined to be menaced by his shade, +till it should be exorcised by that person who had taken the useless +life, saying, "It was I; I did it!" + +As Jasmine entered the hospital, it seemed to her excited imagination +as though she was entering a House of Judgment: as though here in a +court of everlasting equity she would meet those who had played their +vital parts in her life. + +What if Rudyard was here! What if in these few days while she was to be +here he was to cross her path! What would she say? What would she do? +What could be said or done? Bitterness and resentment and dark +suspicion were in her mind--and in his. Her pride was less wilful and +tempestuous than on the day when she drove him from her; when he said +things which flayed her soul, and left her body as though it had been +beaten with rods. Her bitterness, her resentment had its origin in the +fact that he did not understand--and yet in his crude big way he had +really understood better than Ian Stafford. She felt that Rudyard +despised her now a thousand times more than ever he had hinted at in +that last stifling scene in Park Lane; and her spirit rebelled against +it. She would rather that he had believed everything against her, and +had made an open scandal, because then she could have paid any debt due +to him by the penalty most cruel a woman can bear. But pity, +concession, the condescension of a superior morality, were impossible +to her proud mind. + +As for Ian Stafford, he had left her stripped bare of one single +garment of self-respect. His very kindness, his chivalry in defending +her; his inflexible determination that all should be over between them +forever, that she should be prevailed upon to be to Rudyard more than +she had ever been--it all drove her into a deeper isolation. This +isolation would have been her destruction but that something bigger +than herself, a passion to do things, lifted to idealism a mind which +in the past had grown materialistic, which, in gaining wit and mental +skill, had missed the meaning of things, the elemental sense. + +Corporal Shorter's tale of Rudyard's heroism had stirred her; but she +could not have said quite what her feeling was with regard to it. She +only knew vaguely that she was glad of it in a more personal than +impersonal way. When she shook hands with the cheerful non-com. at the +door of the hospital, she gave him a piece of gold which he was loth to +accept till she said: "But take it as a souvenir of Colonel Byng's +little ride with 'Old Gunter.'" + +With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll +not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and +God-bless-you!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER + + +It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of +destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no +moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so +near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their +nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide men +to a new Messiah. + +In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for her. +All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and she saw +herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality that once +she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was answered by a +choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she started up from her +couch with poignant apprehension; but presently she realized that it +was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward not far from the room +where she lay. + +It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been +excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide +the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it +soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists +presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she +was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on +her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon herself, +it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. + +Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires +dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of +the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust +and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling that +around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other scenes, or +wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last fight, and if +so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in the home of the +cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around their fires were +like a family, where men grow to serve each other as brother serves +brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving each other's +honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each other. + +As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance +which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, +she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs +upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to take +up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound was +like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself on her +mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the grim +lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would draw +the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the game was +won. + +The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost +upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where +their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they +reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop +passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of +life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their +helpless comrades in this place of healing. + +As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure +dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each +other--"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me, +Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!" + +But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman somewhere +waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others still had +only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a woman looks at +them; and where women are few and most of them are angels,--the +battle-field has no shelter for any other--such looks have deep +significance. + +The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone +past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one of +them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came towards +the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's window, +slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted its neck, +and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a moment Jasmine +stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew why, by this little +incident of the night, and then suddenly the starlight seemed to draw +round the patient animal standing at attention, as it were. + +Then she saw it was a grey horse. + +Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old Gunter," +ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was Rudyard Byng. + +That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had +passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the +night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she +stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she +would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could-- + +She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe closely +about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter her +room--she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not on the +chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against a table. +She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not there. Her +brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried to button the +night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned it to throw back +her head and gather her golden hair away from her shoulders and breast. +All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her own room.... Where was +her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why should she be at such a +disadvantage! She reached for the table again and found a match-box. +She would strike a light, and find her dressing-gown. Then she abruptly +remembered that she had no dressing-gown with her; that she had +travelled with one single bag--little more than a hand-bag--and it +contained only the emergency equipment of a nurse. She had brought no +dressing-gown; only the light outer rain-proof coat which should serve +a double purpose. She had forgotten for a moment that she was not in +her own house, that she was an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She +felt her way to the wall, found the rain-proof coat, and, with +trembling fingers, put it on. As she did so a wave of weakness passed +over her, and she swayed as though she would fall; but she put a hand +on herself and fought her growing agitation. + +She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard +footsteps in the hall outside--footsteps she knew, footsteps which for +years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the +quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of +determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's +voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and +afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his hand +upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move forward as +though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no lock. With +strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the door, +expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she could +hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were throbbing. + +The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could +bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the +sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes--the hold-all of the +odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, officers +waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of the +hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One light +was burning--a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind her +quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of relief. +Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened her eyes. +A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door. + +It was her husband. + +Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her +bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom +turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had +frightened her had followed his entrance here. + +She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her night-dress +showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind the table, as +though to hide her bare ankles. + +He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered himself. +"Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer place." + +All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and still. +She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she could not +have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a haunting +sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but against +everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of the last +few months seemed suddenly undone--to go for nothing. Just as a +drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for a +period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for +drink, and plunges into a debauch,--the last maddening degradation +before his final triumph,--so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and +self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged +from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, and +her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven into +the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the unknown--into a +strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation. + +Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny +and inquiry in his eyes which she saw--and saw nothing else there. +There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in their +last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, "What did +it mean--that letter from Adrian Fellowes?" + +It was all there in his eyes now--that hateful inquiry, the piercing +scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into her +eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too. + +"Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked. + +She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the look +in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked the +same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man stood +between them, as he had never stood in life--of infinitely more +importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between +Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any +sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of +real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a +disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him! +It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway +over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted now. + +"Why have you come here--to this room?" she asked coldly. + +As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which +angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; but +the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her +steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and +forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in London. +There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, the panic +excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day when Adrian +Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none of the +barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the sjambok. +Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed older, his +thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep fissure between +the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, had freed him +from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had wholly gone from his +cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious life about him. He +was merely the business-like soldier with work to do. His khaki fitted +him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique without defect. He +carried in his hand a short whip of rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed +his hands upon his hips and looked at Jasmine meditatively, before he +answered her question, she recalled the scene with Krool. Her eyes were +fascinated by the whip in his hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as +though she was to be the victim of his wrath, and that the whip would +presently fall upon her shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld. +But his eyes drew hers to his own presently, and even while he spoke to +her now, the illusion of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his +voice to be intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her +shoulders. + +"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," he +answered her. + +"Old Gunter," she said mechanically. + +"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?" + +"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly. + +"Well, I came to see Gunter." + +"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream. + +"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--" + +"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with +a querulous ring to her voice. + +"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp +were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come." + +"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say. + +"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is +obvious that I should visit you." + +"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That must +come." + +"I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We +don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we +cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to +the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing +you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing from +our friends. There's enough of that from our foes." + +"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly. + +"I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us +meet on this neutral ground." + +"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely. + +"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be +fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more +sarcasm than he intended. + +Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into battle. +Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives together +came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms too +against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to this +was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium of +all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one five +months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, craving +for amusement and excitement and--she was going to say romance, but +there was no romance in those sordid hours of pleasure-making, when she +plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand--ah, if only Rudyard had not +gone to South Africa then! That five months held no romance. She had +never known but one romance, and it was over and done. The floods had +washed it away. + +"You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It came +to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the night +as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now." + +Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above +her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or +whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us +worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between us. +I never want to see you any more." + +In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night-dress, +and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the linen. +Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him were too +vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, however, by a +cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a man's death thrust +itself between them. This war might have never been, had it not been +for the treachery of the man who had been false to everything and every +being that had come his way. Indirectly this vast struggle in which +thousands of lives were being lost had come through his wife's +disloyalty, however unintentional, or in whatever degree. Whenever he +thought of it, his pulses beat faster with indignation, and a deep +resentment possessed him. + +It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him, +but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his +country. The map was dead--so much. He had paid a price--too small. + +And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the +same shadow--the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she +said, "There is a black sea between us." + +What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she +could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The +passion of the body was dead in her--atrophied. She was as one through +whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of +desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the +months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a +paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red +corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from +which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the +amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to +restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an +invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was +no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; where +the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing of the +flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, of +houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal life, of +domestic being--of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of no mental +protest which could be put into words: she was only conscious of +emotions which now shook her with their power, now left her starkly +cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering as intense as +that of Procrustes on his bed of iron. + +This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared +breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an +indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by +herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she felt +he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of that. + +That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though +he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret +of life--a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, +contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was +the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She +was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being +exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it +was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of +anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the +rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit +of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling. + +"Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have +you no consideration? It is past midnight." + +His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said +with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always now. What +else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch at his +wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work begins--not an +eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here sometimes. This one +may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a one-hour day--or less." + +Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear +wife--Jasmine--" he exclaimed. + +Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a +moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact +that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him +the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world +seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy +stronger than Time. + +She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable--that +old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her +past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she +scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was +bewildered, distraught. + +"No, no--coward!" she cried. + +He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned white. +Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened to the +floor and passed through it into the night. + +An instant later he was on his horse. + +A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, +and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out. + +She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her +awe-struck ears. + +With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on the +floor, her face turned towards the stars. + +"Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned. + +At least here was no longer the cry of doom. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING + + +At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on +her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward a +figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar motion. +Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing her. +Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched the +nurse's arm. + +"Al'mah--it is Al'mah?" she said. + +Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she recovered +herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost dazedly. + +After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place +for it to happen," she added. + +Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched +the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of +paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a +look of aversion? + +"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in +explanation. + +Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, +with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to +her, she smiled winningly. + +"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined. + +"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then to +gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on strings." + +After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now +she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her +face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work for +in England." + +"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added +suddenly, "I could not sing any longer." + +"Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked. + +"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the +voice." + +They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah +caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said. + +She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld +everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the navy +and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack. + +"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. +"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a +little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach, +Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I +sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's tricks. +How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal sergeant, over +sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs belonging to the +time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and that there's no +such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of mirage of the +mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do crazy things, +and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do awful things. +But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, as they did with +the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories here from men +before they died, of women that were false, and injuries done, many, +many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real at all, but +just phantasy." + +"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused. + +Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it +does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere +snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here; +and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too +sometimes." + +"Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden remembrance. + +"Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here." + +"So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said to +me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing it +is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke of +you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite honest, +too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who you are?" + +Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes +I'm the world's foundling." + +Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical +features became drawn. + +"I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most +to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my identity +altogether. Do you ever feel that?" + +"No; I often wish I could." + +Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she asked. +"You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in London. +Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it something you +wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help here?" + +Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and wondered +what this woman had to say which could be of any import to herself; yet +she felt there was something drawing nearer which would make her shrink. + +"No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and +remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to +the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to +one family, or to one's self. That's all." + +Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do +not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have +had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet +it pursued me till yesterday--till yesterday evening. Now it's gone; +that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was." + +She pointed to the door of another room. + +There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her movements. +Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the look in the +woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine stepped +inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a moment nothing +was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two chairs. + +"That was the first man I ever loved--my husband," Al'mah said quietly, +pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him from +me--you and others." + +Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she +drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of +disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and indefinable +horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through her brain. +It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely calm, she +said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?" + +Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You +took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and +painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at Glencader. +Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter from you. I +had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, when there was +no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little Jigger's sister, when +he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I killed him. Then--I +killed him." + +Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not shrink. +She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as though to +read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was really +true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest horror of +memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. + +"You--are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know +what you have said?" + +Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am +insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is the +place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness--the madness of war and +other madnesses." + +"You had loved him, yet you killed him!" + +"You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of +course--I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a +little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air--its flight was only a +little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed Adrian, +as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but I did it. +Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that day he died? +I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw your face +that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms and found +him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca killed Scarpia? +You remember how she felt? I felt so--just like that. I never +hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it." + +"How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which +comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy. + +"You remember the needle--Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had it. He +showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too weak. The +needle was in his pocket-book--to kill me with some day perhaps. He +certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went to see him. He +was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I said, he had +showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the needle. He talked +of his journey abroad. He lied--nothing but lies, about himself, about +everything. When he had said enough,--lying was easier to him than +anything else--I told him the truth. Then he went wild. He caught hold +of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize the needlepoint when +it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to him only the prick of +a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all over. He died quite +peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him on the sofa. He looked +sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would never lie any more to +women, to you or to me or any other. It is a good thing to stop a +plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was handsome, and his +music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its kind, and it was +part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two wicked men hurt +me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; and I went from +bad to worse. At least he"--she pointed to the other room--"he had some +courage at the very last. He fought, he braved death. The other--you +remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and Ian Stafford went down, +and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian would not go. Then it +was I began to hate him. That was the beginning. What happened had to +be. I was to kill him; and I did. It avenged me, and it avenged your +husband. I was glad of that, for Rudyard Byng had done so much for me: +not alone that he saved me at the opera, you remember, but other good +things. I did his work for him with Adrian." + +"Have you no fear--of me?" Jasmine asked. + +"Fear of--you? Why?" + +"I might hate you--I might tell." + +Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish things. You +would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to me. Some one had +to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or yourself. It fell +to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it would not matter if +you did. Nothing would happen--nothing at all. Think it out, and you +will see why." + +Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice. + +"Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?" + +"Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the +war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!" + +Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had +overpowered her; but now it was all gone. + +"We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"--once +Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would +pay, and would pay here--here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a +woman who, like herself, had suffered. + +"Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took +both of Almah's hands in her own. + +Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all at +once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any human +being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine pity +which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had been +generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; but +it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning compassion +for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or estate." + +But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went +from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her +far behind him,--since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had +sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her +heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the +Invisible--that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her +wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and +had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her +inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even then +been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life. + +That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the +last few hours--why, she knew not--her heart had found a new sense. She +felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something that made +her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading power, a +brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away into the +mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to see, +however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether the +woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity of +her soul made no choice and sought no difference. + +As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over +Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a +light which made them aglow with understanding. + +"I always thought you selfish--almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said +presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real +suffering--only the surface, only disappointment at not having your own +happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I did +what I did?" + +"I understand." + +"I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison +and on the scaffold--if they knew--" + +Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes +with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that +to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you +must put it behind you." ... Suddenly she pointed to the other room +where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. + +"In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood +looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man lay. +"I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was all so +many centuries ago, when I was young and glad." + +Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away. + +A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the wards. +At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the booming +of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies were at +work. + +The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an +impassioned gesture. + +"Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, +that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow--a general assault--if Byng +pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His combination's +working all right--thanks to Byng's lot." + +As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation. + +"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But her +voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear. + +She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he +could not know. + +But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his fighting +at daybreak, as he had said. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +"ALAMACHTIG!" + + +When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window at +the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his +heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and +defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it +with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of peace +in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black curtain +between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could be set a +soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not even said a +God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so near, so dear, +so cherished: + + "For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- + And, now they have looked and seen us, + Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near, + With the thick of the world between us!" + +How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each +other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting +shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each other, +should come to a day when they would be less to each other than +strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot +bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's +assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have +gone, after hope is dead. + +There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as these +vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would never, feel +that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was closed to him; +not even when his whole nature was up in arms against the injury she +had done him. + +But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his +troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of feeling. +After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be treated so? Was +he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal concession? Why should he +be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? He did not know why. But +at the bottom of everything lay a something--a yearning--which would +not be overwhelmed. In spite of wrong and injury, it would live on and +on; and neither Time nor crime, nor anything mortal could obliterate it +from his heart's oracles. + +The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the +sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled +his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His +head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the +stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not +felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so +stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas +beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the +salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the prairie +or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; but +yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the +others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets +into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a man +away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where lies +repose. + +The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he galloped +gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once again, his +mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, as he left +Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was over and done. + +How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over--unless, +unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should +settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands +of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a +primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was +no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was a +lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the product +of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in a +blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the friend +of his race and the lover of one woman. + +Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far +off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if +they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill, +turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the +Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his +mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries of +artillery and three thousand infantry--Leary's brigade, which had not +been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift. + +But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his hard-bitten +South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no doubt. War was part +chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck of the devil. He had +ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; he had always +possessed ballast even when the London life had enervated, had +depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a commonplace: it +belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong. + +Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which +was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of +the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry +did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and +the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be +open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his +gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours +before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master +Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far. + +The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in +command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, +and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the +blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was on +the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, +either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep +basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld +people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they were +not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were prepared to +go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to get up early +in the morning if they want to catch us." + +This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's +command had already reached the position from which they could do their +work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no sign of +life from the Boer trenches in the dusk--naught of what chanced at +Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would certainly +have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not allow the +Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be threatened +or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, there would be +fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for half a +continent. + +"Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry Whalen drew up by him. + +"Not a sound from them--not a sign." + +"Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?" + +"Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of +Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take +the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of +trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be +all right." + +"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry. + +"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje, +and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast." + +Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As +it struck, he noted the time. + +His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall have +the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before they +know it." + +Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They +clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each +other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither +disaster nor death could destroy. + +"My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said. + +"You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I go +down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the day I +married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I said then +I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened out--and I'll +not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if things should +happen that way." + +"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he recovered +himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?" + +"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the +salute. "That is all," he added brusquely. + +They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given +softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen, +moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer trenches. + +Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey +glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly, +till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and kind. +Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the sun +shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active being, +and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first +delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above +the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes +flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat +sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon the +stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and +beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was +new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and +this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all +things living begin the world afresh. + +But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the +sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the +aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter than +attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house or +fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any +mysterious thing may happen--a world of five thousand years ago--the +air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would seem +of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast colonies of +green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might belong. Something +frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his flight through the +grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful adventure; a bird hears the +sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves or the swaying shrubs, and +in disdain of such slight performance flings out a song which makes the +air drunken with sweetness. + +A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with +flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known +no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is +still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest +beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common. + +Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the +lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them +upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is +it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there to +the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not-- + +Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is +shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the +veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and +beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of +light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle of +vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering +bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with strange, +half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok and the +rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, vaguely trying +to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of their world; +useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of Boers and +British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in alarm; for they +knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered the madness of +battle, and they realized it at its native first value. + +There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind +Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had +brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this flank +of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at work on +the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people from the +places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks. + +Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer trenches. +These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose blood was in a +tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at hand-to-hand range, +men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in the days when the +only fighting was man to man, or one man to many men. Here every +"Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell back because he was +forced back by men who were men of the veld like himself; and the +Briton pressed forward because he would not be denied; because he was +sick of reverses; of going forward and falling back; of taking a +position with staggering loss and then abandoning it; of gaining a +victory and then not following it up; of having the foe in the hollow +of the hand and hesitating to close it with a death-grip; of promising +relief to besieged men, and marking time when you had gained a +foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on. + +Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked +below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a +fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew +should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty +and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men the +status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters under +Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led nowhere +forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done a big +thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like +Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to be +the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from almost +perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory. + +From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! But +here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his +heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the +bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his +fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only +bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and +muscle, though the will was iron. + +Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by +step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward, +taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot; +never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat +above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and +might be caught by a lightning shot. + +Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the +hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a +soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men +of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would presently +throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up where +hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable position. At +last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in proportion as the +rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men reached the top, +mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit because of the +comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before them. As they +were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely as ever men +fought in the days of Rustum. + +In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen +and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger +number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his +life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry +Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he +had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also passed +through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely conscious +of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall him; but, in +the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his men were waving +their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before him, ragged and +grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and race-hatred in their +eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he wounded, but the wounded +voortrekker--a giant of near seven feet clubbed his rifle, and drove at +him. Rudyard shot at close quarters again, but his pistol missed fire. + +Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that +the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes +involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, but, +as he did so, he heard a cry--the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he knew +so well. + +"Baas! Baas!" it called. + +Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him +to the ground. + +"Baas! Baas!" + +The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness. + +Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do +anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in the +instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of "Baas! +Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of the Boer +who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As Rudyard +fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" again, +and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own pistol +brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he realized who +it was had cried out, "Baas!" + +The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, with +sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street. + +It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's +body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas--Baas!" + +Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own +fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed +that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger +than death. + +Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his +unconscious friend with a great anxiety. + +"No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's breast. +"The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the blow. Alamachtig, +it is good! The Baas--it is right with the Baas." + +Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as +Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head. + +Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and +machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and the +infantry--Humphrey's and Blagdon's men--were hurrying up the slope +which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position the +enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, because +they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high as their +own. + +"A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still +unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor this +time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at +DeLancy Scovel's." + +Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he +looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind +being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the +hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard +would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the +thing for him. + +Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful +would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's +hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken +ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a +Westminster sawbones. + +Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng +had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once +he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance +before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the +Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been +known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called +Little Jingo. + +His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard, +but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek. + +"He wants brandy," Jigger said. + +"Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply. + +"I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask. + +"Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it +too!" + +"A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently. + +As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What +do you stay here as--deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the +other." + +"Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See--the Baas." + +Rudyard's eyes were open. + +"Prisoner--who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly. + +"Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him. + +"He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen. + +"I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +"THE ALPINE FELLOW" + + +To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who +emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay +in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit, +were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree, +transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the +skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of +conflict. + +The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before +him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of death +on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in his +young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and +desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of +those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated. + +Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant +rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches +and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has +little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his comrades +and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he has to do +so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has none of the +composure of those who have solace in thinking that what they leave +behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and there some +simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off the meaning +of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in their hands +for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment. + +So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom +Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard +Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the +Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet grim +frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden and +masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of +Britain's manhood. + +"From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as +fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he +heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he shoves +the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, sticks his +chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and treks across +the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave him and all his +that went before him the key to civilization, and how to be happy +though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, the +I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the best. He +was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and out of a +fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to say, 'I've +got the hang of this, and it's different from what I thought; but that +doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in style. It's the +has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, he fished out the +little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, to let it tell his +fellow-countrymen how he looked at it--that he was just a pawn in the +great game. The game had to be played, and won, and the winner had to +sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the sacrifices. Well, I'd like a +tombstone the same as that fella from New Zealand, if I could win it as +fair, and see as far." + +Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the +ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An +Alexander, with not one world conquered." + +"I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could put +such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't want +to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to stay, +but he went against his will, and--and I wish that the grub-hunters, +and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in England could get +hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a different thing in +Thamesfontein and the little green islands." + +"You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier," +said Stafford with a friendly nod. + +"I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that +was hard enough." + +Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough--a handful of guns and +fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put in +an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'" + +"Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning +the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big shindy. +It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away like a fat +old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in his bones now. +I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, more that's worth +having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he wants what 'd make his +wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it." + +"Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded +Stafford evenly. + +Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when +we took Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had +so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng." + +Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm +for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at the +Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the smell of +disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a snigger little +place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of peaches and oranges, +and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of nice flowers in the +garden, and a stoep made for candidates for Stellenbosch--as +comfortable as the room of a Rand director." + +"Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards +Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn, +the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or +cloud of green in the veld. + +"No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply. + +Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look of +sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to +Durban, then?" + +"No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed +at the hospital." + +Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked heavily. "Is +she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken. + +"She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend +would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the +same, and took her some veld-roses." + +"You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low. + +"Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered, +"but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can +smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything gets +a turn of its own at the Front." + +"She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, with +his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would have +died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, looking +into the bloom of the garden. + +"Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he +should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend had +told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the name +of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's wife, +there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and +Jasmine were not the same as of yore. + +"Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse +Byng." + +"Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed +back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box +to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had +widened since then. + +Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah was +nursing Jasmine's husband--surely life was merely farce and tragedy. + +At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose +to go, but turned back to Stafford again. + +"She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell +what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty frail. +We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No need to +say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and responsibility, and +in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more ill than the chill +makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my stupid way." + +Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful +friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes. + +"Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry +Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and a +fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips +very easily. + +Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a +friend," he said aloud--"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not +betray a "--the waving of wings above him caught his eye--"he could not +betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the servitor +of carrion death, as it flew down the wind. + +He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in +the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; and +it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his past, +towards his future. + +What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New +Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had +purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was +immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated +himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe +was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this +obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price +which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol +or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying +to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not +do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge that +Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To pay +the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the +equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy all +hope for the future. + +It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear +honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open to +him--to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take the +stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself and +soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those who +hoped for him the now unattainable things. + +In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had +invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in +the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by. + +The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had +opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the railway +station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul hitherto +hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new world--not like the +one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or tumultuous, but it +had the lure of that peace, not sterile or somnolent, which summons the +burdened life, or the soul with a vocation, to the hood of a monk--a +busy self-forgetfulness. + +Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave +world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his +eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came +to him. + +Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she once +wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she +can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything +gets a turn of its own at the Front." + +Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To go +to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out for +it either in pity--or in love? + +In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was +dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, +that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, +which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be dislodged. +It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the gloom. Even +betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It continues. No +longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for appeal, or for +adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies in the temple, +and the portals ate closed forever. + +For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was +behind the curtain still. + +He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house +in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man +who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering would +carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or the +other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done that, +there could be no reunion. + +He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had +cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead +from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's +Farm. + +No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she was +dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen +suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take in +camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard by +her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital. + +His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn +for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be +convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said. + +He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any +change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her +know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or +secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course. + +As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a +Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same engagement, +"Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the English of it. + +Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for +Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah? + +As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just +arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The +address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth. + +He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had come +to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over so +many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been blinded +by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters he had +written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that this reply +would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the future +restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon the +wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world. + +After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own +darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and opened +the envelope. + +It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking +him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her +trouble: + + +".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to me +quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old +Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make +that light in his face! I never saw it there--did you? It is just +giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving +up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and +profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on.... Ian, I'm +not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's too +much of the Climbers in us all--not social climbing, I mean, but +wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big +material world. When I look at Tynie--he's lying there so peaceful--you +might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set free into a +world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of light that +never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the sight of his +eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that belongs to +Allah,--I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so friendly, so +gentler than the name by which we call the First One in our language +and our religion--and that world is inside ourselves.... Tynie is +always thinking of other people now, wondering what they are doing and +how they are doing it. He was talking about you a little while ago, and +so admiringly. It brought the tears to my eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, +that our friendship has always been so much on the surface, so 'void of +offence'--is that the phrase? I can look at it without wincing; and I +am glad. It never was a thing of importance to you, for I am not +important, and there was no weight of life in it or in me. But even the +butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in +your big life. I like to think it was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a +little more interest from the drone of the locust or the glow of a +butterfly's wings. I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the +bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of +fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard +the lines--foolish they read, but they are not: + + "'All summer long there was one little butterfly, + Flying ahead of me, + Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow, + Flying ahead of me. + One little butterfly, one little butterfly, + What can his message be?-- + All summer long, there was one little butterfly + Flying ahead of me.' + +"It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of +things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us +on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher +hills. + +"Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment; +perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to do, +and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used always to +think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I first knew you +on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, would have +carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you have lost that +ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever told me. The thing +behind the words in your letter tells me plainer than words. The last +time I saw you in London--do you remember when it was? It was the day +that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with the sjambok. Well, +that last time, when I met you in the hall as we were both leaving a +house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you remember the day I went to +see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the truth then more. I often +wondered how I could ever help you in the old days. That was an +ambition of mine. But I had no brains--no brains like Jasmine's and +many another woman; and I was never able to do anything. But now I feel +as I never felt anything before in my life. I feel that my time and my +chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, like Miriam,--or was it +Deborah?--and that I must wind the horn of warning as you walk on the +edge of the precipice. + +"Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to +Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's +hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful child +must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp corner +that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to do. Even +Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, as he +never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do anything if +you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man before the war +she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the pieces, and put +them all together again. He says that after we win, reconstruction in +South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given to a man, because, +if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial show'--that's +Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it here, or why +shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in England? You found +the key to England's isolation, to her foreign problem,--I'm quoting +Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep hands off in this fight; +well, why shouldn't you find another key, that to the future of this +Empire? You got European peace for England, and now the problem is how +to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie says this, not me. His command +of English is better than mine, but neither of us would make a good +private secretary, if we had to write letters with words of over two +syllables. I've told you what Tynie says, but he doesn't know at all +what I know; he doesn't see the danger I see, doesn't realize the mad +thing in your brain, the sad thing weighing down your heart--and hers. + +"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your letter +has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it must not, +shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in this war. Is +not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go yet, and that +you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan now would be a +crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken memory--even mine, +Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all want you, to be the big +man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It is too small. If one +must be a slave, then let it be to something greater than one's self, +higher--toweringly unattainably higher. Believe me, neither the girl +you love nor any woman on earth is entitled to hold in slavery the +energies and the mind and hopes of a man who can do big things--or any +man at all. + +"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them down. +At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it +through--blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them still; +but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you not +live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, and +He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own making. + +"You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things +home to me--and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and +maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too +that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to +teach us our lesson--us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am +going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night--oh, how strange +that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me +say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were, +he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to +him a fortnight ago--Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at +these words: + + "'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: + Wait ye the warning? + Our low life was the level's and the night's; + He's for the morning.' + +"Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine +fellow!' ..." + + +A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage, +solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said: + + +"It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it, +not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so good.... +We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth +of her share of Ian Stafford...." + + +Then there followed a postscript which ran: + + +"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or +that. Well, here is the ship--mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home +for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope." + + +Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the joy +of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were +silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its +fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt +that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; and +he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes. + +"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian +Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said. + +Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as +his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair +retreated before a woman's insight. + +"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +AT BRINKWORT'S FARM + + +"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown +more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at +Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the +mask of his outward self-control. + +"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly. + +"When--where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's. + +"At Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"But what are you--a prisoner--doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?" + +"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." + +"They let you come without a guard?" + +"No--not. They are outside"--Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of +the house--"with the biltong and the dop." + +"You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." + +"What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at +Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: +Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute +certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with +the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when +the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool +believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas. + +It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the +House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a reconstructed +life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe. + +The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of him. +The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare +frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with +the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki hat +which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and +vengeful. + +Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the +Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it +all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the best, +lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would break +her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament which alone +could make life tolerable to her or to others who might live with her +under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he swiftly devised +means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He was certain harm +was meant--there was a look of semi-insanity in Krool's eyes. Krool +must be put out of the way before he could speak with the Baas.... But +how? + +With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid +of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept +there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would +move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently move +on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, to +which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of his +neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old +friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason why. + +"You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently. + +"Yes." + +"To sjambok you again?" + +Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's Kopje. +I kill Piet Graaf to do it." + +There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a +wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety. + +He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he +dreaded the inconsistency which such men show--forgiving and forgetting +when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of punishment +remain. + +He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said presently +with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet Graaf--have you told +the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? The sjambok is the Baas' +cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills to cure. Do you think that +the Baas would want his life through the killing of Piet Graaf by his +friend Krool, the slim one from the slime?" + +As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its +branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of +Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage +possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on Wotan +in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could not. His +body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of hatred, +then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and again +opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. + +At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban was +off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant. + +"Ah, you speak of traitor--you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The +sjambok--fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes--a t'ousand! Krool--Krool is +a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool do? +He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek--against the Philistine. He help +the chosen against the children of Hell. + +"What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in +the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves +would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the +voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps +and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things +good for him to hear." + +Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through +the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his +eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him +and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in the +broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over the +boulders of a rapid. + +"Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland from +the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The Baas an' +I, we understand--on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the Baas, and +I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people of the Baas' +country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he will it. So it +was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas strike, he strike; +if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set down. All else go. +Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, Cronje, Botha, they all +go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On the Limpopo it is written. +All must go, if the Baas speak--one, two, three, a t'ousand. Else the +bond is water, and the spirits come in the night, and take you to the +million years of torment. It is nothing to die--pain! But only the Baas +is kill me. It is written so. Only the Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor +all the verdomde Rooineks out there"--he pointed to the vast camp out +on the veld--"nor the Baas' vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas' +vrouw! She cannot hurt me..." He spat on the ground. "Who is the +traitor? Is it Krool? Did Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas' +slave; it is only the friend of the Baas that steal from him--only him +is traitor. I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to +save the Baas! I saw you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go +tell the Baas all. If he kill me--it is the Baas. It is written." + +He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion +glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle. + +Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly +to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent this +abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he would +have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the Baas' +vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that the end +was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice Tynemouth's letter +a new spirit had been working in him. He must do nothing rash. There +was enough stain on his hands now without the added stain of blood. But +he must act; he must prevent Krool from telling the Baas. Yonder at the +hospital was Jasmine, and she and her man must come together here in +this peaceful covert before Rudyard went forward with the army. It must +be so. + +Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep +and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first, +did not understand. + +Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at +once march him back to the prisoners' camp." + +Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a +pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would +not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a +soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no +resistance. + +But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry--"Baas!" + +In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty +neckcloth provided a gag. + +The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of +superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries. +Stafford's move was regular from a military point of view. He was +justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner. He +could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged. + +As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had +disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during +the incident. + +A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much in +common--the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned against. + +"I heard his last words about you and--her," she said in a low voice. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. + +"In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." + +"Thank God!" + +Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to +him, or why you have come," she said, "but--" + +"I have come to congratulate him on his recovery." + +"I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them +before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes." + +"What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his +heart give a bound and his brain throb. + +"Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were--concerned." + +"I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily. + +He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare friendliness. +There came over him again the feeling he had at the hospital when they +talked together last, that whatever might come of all the tragedy and +sorrow around them they two must face irretrievable loss. + +She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she +said, "Yes, I will take it while I can." + +Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for +something--some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, +then they steadied to his firmly. + +"You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death--I saw that at +the inquest." + +"Yes, I knew." + +"It was a poisoned needle." + +"I know. I found the needle." + +"Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it." + +Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation +broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was +buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices--voices of old +thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering +on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed +to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him. + +"He had hurt me more than any other--than my husband or her. I did it. +I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, I +wanted something for all I had lost, and he was ..." + +Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am +not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself for +it--only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to pay, in +my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands that +carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This one +man died because ..." + +He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying +now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The +gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So +long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting for +Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there would +always have been a black shadow between--the shadow that hangs over the +scaffold. + +"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. + +"They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On the +day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." + +There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here +before he joins his regiment." + +"I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was +better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she was +coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, I +sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what a +woman like me does." + +"What did you say to her?" + +"I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She +will think he is dying." + +"If she resents the subterfuge?" + +"Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting--who can tell! +Now is the time--now. I want to see it. It must be." + +He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes +had a strange childishly frightened look. + +"You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. + +A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her +eyes were suffused. + +"The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a voice +which told how deep was the well of misery in her being. + +"It is as old as Allah," he replied. + +"Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is +coming." + +An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and +Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left. + +As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her +fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she +heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the +house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's Farm. +Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the neckcloth was +still binding his mouth. + +As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like +flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to +the frock-coat and the huge top-boots. + +The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way. + +"What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing +Krool. + +"A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the guard. +"He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a lump o' +lead in 'is baskit 'e does." + +"'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it +hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"--he jerked +his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's voices +talking earnestly. + +"Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on +that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, this +half-caste Boojer is." + +The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the next +push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's done a +lot o' bitin' in 'is time--let 'im bite the dust now, I sez. I'm fair +sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square fighters. Why, 'e'd +fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke would." + +"There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was +jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this +time--goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes +and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're +goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over +the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the +howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening +their bouquets to-morrow--" + +"Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second. + +"I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear +let 'im 'ear--that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the +off side of a vicarage." + +He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade followed +up with a sharp challenge. + +"I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's--not about wot +the next move is, and w'en it is." + +The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard +Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night--w'en you was sleepin' at your +post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit at it. +You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the hills--that's +shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' thing in the air +wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' to 'it. That's +shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being shook--that's mausers and +others. You'll see regiments marching out o' step, an' every man on his +own, which is not how we started this war, not much. And where there's +a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, and you get behind it like a +man. And w'en there's nothing to get behind, you get in front, and take +your chances, and you get there--right there, over the trenches, over +the bloomin' Amalakites, over the hills and far away, where they want +the relief they're goin' to get, or I'm a pansy blossom." + +"Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the Second. +He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front of him +with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics of the +fight to come. + +"We'll all be in it--even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah +with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done a +bit o' nursin'--there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell in +'is 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me where +I squeak that kind o' thing do." + +Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep sounded +smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house. + +He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the +distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a +pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the +lightness of a boy, and galloped away. + +He had not seen Al'mah as he passed. + +In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh +broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw +Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where +Jasmine was. + +"Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the +stain of the blossoms from her fingers. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +SPRINGS OF HEALING + + +Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm, +the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it +was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone +should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of +her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all +was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at +Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the chance +to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been hers. She +herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all to which +she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of it. She was +of those who get their happiness first in making others happy--as she +would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; as even she +tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account with the +firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the protective +sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her life. It had +sent her to South Africa--to protect the wretch who had done his best +to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she did her nurse's +work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source of her revolt at +Jasmine's conduct and character. + +But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was, +after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she +really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's +rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, have +become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that also in +part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp disapproval +of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter at what cost +to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which would make a +woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order that he might +be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her which would make a +thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she herself set above +all others? + +But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think +and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and +they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins. + +She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly waned. +Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, up and +down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. At +length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat down in a great +arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid down the law for +his people. + +Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm? + +A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate +Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would +link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on to +the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived +while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he left. +It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for three +hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was made +of the delay. + +When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was +one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and +he, like Stafford, though in another sphere--that of the Secret +Intelligence Department--had travelled far and wide in the world. +Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as near +that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a woman +beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was because +he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be properly +classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the beautiful. +But there was something in her face that haunted him--a wistful, +appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant readiness +of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of organization. +And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown those who hadn't +life-belts," as he said. + +In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said +that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one +family was unusual. + +"Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest +officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's Farm, +in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a fellow +well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the Stay +Awhile with a staff-officer." + +The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any +officers' mess. + +"I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll +muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you, +Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of +impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have +traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at +Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think +so." + +"If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major, +"the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time for +teaching the rudiments of human intercourse." + +Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly +self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't +met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that--" + +The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what +Nancy would tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook--and then Rigby +would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw his +wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't tell +what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's pegnoir, +for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby." + +With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side +pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the +hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's +own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a +match. + +"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin +precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table. + +A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the +technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any +number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions, +is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports. + +"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the +tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the +relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did +not exist. + +When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly +over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was +the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock. + +It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she +must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to +him? + +If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he +was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into the +night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her voice +faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the last time +before he rode away again forever, on that white horse called Death? A +shudder passed through her. + +"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those were +the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford dined +with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the life +they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and yet--" + +Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the thought +of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun strands of +hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its great coiled +abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust the simple +linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the soft simplicity +of her dark-blue gown. + +She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the +messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been gone +three hours or more. + +Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without +hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired +reconciliation and peace. + +She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to Brinkwort's +Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have orders. She +hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and explained. His +sympathy translated itself into instant action. Fortunately there was a +cart at the door. In a moment she was ready, and the cart sped away +into the night across the veld. + +She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver nor +the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar voice +saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it brown. First +Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be over the +hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of the +hold-me-backs." + +She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her +husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told her +of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter." + +She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low +tone. + +"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you +should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one +else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and +'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's +well as ends well, and you're together at the finish." + +She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt +her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that pain +now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she found +Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man she +had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head drooped. "At +the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! The world stood +still for her. + +"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's +voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly it +came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the +siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not +said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was +closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She +seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream. + +She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only +answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was +distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her +anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to +which he belonged. + +What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if Rudyard +was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him understand +that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the flood"--before +that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her life except the +old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the power which swept her +into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, deaf to her voice and to +any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her vision the figure of Ian +Stafford, but she put that from her with a trembling determination. +That was done forever. She was as sure of it as she was sure of +anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, would never forgive +her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred her. Ian had saved her +from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation and fury, and had then +repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him with a magnanimity and a +chivalry which had humiliated her. He had protected her from the shame +of an open tragedy, and then had shut the door in her face. Rudyard, +with the same evidence as Ian held,--the same letter as proof--he, +whatever he believed or thought, he had forgiven her. Only a few nights +ago, that night before the fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his +arms to her and called her his wife. In Rudyard was some great good +thing, something which could not die, which must live on. She sat up +straight in the seat of the cart, her hands clinched. + +No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered +not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove herself; +his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must not be cut +off at the moment when so much had been done; when there was so much to +do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little burst of eloquence," +as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he thought her; but a +woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the poppy-fields of +pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue in her to avoid +the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, and to have +learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have been wholly +destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might be turned to +good account. + +She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright +lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of +her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a +hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng." + +He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights +seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came +the sharp voice of a soldier saying: + +"Halt! Who goes there?" + +"A friend," was the Corporal's reply. + +"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned. + +A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the +lights of the house were flaring out upon her. + +She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal +Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that at +the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity. + +All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she +knew it was Al'mah. + +"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a +whisper. + +The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it might +almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp. + +"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps. + +Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which +seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by +Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and the +morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The butterfly +had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat. + +She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never +would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since all +was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had been +dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had been of +the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no harm, but +only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the result of +her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go wrong. She +had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension of the +possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery Jasmine +should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in arrant +egotism once more! Suppose--no, she would suppose nothing. She must +believe that all she had done was for the best. + +She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm +fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes, +and all at once realized the cause of that agitation--the fear that +death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever +shut against the answering voices. + +"You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened +the grasp of her hands. + +As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are suddenly +withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so Jasmine's +hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though she must +fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained her balance, +withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah. + +"He is alive--he is alive--he is alive," she kept repeating to herself +like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear +herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me." + +Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense of +something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, old +room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias +Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a +picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome +of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they +were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer army +in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot his +house or ravage his belongings. + +To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at +once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost +mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision, +her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the +corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no +more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint +smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside +another room--not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the +Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something +English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man +standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was +a figure which had no affinity with death. + +As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found +herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes. + +Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really +was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and sun. +The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self were not +yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and intensity. +This had been too daring an experiment with one of her nature, which +had within the last few months become as strangely, insistently, even +fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the past. In spite of a +tremulous effort to govern herself and see the situation as it really +was--an effort of one who desired her good to bring her and Rudyard +together, the ruse itself became magnified to monstrous proportions, +and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that she had been inveigled; +that what should have been her own voluntary act of expiation and +submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, ever her most secret +enemy, took possession of her. + +"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body +trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation +in her voice. + +He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently +held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more +fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the +beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly leaped +at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the primitive +thing of which he had had enough. + +"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The +letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she +was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should +not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to +get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not +let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that +midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you +would not really wish it to end." + +Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women, +as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the +anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being +alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament +had flooded it for the moment. + +He would have gone to her--that was what he had said. In spite of her +conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he +would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or +how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was! + +How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face grown +hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also at his +temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in the +centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her making +for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his eyes. It +had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable reproach. Could she +face that look now and through the years to come? It were easier to +live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking the cup that would +not empty, on and on, than to live with that look in his eyes. + +She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a sjambok +lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and in the +minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the street +under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide. + +Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of all. Idiosyncrasy +may not be cauterized, temperament must assert itself, or the +personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the end of it all? +She had placed herself so completely in his power by her wilful +waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have been ruler over +him; now she must be his slave! + +"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a +cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now? +Don't you want to?" + +"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A +twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!" + +Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had +in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for +that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But +why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there +was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with +herself--and with him. She was in chaos again. + +"You treat me like a child, you condescend--" + +"Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden +storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the +will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared. + +"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You +haven't got over your illness yet." + +He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of +it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far +greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two +people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was +this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with +Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind--a talk which, in its +brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a +promise to one of the best friends that man--or woman--ever had, as he +thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford +understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived +by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of +her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble +she had caused. So he said to himself. + +As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him. + +"Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You have +not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at +Al'mah and the doctor!" + +She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed +him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the +chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act +was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she felt +his pulse with the gravity of a doctor. + +Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed +there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the +whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the +table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it +to his lips. + +"Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You +shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming." + +As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour +of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before. + +There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even +wounds and illness had not faced--only humour, only a hovering joy, +only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of +the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not fantastically +to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other room where were +the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was no offending +magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, but a human +something which took no account of the years that the locust had eaten, +the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of them. There was only +the look she had seen the day he first visited her in her own home, +when he had played with words she had used in the way she adored, and +would adore till she died; when he had said, in reply to her remark +that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make any difference to +his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly it was all as if +that day had come back, although his then giant physical strength had +gone; although he had been mangled in the power-house of which they had +spoken that day. Come to think of it, she too had been working in the +"power-house" and had been mangled also; for she was but a thread of +what she was then, but a wisp of golden straw to the sheaf of the then +young golden wheat. + +All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful bright +look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her old self +like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, sank back +again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by a gentle +wind. + +Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the +thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling +as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and +buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly. + +With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew +her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders. + +"Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace." + +They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not make +her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both knew +her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; and +each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means! + +All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little +spasmodic grasp. + +"I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be +absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, bravely. + +"Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not +change. She noted that. + +"I know. It was--" + +She paused. What right had she to tell! + +"Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me." + +She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely +waiting and watching. + +Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek his. +They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, they +dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as she said: + +"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master +me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my +wrists." + +She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used +them concerning herself the night before the tragedy. + +"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I +was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You +took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest." + +"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so beautiful." + +She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a +dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had +been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or +did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and +words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any +real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself." + +"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It +takes all that ever was and makes it new." + +She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to +have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, all +that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond +endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she caught +the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, and what +he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, for this +one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a rest-place +on the road. + +He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and +held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great +sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre +of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of +spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart. + +"It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to +have her chance, and she has got it." + +Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She +knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the +night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's +surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went +back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent Garden. +The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some phrases of +the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no resonance or +vibration. It trailed away into a whisper. + +"I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it +that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to herself.... Again +reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. "No, I +am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a long time, "If a +price must be paid, I will pay it." + +Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near by. +At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of +sentries off duty--the two who had talked to her earlier in the +evening, after Ian Stafford had left. + +"This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o' +space in a night out here." + +"I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath," +rejoined the other. + +"I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously. + +"I got kids--somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a flourish +of pride and self-assertion. + +"Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First. + +"You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," declared +his friend in a voice of fatality. + +"You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I +like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in the +morning 'ere." + +"Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son," +challenged the Second. + +"I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet +reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you +when we're in Lordkop." + +"I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was +the railing reply. + +"She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then they +struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, and said +good-night in the vernacular. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +UNDER THE GUN + + +They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who +had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it +seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a +waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far +away in front--that front which must be taken--there hung over the +ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured +the air--crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of +animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, +on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which +quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, and +the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, +showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead. + +"Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, fell +into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with a +sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in the +millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The +lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a +verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin +this day." + +Alamachtig! + +At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air +was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the +ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that +human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike +were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no +apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly, +coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a +comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds +his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too--puddles +of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from +the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense +concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony of +those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and +voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men +around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained +with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were not +the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and making +bets as to where the attack would begin to-day. + +Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had +been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever +done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking was +indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his +battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result to +the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders +accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the new +position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against this +fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe at +advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and the +clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an +enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall +back into a smother--as though, in falling, blankets were drawn roughly +over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air around him. +And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets flapping in +the air were the machine guns of the foe following his battery into a +zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that smothered him were +wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the direst agonies of +body and mind. + +The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power, +sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks +flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the struggle +of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, plunging here +and there in flight and futile motion. As unconsciousness enwrapped him +the vision of these distraught denizens of the veld was before his +eyes. Somehow, in a lightning transformation, he became one with them +and was mingled with them. + +Time passed. + +When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was before +him--the negative left on the film of his sight by his last conscious +glance at the world. + +He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The +springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the army +to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the hill +lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious of +this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone forward. +There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a kind of +valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a world in +which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many years--or +centuries--was it since he had been in that harvest of death? There was +no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was that his soul had +made so far a journey. + +In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had +gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of +the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that +confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of +the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it +waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own +blood, in the swath which the battle had cut. + +His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the +mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him +on the shoulder, had summoned him. + +When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to +live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and Rudyard +had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken +roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It had +seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and that +the way was open to peace, if not to happiness. + +When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I +will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time +and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way of +the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death. + +To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and +absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when +he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by +the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not +for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had +reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink it. +Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it." + +He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a +vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the +everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he smiled +too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant that the +army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would soon be the +Relief for which England prayed. + +There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His +battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its +work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great +day's work. + +He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable day. +He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery had +suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not +hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the +battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant +withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and renewed +activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and his slain +men and fellow-officers. + +But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant +to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It +was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was +small, distant, and subordinate. + +If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the +battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from +that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid, +and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed +for darkness. + +He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind +the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping +down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he +gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the +spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his +parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness +swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed his +temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had ever +known. + +"Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed eyes. +"Jasmine--water," he pleaded, and sank away again into that dream from +which he had but just wakened. + +It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head +was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead. + +But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held +the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips. + +Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their way +from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to this +corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the +enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they first +fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of fire. No +heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, nurse, or +surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here were two +races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give and take for +the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was closed. + +The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no +right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the +battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and +in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and +had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where +wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of war. +When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow her to +remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her way to +where the wounded and dead lay. + +A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured +gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of +Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come +whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the +man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like +herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose +hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that +as a brother loves so he loved her. + +Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the +lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are +commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser +nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the +abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached +Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The +surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care for +a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a +courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With +both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light his +cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it was +with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it! + +"Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over +him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me +pipe, glory be!" + +With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun, +left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that +nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was +made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the +young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, some +with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the gunner, +who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood at +attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his credit +for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she threw +over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained jackets +lying near--jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had tried +hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down. + +There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was +spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were +dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. + +Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was +ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that +the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until +she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to +tell--all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that +look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and +peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came +to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going: +his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from +the lever that lifted things. + +She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards +the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the loathsome +birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting till they +could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. Instinctively she +drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as though to protect it from +the evil flying things. She forced between his lips a little more water. + +"God make it easy!" she said. + +A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through +the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing +them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all +her own problems--like Stafford--like Stafford? Stooping, she +reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed +her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need her +on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who +could help him now. Who else was there beside herself--and Jigger? + +Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been +with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like Jigger +to be absent when Stafford needed him. + +She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him +coming--to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she +saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner, +stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and +head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though +there was a goal which must be reached. + +An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat +at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was +the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so +flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who +had fallen. Now he also was in dire need. + +She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an +angular assertion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log, +ungainly and rigid. + +"They got me! I'm hit--twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that +stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an +abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he +added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found him. +His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure seemed +to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if not +resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out +querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis. + +"They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I wasn't +fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, accent, +and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips moved +once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor," he said +mechanically, and said no more. + +As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last words. +"Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly. + +They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and +died. She shuddered. + +"So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the +lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay. + +Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took +no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being +killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of Ian +Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea. + +He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her +vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept +ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi +Terrace--first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had +sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes had +died--"More was lost at Mohacksfield." + +The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim +of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie +unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face +of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the +armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or +struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over the +hills. + +In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept +Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been justified. He +would have died had it not been for the water and brandy she had forced +between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath the gun. In the +end they would come and gather the dead and wounded. When the battle +was over they would come, or, maybe, before it was over. + +But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of +artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar +of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her +senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew +thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a dream. +She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than all the +noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her very body +seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers hurting +her brain. + +At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs. + +So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and +bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded! + +The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder +almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was +ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to know +that friends were with him at the last, and also what had happened at +Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday. + +She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one +man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and +swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so. + +The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare frock-coat, +huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's Farm. The last +time she had seen that malevolent face was when its owner was marched +away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +It was Krool. + +An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, for +it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it. + +When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces +with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The +superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; +then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of +savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with +sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was +upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he +saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry. + +With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A +sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained +horses sprang forward. + +"The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder. + +Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins, +but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for +him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach +Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after +his escape--if he was caught--he would do something to gall the pride +of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to issue +forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy loss +while the battle was at its height--he would ride it over the hills +into the Boers' camp. + +There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with +his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a +wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the +staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses, +and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow +the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire +upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it rose +again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It +swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, +Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that +dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and understood +that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer lines. + +At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had also +fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British gun was +not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, and their +fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was doing the thing +with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval as the gun came +nearer and nearer. + +Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of +one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses +were behaving so gallantly,--horses of one of their own batteries +daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force--that there was +scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden +turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving +behind it a little cloud of dust. + +Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man +who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry +Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way, +and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still +unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much +the same as those of Barry Whalen. + +With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's vigil. +The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by the Red +Cross wagons. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +"PHEIDIPPIDES" + + +At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and +fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and friend, +the end came to the man who had lain under the gun. + +"Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the +humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner who +brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it. + +It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth, +he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle, +to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died +for England before they knew that victory was hers. + +"Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much +upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his +hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had +to go before they knew." + +"I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look in +his face. + +His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and +Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah +took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, +noiseless steps, left the room. + +What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. + +Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time. + +"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written +self-control. + +"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It +will help him." + +He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of +pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another room. + +There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips. + +She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white and +still upon the coverlet. + +At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would +reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from +the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half +raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A light +transfigured his face. + +"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly down. + +"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +"THE ROAD IS CLEAR" + + +The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and +glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an +emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from +Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the +petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its +improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain, +where she guarded the jewels of her honour. + +The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and +drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills +from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup +of trembling, the wine of loss. + +As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of +brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets +of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to +bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left the +Day Path and took the Night Road. + +Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with +bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the resurrection +and the life"--the volleys of honour, the proud salut of the brave to +the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few who turn away +from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging behind--all had +been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the veld with a golden +radiance which soothed like prayer. + +By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a +woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed +to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the +attitude of the figure. + +A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away +from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes. + +"What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see +that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was +properly in its place. + +"'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how +I'll git along now." + +There was great hopelessness in the tone. + +"He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, Jigger. He +thought of all that." + +"'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of +protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money, +when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for +'im--that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im." + +"You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago +that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard--good for all the +time." + +The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that--did 'e?" he asked, +and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, ain't 'e?" +His look questioned her eagerly. + +For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took on +a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from +strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered +steadily: + +"Yes, he is happy now." + +"How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed +in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is +it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep +sometimes--singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time I +ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" + +"Yes, it is like that--just like that," she answered, taking his hand, +and holding it with a motherly tenderness. + +"Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added. + +She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly. + +"This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all +have to go back to work." + +"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it something +of her old whimsical self. + +"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of +intellectual effort. "It's a cut above 'em both--that's my fancy." + +"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do +when you get back to England?" she inquired. + +"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a +scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?" + +"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked. + +"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly. + +"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, +"and we'll have to find a way of being busy together." + +"His gryce'd like that," he responded. + +She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds became +silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a long +time. + +"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a +whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to +shut out something that pained her sight. + +"I wish you'd sing somethin'--same as you did that night at Glencader, +about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from the +bed. + +She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and +turned again to the light in the evening sky. + +"P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself. + +On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to +sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go +down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence +between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which +the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the +disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared +to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence +would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to +look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should +force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had +talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been nothing. + +Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time +the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the +grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs +of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, +that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should +be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its +own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same +light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which +exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things any +more. + +There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the valley. +With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the land +where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land where +he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped to +make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it from +disaster. + +But there had come another victory--the victory of Home. The +coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one +hour. + +Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman beside +him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him with an +understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a colour +came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days than he +could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a sadness +which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen those eyes +he had thought them the most honest he had ever known. Looking at them +now, with confidence restored, he thought again as he did that night at +the opera the year of the Raid. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose and +a great gentleness in his tone. + +Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination +gathered at her lips. + +Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself. + +"But I cannot--I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then you +may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour went +from her lips. "I must be honest now--at last, about everything. I want +to tell you--" + +He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely in +the eyes. + +"Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of +finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in +one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips. + +"A fresh start for a long race--the road is clear," he said firmly. + +Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that in +his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she +was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast. + +A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed +and echoed away among the hills. + +He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his eyes. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again. + +Her fingers tightened on his. + + + + +THE END + + + + +GLOSSARY: + +AASVOGEL Vulture. + +ALFALFA Lucerne. + +BILTONG Strips of dried meat. + +DISSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon. + +DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil. + +DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally +applied to Dutchmen in South Africa. + +DORP Settlement or town. + +KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa. + +KOPJE A rounded hillock. + +KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains. + +KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle. + +KRANZES Rocky precipices. + +MEERKAT A species of ichneumon. + +ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the +Boers. + +SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills). + +SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. + +SPRUIT A small stream. + +STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house. + +TAAL South African Dutch. + +TREK To move from place to place with belongings. + +VELD An open grassy plain. + +VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes. + +VERDOMDE Damned. + +VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African +Republics. + +VOORTREKKER Pioneer. + +VROUW Wife. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUDGMENT HOUSE *** + +***** This file should be named 3746.txt or 3746.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/4/3746/ + +Produced by Juli Rew. 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It is in conception and portraiture a work of the +imagination. + + +"Strangers come to the outer wall-- +(Why do the sleepers stir?) +Strangers enter the Judgment House-- +(Why do the sleepers sigh?) +Slow they rise in their judgment seats, +Sieve and measure the naked souls, +Then with a blessing return to sleep. +(Quiet the Judgment House.) +Lone and sick are the vagrant souls-- +(When shall the world come home?)" + + +"Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far, +God must judge the couple: leave them as they are-- +Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory, +And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story! + + +"Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all, +Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall? +No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places! +While I count three, step you back as many paces!" + + +"And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at +Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What +would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'" + + +"So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the noble strong man +Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a +God loved so well: +He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell +Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began +So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter to be mute: +'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed." + + +"Oh, never star +Was lost here, but it rose afar." + + + + + +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE + + + + +BOOK I + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE JASMINE FLOWER + + +The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air +was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the +gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in +the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by +this sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power +of the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast +of the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack +of enterprise had somewhat forfeited. + +Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypnotized by the +unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage name was Al'mah. At the +moment of the opera's supreme appeal the eyes of three people at least +were not in the thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first +row of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of about +thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in +his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes +over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction +which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name +was Adrian Fellowes. + +Either the opera and the singer had no charms for Adrian Fellowes, or +else he had heard both so often that, without doing violence to his +musical sense, he could afford to study the effect of this wonderful +effort upon the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the +stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked; of happy colour, +and, apparently, with a mind and soul in which no conflicts ever +raged--to the advantage of his attractive exterior. Only at the summit +of the applause did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the +gloating look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table with +the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes that he has +beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit which has tricked him so +often. Now the cold-blue eyes caught, for a second, the dark-brown +eyes of the Celtic singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, +eagerly, and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad +faces before her. + +In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man and a very +young woman, who also in the crise of the opera were not looking at +the stage. The eyes of the man, sitting well back--purposely, so that +he might see her without marked observation--were fixed upon the +rose-tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk gown, +which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair and wonderful +colour of her face. Her eyes were fixed upon her lap, the lids half +closed, as though in reverie, yet with that perspicuous and reflective +look which showed her conscious of all that was passing round +her--even the effect of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel. + +She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat faster because of +it; and a temperament adjustable to every mood and turn of human +feeling was answering to the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, +child-likeness, and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate +consciousness. She was responsive to the passionate harmony; but she +was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet deferential appeal to her +emotions of the dark, distinguished, bearded man at her side, with the +brown eyes and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign +Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him a tact and an +insinuating address peculiarly alluring to her sex. She was well aware +of Ian Stafford's ambitions, and had come to the point where she +delighted in them, and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or +for woe"; but she would probably have resented the suggestion that his +comparative poverty was weighed against her natural inclinations and +his real and honest passion. For she had her ambitions, too; and when +she had scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that something +only little less than a diadem would really satisfy her. + +Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards another occupant +of her box, who sat beside her pretty stepmother--a big, bronzed, +clean-shaven, strong-faced man of about the same age as Ian Stafford +of the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her +request. Ian had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to +the millions he had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and +on the Rand. At first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form +she had inwardly contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and +that other spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in +the stalls, towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, +happy glance, and with which she herself had been familiar since her +childhood. The contrast had not been wholly to the advantage of the +nabob; though, to be sure, he was simply arrayed--as if, indeed, he +were not worth a thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense +of power, but his occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own +great sense of humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur +delightful to hear. + +Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and that she +interested him was evident by the sudden arrest of his look and his +movements when introduced to her. Ian Stafford had noted this look; +but he had seen many another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as +much natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the shoulders of +his mind; for the millions alone would not influence her, that was +sure. Had she not a comfortable fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was +not the kind of man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and +nature. So much had happened between Jasmine and himself, so deep an +understanding had grown up between them, that it only remained to +bring her to the last court of inquiry and get reply to a vital +question--already put in a thousand ways and answered to his perfect +satisfaction. Indeed, there was between Jasmine and himself the +equivalent of a betrothal. He had asked her to marry him, and she had +not said no; but she had bargained for time to "prepare"; that she +should have another year in which to be gay in a gay world and, in her +own words, "walk the primrose path of pleasure untrammelled and alone, +save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy." + +Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was well. And now +the year was nearly up, and she had not changed; had, indeed, grown +more confiding and delicately dependent in manner towards him, though +seeing him but seldom alone. + +As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to himself, "So +exquisite and so clever, what will she not be at thirty! So well +poised, and yet so sweetly child-like dear dresden-china Jasmine." + +That was what she looked like--a lovely thing of the time of Boucher +in dresden china. + +At last, as though conscious of what was going on in his mind, she +slowly turned her drooping eyes towards him, and, over her shoulder, +as he quickly leaned forward, she said in a low voice which the others +could not hear: + +"I am too young, and not clever enough to understand all the music +means--is that what you are thinking?" + +He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes commanded hers, +but still deferentially, as he said: "You know of what I was +thinking. You will be forever young, but yours was always--will always +be--the wisdom of the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at +twenty-two." + +"How trying that you should know my age so exactly --it darkens the +future," she rejoined with a soft little laugh; then, suddenly, a +cloud passed over her face. It weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed +before her into space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous +anxiety. What did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous, for her +small sensuous lips drew closer, and the fan she held in her lap +slipped from her fingers to the floor. + +This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan to her, said +into a face again alive to the present: "You look as though you were +trying to summon the sable spirits of a sombre future." + +Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once more quite +self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it +chimes with every mood and circumstance." + +Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough +power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed +through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! +Three millions at thirty-three--and millions beget millions!" + +. . . Power--millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for +the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full +occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of +life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of +merit. Power--that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had +made his fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the +vanity of mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for +his fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which +nearly every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a +fortune which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human +nature, then had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, +the native genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He +had died at last with the smile on his lips which had followed his +remark, quoted in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The +world wants to be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I +stunned it. My fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid +me well. But they all love being fooled best." + +Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons +and herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was +the only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of +his existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception +so acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only +one of his blood who had anything of himself in character or +personality, and he predicted--too often in her presence--that she +"would give the world a start or two when she had the chance." His +intellectual contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced +in her with no prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from +the age of three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet +with too much intelligence to carry her will and power too +far. Infinite adaptability had been the result of a desire to please +and charm; behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own +way and bend other wills to hers. + +The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her +stepmother and of Ian Stafford--one, because she was jealous and +obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and +an ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give +save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in +England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, +determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity +which even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar +high above the capable average. That chance, the predestined alluring +opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was +ready for the spring--nerved the more to do so by the thought that +Jasmine would appreciate his success above all others, even from the +standpoint of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded. How +did it come that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously +the insouciant child? + +He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the impression of +force and natural power of the millionaire struck him now, as it had +often done. As though summoned by them both, Byng turned his face and, +catching Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward. + +"I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet," he said, with +a little jerk of the head towards the stage, where, for the moment, +minor characters were in possession, preparing the path for the last +rush of song by which Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her +first night to a complete triumph. + +With face turned full towards her, something of the power of his head +seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was honest, alert, and almost brutally +simple--the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and +the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had +in them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat +self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were +combined of strength, activity, and also a little of grace. + +"I never had much chance to hear great singers before I went to South +Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this swallows me like a storm on +the high veld--all lightning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot +in my time." + +With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine leaned over and +whispered--for the prima donna was beginning to sing again: + +"There's nothing you have missed in your race that you cannot ride +back and collect. It is those who haven't run a race who cannot ride +back. You have won; and it is all waiting for you." + +Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation came to him--the +kind of thing he felt once when he was sixteen, and the vicar's +daughter had suddenly held him up for quite a week, while all his +natural occupations were neglected, and the spirit of sport was +humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time--who was +there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not +carouse, when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; +when men got so dead beat, with no homes anywhere--only shake-downs +and the Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be +his slave, to keep his home; but that was a business which had +revolted him, and he had never repeated the experiment. Then, there +had been an adventuress, a wandering, foreign princess who had fooled +him and half a dozen of his friends to the top of their bent; but a +thousand times he had preferred other sorts of pleasures--cards, +horses, and the bright outlook which came with the clinking glass +after the strenuous day. + +Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him--his primitive, +almost Edenic sincerity; his natural indolence and native force: a +nature that would not stir until greatly roused, but then, with an +unyielding persistence and concentrated force, would range on to its +goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will, vision and +a gallant heart. + +Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward eagerly. There was a +rustle in the audience, a movement to a listening position, then a +tense waiting and attention. + +As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to Ian Stafford, +whose well-proportioned character, personality, and refinement of +culture were in such marked contrast to the personality of the other: +"They live hard lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of +himself." + +"Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal of one thing to +get another," Ian answered a little grimly. + +"Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper. + +Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience. The bold and +generous orchestration, the exceptional chorus, the fine and brilliant +tenor, had made a broad path for her last and supreme effort. The +audience had long since given up their critical sense, they were ready +to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was instant and +complete. Now, not an eye was turned away from the singer. Even the +Corinthian gallant at the end of the first row of stalls gave himself +up to feasting on her and her success, and the characters in the opera +were as electrified as the audience. + +For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the only thing in +the world, transposing all thoughts, emotions, all elements of life +into terms of melody. Then, at last, with a crash of sweetness, the +voice broke over them all in crystals of sound and floated away into a +world of bright dreams. + +An instant's silence which followed was broken by a tempest of +applause. Again, again, and again it was renewed. The subordinate +singers were quickly disposed of before the curtain, then Al'mah +received her memorable tribute. How many times she came and went she +never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her well up the +stage beside a table where two huge candles flared. The storm of +applause breaking forth once more, the grateful singer raised her arms +and spread them out impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon. + +As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught the flame +of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud of fire. The wild +applause turned suddenly to notes of terror as, with a sharp cry, she +stumbled forward to the middle of the stage. + +For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an +opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet +between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He +crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In +an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had +crushed out the flames with swift, strong movements. + +Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great arms, he strode +off with her behind the scenes. + +"Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried a strong voice from +the audience; and a cheer went up. + +In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage. "She is not +seriously hurt," he said simply to the audience. "We were just in +time." + +Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafening applause +broke forth. + +"We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an admiring, teasing +laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm. + +"'We'--well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine, standing close to +him and looking up into his eyes with that ingratiating softness which +had deluded many another man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak +you took?" she added, whimsically. + +"Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly. "You'll have to wear +my overcoat home." + +"I certainly will," she answered. "Come--the giant's robe." + +People were crowding upon their box. + +"Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat from the hook +on the wall. + +As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prematurely aged father +whispered in the pretty stepmother's ear: "Jasmine'll marry that +nabob--you'll see." + +The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in love with Ian +Stafford," she said, decisively. + +"But she'll marry Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn reply. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE UNDERGROUND WORLD + + +"What's that you say--Jameson--what?" + +Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at the end of his cigar, +and stared at a man who was reading from a tape-machine, which gave +the club the world's news from minute to minute. + +"Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight hundred men. He +started from Pitsani two days ago. And Cronje with his burghers are +out after him." + +The flaming match burned Byng's fingers. He threw it into the +fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment, his face hot with +feeling, then he burst out: + +"But--God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The burghers'll catch +him at Doornkop or somewhere, and--" He paused, overcome. His eyes +suffused. His hands went out in a gesture of despair. + +"Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's lost the game for +them." + +The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get in yet. He surely +planned the thing with due regard for every chance. Johannesburg--" + +"Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the Rand +should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide now. It +might have been--it was to have been--a revolution at Johannesburg, +with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a filibustering +business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as sure as +guns. 'Gad, it makes me sick!" + +"Europe will like it--much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, +offering Byng a lighted match. + +Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on +Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870 +and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your +business, you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out +there, friends of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the +British kids that can't be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men +who pay all the taxes and can't become citizens. It's the justice you +can only buy; it's the foot of Kruger on the necks of the subjects of +his suzerain; it's eating dirt as Englishmen have never had to eat it +anywhere in the range of the Seven Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, +it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be at Doornkop, unless-- But, no, +they'll track him, trap him, get him now. Johannesburg wasn't +ready. Only yesterday I had a cable that--" he stopped short +. . . "but they weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or something; +and Englishmen aren't good conspirators, not by a damned sight! Now +it'll be the old Majuba game all over again. You'll see." + +"It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than +your first," remarked Stafford. + +Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost, +as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never +touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal +swizzle revolted his Eesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very +slowly, gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking. Then +he looked round. There was no one very near, though curious faces were +turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was passed from +mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched his chest +with a firm forefinger. + +"Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of +that. Dr. Jim'll never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque +for breakfast. But there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if +the chef doesn't turn up his nose too high. After all, what has +brought things to this pass? Why, mean, low tyranny and +injustice. Why, just a narrow, jealous race-hatred which makes helots +of British men. Simple farmers, the sentimental newspapers call +them--simple Machiavellis in veldschoen!" * + +Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he +replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox +way." + +"She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?" + +Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in +England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to get +in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of the +millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger standing +over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera we +had a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into flames +on the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the Transvaal, +is in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who will save +her, and--" + +A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face +of Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low, +generous laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at +some expense to himself--with his own overcoat, or with some one +else's cloak. Is that what you want to say?" + +All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us--even in +moments when interests are in existence so great that they should +obliterate all others--came to the surface. For a moment it almost +made Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done +all that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself +into his very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms +of memory and longing. + +He had read only one paper that morning, and it--the latest attempt at +sensational journalism--had so made him blush at the flattering +references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that +he had opened no other. He had left his chambers to avoid the +telegrams and notes of congratulation which were arriving in great +numbers. He had gone for his morning ride in Battersea Park instead of +the Row to escape observation; had afterwards spent two hours at the +house he was building in Park Lane; had then come to the club, where +he had encountered Ian Stafford and had heard the news which +overwhelmed him. + +"Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have +done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to +think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?" + +Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a +soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman +than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a +mind of unusual decision. + +Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he +replied: + +"Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my +time, and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I +suppose it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the +trouble's on you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd +have funked the whole thing, I suppose--jumping from that box onto the +stage, and grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it +were. But that wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man +that's in most of us, even when we're not very clever, does things +right. It's when the conventional man comes in and says, Let us +consider, that we go wrong. By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her +beauty spoiled as any woman ever was; but she's only got a few nasty +burns on the arm and has singed her hair a little." + +"You've seen her to-day, then?" + +Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one +likely to rouse a man's interest in a woman. Al'mah was unmarried, so +far as the world knew, and a man of Byng's kind, if not generally +inflammable, was very likely to be swept off his feet by some unusual +woman in some unusual circumstance. Stafford had never seen Rudyard +Byng talk to any woman but Jasmine for more than five minutes at a +time, though hundreds of eager and avaricious eyes had singled him out +for attention; and, as it seemed absurd that any one should build a +palace in Park Lane to live in by himself, the glances sent in his +direction from many quarters had not been without hopefulness. And +there need not have been, and there was not, any loss of dignity on +the part of match-making mothers in angling for him, for his family +was quite good enough; his origin was not obscure, and his upbringing +was adequate. His external ruggedness was partly natural; but it was +also got from the bitter rough life he had lived for so many years in +South Africa before he had fallen on his feet at Kimberley and +Johannesburg. + +As for "strange women," during the time that had passed since his +retum to England there had never been any sign of loose living. So, to +Stafford's mind, Byng was the more likely to be swept away on a sudden +flood that would bear him out to the sea of matrimony. He had put his +question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply. It came +frankly and instantly: + +"Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this +morning--with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe +it, but I saw her, too. She'd been up since six o'clock, she +said. Couldn't sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy +blossom all the same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, +and a nurse doing the needful. It's an odd dark kind of beauty she +has, with those full lips and the heavy eyebrows. Well, it was a bull +in a china-shop, as you might judge--and thank you kindly, Mr. Byng, +with such a jolly laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so +wonderfully--thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had +planned it all. And wouldn't I stay to breakfast? And not a bit stagey +or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond--a gem in her +way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the +prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; +and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at +breakfast--why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and +cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all +right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." + +As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to +him, so patently true and honest in every particular. It was rather +contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged +fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to +the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's +personality. It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who +would be comparing Jasmine's quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, +and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius +of the singer. It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a +personality more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him +perfectly at ease mentally and physically. + +Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was +so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant +woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and +attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in +marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she +had naturally shown only the one side of her nature--she adapted +herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at +an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well. + +Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be--she had been so from a +child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had +made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving +surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the +spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married +again; and then it had been too late to control her. The wonder was +that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so +determined, so capable. Was it because she had unusual brain and +insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to +see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had +kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely +from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense +emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman +of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very +amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize +women. + +Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was +concerned. He had not heard her father's remark of the night before, +"Jasmine will marry that nabob--you'll see." + +He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a +note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room +fire. He could not help but see--he knew the envelope, and no other +handwriting was like Jasmine's, that long, graceful, sliding +hand. Byng turned it over before opening it. + +"Hello," he said, "I'm caught. It's a woman's hand. I wonder how she +knew I was here." + +Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself: "If +Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she'd find out. I wonder--I +wonder." + +He watched Byng, over whose face passed a pleased smile. + +"Why," Byng said, almost eagerly, "it's from Miss Grenfel--wants me to +go and tell her about Jameson and the Raid." + +He paused for an instant, and his face clouded again. "The first thing +I must do is to send cables to Johannesburg. Perhaps there are some +waiting for me at my rooms. I'll go and see. I don't know why I didn't +get news sooner. I generally get word before the Government. There's +something wrong somewhere. Somebody has had me." + +"If I were you I'd go to our friend first. When I'm told to go at +once, I go. She wouldn't like cablegrams and other things coming +between you and her command--even when Dr. Jim's riding out of +Matabeleland on the Rand for to free the slaves." + +Stafford's words were playful, but there was, almost unknown to +himself, a strange little note of discontent and irony behind. + +Byng laughed. "But I'll be able to tell her more, perhaps, if I go to +my rooms first." + +"You are going to see her, then?" + +"Certainly. There's nothing to do till we get news of Jameson at bay +in a conga or balled up at a kopje." Thrusting the delicately perfumed +letter in his pocket, he nodded, and was gone. + +"I was going to see her myself," thought Stafford, "but that settles +it. It will be easier to go where duty calls instead, since Byng takes +my place. Why, she told me to come to-day at this very hour," he +added, suddenly, and paused in his walk towards the door. + +"But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to +reflect.... "Well, there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, +that's sure. France, Austria, Russia can spit out their venom now and +look to their mobilization. And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap +if Dr. Jim gets caught! What a mess it will be! Well--well--well!" + +He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this +was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people. + + + +CHAPTER III + +A DAUGHTER OF TYRE + + +"Monsieur voleur!" + +Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the +opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in +his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume +greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet +by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to +him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence +and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous +protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt +quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy +and beauty and bloom. + +"Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand +rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran +off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive +one it was." + +"Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable." + +She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat +this morning--before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of +thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came +back." + +"It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I +didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." + +"In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. + +"Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." + +"Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. + +"Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." + +"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid +itself--or went out and hanged itself?" + +He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made +especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this +very chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in +full view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words--a deep, round +chuckle it was. + +"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield +where I could see it and breakfast too." + +"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of +a boudoir." + +"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. + +"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't +she?" + +"Not so good a breakfast as I got." + +"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a +little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like +those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while +at all. + +"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I +give up. I can't talk in your way." + +"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her +eyes. + +"Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the +kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there." + +"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock +dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" + +His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness +suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, +"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch +Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop +or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul." + +Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about +this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to +be settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the +prima donna's boudoir, and--" + +"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly. + +"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little +laugh. "Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this +horrid flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like +this, or been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known +everything; if I hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her +and knew that she was recovering from that dreadful shock very +quickly? But could you think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to +have asked about her?" + +"I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were +talking--not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be +thinking that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to +me to--" + +She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languishing humour. "Now +you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head +turned, and--" + +"It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head," he +broke in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an +opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him. + +There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was +half-assumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was +so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that +the unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however +agreeably so. Then she said to him: "I won't say you were brave last +night--that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; +it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with +great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at +all in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a +burning building, was it?" + +"There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned," he +replied. "I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to +move quick--by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was +just a little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was +nearer to the stage." + +"Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford." + +"They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb +for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening +things; and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we +veld-rangers and adventurers." + +"You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions," she said, almost shyly." +You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last +night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should +think." + +"Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage +natures. The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the +sculpture of Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music +of a master, though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've +carried a banjo and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved +my life with the cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in +Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun within reach, but I'd been playing the +cornet, and just as he was crouching I blew a blast from it--one of +those jarring discords of Wagner in the "Gotterdammerung"--and he +turned tail and got away into the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be +the most acute of all the senses with the pioneer. If you've ever +been really dying of thirst, and have reached water again, its sounds +become wonderful to you ever after that--the trickle of a creek, the +wash of a wave on the shore, the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a +fall, the swish of a rainstorm. It's the same with birds and +trees. And trees all make different sounds--that's the shape of the +leaves. It's all music, too." + +Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and +observation of his words. "So it wasn't strange that you should be +ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?" She looked at him +keenly. "Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given +to a woman who in other respects--" she paused. + +"Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's +what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world +of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of +irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I +suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they +don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It +alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would +commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance +of it all." + +"Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?" + +"Yes, when she was laughing and jesting--and when she kissed me +good-bye." + +"When--she--kissed you--good-bye?" + +Jasmine drew back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the +other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had +been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it +had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been +allowed to read books of verse--Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, +Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others--unchallenged and unguided. The +understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been +at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to her by slow but +subtle means--an apprehension from instinct, not from knowledge. There +had never been a shock to her mind. + +The knowledge of things had grown imperceptibly, and most of life's +ugly meanings were known--at a great distance, to be sure, but still +known. Yet there came a sudden half-angry feeling when she heard +Rudyard Byng say, so loosely, that Al'Mah had kissed him. Was it +possible, then, that a man, that any man, thought she might hear such +things without resentment; that any man thought her to know so much of +life that it did not matter what was said? Did her outward appearance, +then, bear such false evidence? + +He did not understand quite, yet he saw that she misunderstood, and he +handled the situation with a tact which seemed hardly to belong to a +man of his training and calibre. + +"She thought no more of kissing me," he continued, presently, in a +calm voice--"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely +to see again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her +than kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it +as soon as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat +unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little +Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist and bohemian." + +Jasmine's face cleared, and her equilibrium was instantly +restored. She was glad she had misunderstood. Yet Al'mah had not +kissed her when she left, while expressing gratitude, too. There was a +difference. She turned the subject, saying: "Of course, she insists on +sending me a new cloak, and keeping the other as a memento. It was +rather badly singed, wasn't it?" + +"It did its work well, and it deserves an honoured home. Do you know +that even as I flung the cloak round her, in the excitement of the +moment I 'sensed,' as my young nephew says, the perfume you use." + +He lifted his hand, conscious that his fingers still carried some of +that delicate perfume which her fingers left there as they lay in his +palm when she greeted him on his entrance. "It was like an incense +from the cloak, as it blanketed the flames. Strange, wasn't it, that +the undersense should be conscious of that little thing, while the +over-sense was adding a sensational postscript to the opera?" + +She smiled in a pleased way. "Do you like the perfume? I really use +very little of it." + +"It's like no other. It starts a kind of cloud of ideas floating. I +don't know how to describe it. I imagine myself--" + +She interrupted, laughing merrily. "My brother says it always makes +him angry, and Ian Stafford calls it 'The Wild Tincture of +Time'--frivolously and sillily says that it comes from a bank whereon +the 'wild thyme' grows! But now, I want to ask you many questions. We +have been mentally dancing, while down beyond the Limpopo--" + +His demeanour instantly changed, and she noted the look cf power and +purpose coming into the rather boyish and good-natured, the rash and +yet determined, face. It was not quite handsome. The features were not +regular, the forehead was perhaps a little too low, and the hair grew +very thick, and would have been a vast mane if it had not been kept +fairly close by his valet. This valet was Krool, a +half-caste--Hottentot and Boer--whom he had rescued from Lobengula in +the Matabele war, and who had in his day been ship-steward, barber, +cook, guide, and native recruiter. Krool had attached himself to Byng, +and he would not be shaken off even when his master came home to +England. + +Looking at her visitor with a new sense of observation alive in her, +Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of +sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, +adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in +the chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and +hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel +suggestion of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in +fact and by suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent +underlying force, a capacity to do huge things when once roused. He +had been roused in his short day. The life into which he had been +thrown with men of vaster ambition and much more selfish ends than his +own, had stirred him to prodigies of activity in those strenuous, +wonderful, electric days when gold and diamonds changed the +hard-bitten, wearied prospector, who had doggedly delved till he had +forced open the hand of the Spirit of the Earth and caught the +treasure that flowed forth, into a millionaire, into a conqueror, with +the world at his feet. He had been of those who, for many a night and +many a year, eating food scarce fit for Kaffirs, had, in poverty and +grim endeavour, seen the sun rise and fall over the Magaliesberg +range, hope alive in the morning and dead at night. He had faced the +devilish storms which swept the high veld with lightning and the +thunderstone, striking men dead as they fled for shelter to the +boulders of some barren, mocking kopje; and he had had the occasional +wild nights of carousal, when the miseries and robberies of life and +time and the ceaseless weariness and hope deferred, were forgotten. + +It was all there in his face--the pioneer endeavour, the reckless +effort, the gambler's anxiety, the self-indulgence, the crude +passions, with a far-off, vague idealism, the selfish outlook, and yet +great breadth of feeling, with narrowness of individual purpose. The +rough life, the sordid struggle, had left their mark, and this easy, +coaxing, comfortable life of London had not covered it up--not yet. He +still belonged to other--and higher--spheres. + +There was a great contrast between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was +handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a +mind which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a +skill of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen +languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human +intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with +him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming +again. The contrast was prodigious--and perplexing, for Rudyard Byng +had qualities which compelled her interest. She sighed as she +reflected. + +"I suppose you can't get three millions all to yourself with your own +hands without missing a good deal and getting a good deal you could do +without," she said to herself, as he wonderingly interjected the +exclamation: + +"Now, what do you know of the Limpopo? I'll venture there isn't +another woman in England who even knows the name." + +"I always had a thirst for travel, and I've read endless books of +travel and adventure," she replied. "I'd have been an explorer, or a +Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man." + +"Can you ride?" he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her +slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and +white. + +"Oh, man of little faith!" she rejoined. "I can't remember when I +didn't ride. First a Shetland pony, and now at last I've reached +Zambesi--such a wicked dear." + +"Zambesi--why Zambesi? One would think you were South African." + +She enjoyed his mystification. Then she grew serious and her eyes +softened. "I had a friend--a girl, older than I. She married. Well, +he's an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son +then, and wild for sport. They went on their honeymoon to shoot in +Africa, and they visited the falls of the Zambesi. She, my friend, was +standing on the edge of the chasm--perhaps you know it--not far from +Livingstone's tree, between the streams. It was October, and the river +was low. She put up her big parasol. A gust of wind suddenly caught +it, and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly +swept into the chasm. A man with them pulled her back in time--but she +hung on to that red parasol. Only when it was all over did she realize +what had really happened. Well, when she came back to England, as a +kind of thank-offering she gave me her father's best hunter. That was +like her, too; she could always make other people generous. He is a +beautiful Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi. I wanted the red +parasol, too, but Alice Tynemouth wouldn't give it to me." + +"So she gave it to the man who pulled her back. Why not?" + +"How do you know she did that?" + +"Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford's chambers. I +conjecture right, do I?" + +Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her +faintly smiling lips; but she only said, "You see he was entitled to +it, wasn't he?" To herself, however, she whispered, "Neither of +them--neither ever told me that." + +At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard +Byng. "If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him. There +is news from South Africa." + +Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened. "No, tell him to come here," she +said to the footman. "Mayn't he?" she asked. + +Byng nodded, and remained standing. He seemed suddenly lost to her +presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, +intense. + +Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided +that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct +personality. Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing +of the nouveau riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, +his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a +school-boy--and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace +building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period +of years. There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, +he did not make enough of his height and bulk; but his eye was strong +and clear, his head was powerful, and his quick smile was very +winning. Yet--yet, he was not the type of man who, to her mind should +have made three millions at thirty-three. It did not seem to her that +he was really representative of the great fortune-builders--she had +her grandfather and others closely in mind. She had seen many captains +of industry and finance in her grandfather's house, men mostly silent, +deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their manner and persons the +accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless aggression and +domination. + +Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions? It +could not be just that alone. She remembered her grandfather used to +say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of +every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew +when to take it, and how to use it. "The lucky man is the man that +sits up watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping"--that +was the way he had put it. So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of +those who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but +not a hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he +was, still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in +England and the prettiest and best-born. He certainly had inherent +breeding. His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be +as distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford--as Ian Stafford, who, +however, had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his +name and might never do so. + +She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to +Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future--ambassador at Paris +or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall--Ian, +gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his +luck and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a +prince of princelier days. Ian gratified every sense in her, met every +demand of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical +instinct, and was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so +hard to wait for luck, for place, for power, for the environment where +she could do great things, could fill that radiant place which her +cynical and melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had +prefigured for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and +he had filled her brain--purposely-- with ambitious ideas. He had done +it when she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he +had overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be +vivid and indelible when he was gone. He had meant to bless, for, to +his mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain +power, "to make the band play when you come," was the true philosophy +of life. And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was +accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection +by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or +admonition. He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had +built the structure of his success. He had made material things the +basis of life's philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly +materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at +the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she +had a passion which was represented by books of biography without +number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her +bedroom and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity--when Lady +Tynemouth brought them to her--she read the newest and most daring +productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the +world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had +remarked to Alice Tynemouth: + +"You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose +the over-coloured thing three times out of five--it used to be more +than that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in +everything. I need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in +everything. I wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being +ruled." + +To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband--not a difficult +thing to find--would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd +choose the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one +time, out of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A +little cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in +colour--and everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no +orientation." + +Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no +doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give +her greater proportion--and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with +three millions behind her--she herself had only the tenth of one +million--she could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, +perfect life where the world would come as to a court, and-- + +Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, +and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from +some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted--her idealistic +self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and +thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! +Why should it be so hard for her? + +She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged +note. + +Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, +was standing in the doorway. + +"Cronje! . . . Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of +smother in the tone. + +Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the +fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a +crushed captive. + +"Where?" Byng asked, huskily. + +"Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated +by Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw +in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition +suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, +somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without +present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a +foe--one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil +influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every +individual life. + +"Doornkop--what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine. "I knew they'd +put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and +they've done it-- Kruger and Joubert. Englishmen aren't slim enough to +be conspirators. Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, +gambling with the Almighty. It's bury me deep now. It's Paul Kruger +licking his chops over the savoury mess. 'Oh, isn't it a pretty dish +to set before the king!' What else, Krool?" + +"Nothing, Baas." + +"Nothing more in the cables?" + +"No, Baas." + +"That will do, Krool. Wait. Go to Mr. Whalen. Say I want him to bring +a stenographer and all the Partners-- he'll understand--to me at ten +to-night." + +"Yes, Baas." + +Krool bowed slowly. As he raised his head his eyes caught those of +Jasmine. For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the +man's eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face. The look +had its revelation which neither ever forgot. A quiver of fear passed +through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a +hardening of her will, as against some possible danger. + +As Krool left the room he said to himself: "The Baas speaks her for +his vrouw. But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal--p'r'aps." + +Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of +the Rooinek--of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his +fingers again with a malignant cruelty. + +Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that +old ironic humour which was always part of him: "'Fee, fo, fi, fum, I +smell the blood of an Englishman.'" + +Her face contracted with pain. "They will take Dr. Jim's life?" she +asked, solemnly. + +"It's hard to tell. It isn't him alone. There's lots of others that we +both know." + +"Yes, yes, of course. It's terrible, terrible," she whispered. + +"It's more terrible than it looks, even now. It's a black day for +England. She doesn't know yet how black it is. I see it, though; I see +it. It's as plain as an open book. Well, there's work to do, and I +must be about it. I'm off to the Colonial Office. No time to +lose. It's a job that has no eight-hours shift." + +Now the real man was alive. He was transformed. The face was set and +quiet. He looked concentrated will and power as he stood with his +hands clasped behind him, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes alight +with fire and determination. To herself Jasmine seemed to be moving in +the centre of great events, having her fingers upon the levers which +work behind the scenes of the world's vast schemes, standing by the +secret machinery of government. + +"How I wish I could help you," she said, softly, coming nearer to him, +a warm light in her liquid blue eyes, her exquisite face flushing with +excitement, her hands clasped in front of her. + +As Byng looked at her, it seemed to him that sweet honesty and +high-heartedness had never had so fine a setting; that never had there +been in the world such an epitome of talent, beauty and sincerity. He +had suddenly capitulated, he who had ridden unscathed so long. If he +had dared he would have taken her in his arms there and then; but he +had known her only for a day. He had been always told that a woman +must be wooed and won, and to woo took time. It was not a task he +understood, but suddenly it came to him that he was prepared to do it; +that he must be patient and watch and serve, and, as he used to do, +perhaps, be elate in the morning and depressed at night, till the day +of triumph came and his luck was made manifest. + +"But you can help me, yes, you can help me as no one else can," he +said almost hoarsely, and his hands moved a little towards her. + +"You must show me how," she said, scarce above a whisper, and she drew +back slightly, for this look in his eyes told its own story. + +"When may I come again?" he asked. + +"I want so much to hear everything about South Africa. Won't you come +to-morrow at six?" she asked. + +"Certainly, to-morrow at six," he answered, eagerly, "and thank you." + +His honest look of admiration enveloped her as her hand was again lost +in his strong, generous palm, and lay there for a moment thrilling +him.... He turned at the door and looked back, and the smile she gave +seemed the most delightful thing he had ever seen. + +"She is a flower, a jasmine-flower," he said, happily, as he made his +way into the street. + +When he had gone she fled to her bedroom. Standing before the mirror, +she looked at herself long, laughing feverishly. Then suddenly she +turned and threw herself upon the bed, bursting into a passion of +tears. Sobs shook her. + +"Oh, Ian," she said, raisig her head at last, "oh, Ian, Ian, I hate +myself!" + +Down in the library her stepmother was saying to her father, "You are +right, Jasmine will marry the nabob." + +"I am sorry for Ian Stafford," was the response. + +"Men get over such things," came the quietly cynical reply. + +"Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She +has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never +had--the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and--" + +He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his +child. + +"Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply. + +"I wish--Nelly, I do wish that--" + +"Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any +use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone--as her +grandfather did." + +"God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman--" + +Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from +her grandfather's nature was a perilous gift. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PARTNERS MEET + + +England was more stunned than shocked. The dark significance, the evil +consequences destined to flow from the Jameson Raid had not yet +reached the general mind. There was something gallant and romantic in +this wild invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and +insufficient clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the +merest flurry of battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with +Fate--challenging a republic of fighting men with well-stocked +arsenals and capable artillery, with ample sources of supply, with +command of railways and communications. It was certainly magnificent; +but it was magnificent folly. + +It did not take England long to decide that point; and not even the +Laureate's paean in the organ of the aristocracy and upper middle +class could evoke any outburst of feeling. There was plenty of +admiration for the pluck and boldness, for the careless indifference +with which the raiders risked their lives; for the romantic side of +the dash from Pitsani to the Rand; but the thing was so palpably +impossible, as it was carried out, that there was not a knowing mind +in the Islands which would not have echoed Rhodes' words, "Jameson has +upset the apple-cart." + +Rudyard Byng did not visit Jasmine the next evening at six +o'clock. His world was all in chaos, and he had not closed his eyes to +sleep since he had left her. At ten o'clock at night, as he had +arranged, "The Partners" and himself met at his chambers, around which +had gathered a crowd of reporters and curious idlers; and from that +time till the grey dawn he and they had sat in conference. He had +spent two hours at the Colonial Office after he left Jasmine, and now +all night he kneaded the dough of a new policy with his companions in +finance and misfortune. + +There was Wallstein, the fairest, ablest, and richest financier of +them all, with a marvellous head for figures and invaluable and +commanding at the council-board, by virtue of his clear brain and his +power to co-ordinate all the elements of the most confusing financial +problems. Others had by luck and persistence made money--the basis of +their fortunes; but Wallstein had showed them how to save those +fortunes and make them grow; had enabled them to compete successfully +with the games of other great financiers in the world's +stock-markets. Wallstein was short and stout, with a big blue eye and +an unwrinkled forehead; prematurely aged from lack of exercise and the +exciting air of the high veld; from planning and scheming while others +slept; from an inherent physical weakness due to the fact that he was +one of twin sons, to his brother being given great physical strength, +to himself a powerful brain for finance and a frail if ample +body. Wallstein knew little and cared less about politics; yet he saw +the use of politics in finance, and he did not stick his head into the +sand as some of his colleagues did when political activities hampered +their operations. In Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle +with Oom Paul, not from lack of will, but because he had no stomach +for daily intrigue and guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; +and he was convinced that only a great and bloody struggle would end +the contest for progress and equal rights for all white men on the +Rand. His inquiries had been bent towards so disposing the financial +operations, so bulwarking the mining industry by sagacious designs, +that, when the worst came, they all would be able to weather the +storm. He had done his work better than his colleagues knew, or indeed +even himself knew. + +Probably only Fleming the Scotsman--another of the Partners--with a +somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which +compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so +cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how +extraordinary Wallstein's work had been--only Fleming, and Rudyard +Byng, who knew better than any and all. + +There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the +Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein +and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to +Rhodes, being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a +master of commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the +days when he trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had +made his first ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made +en route to Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle +of compound multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again +he had a collateral interest in the commissariat. + +Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an +indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a +few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of +the moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year +or in that, for this thing or for that--cheques written very often on +the backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the +fly-leaf of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so +stirred by half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of +his vain slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, +caring little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he +once wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of +his henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday. + +So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel +came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead +financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the +conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that +one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty +thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a +purpose in which it was expedient their own hands should not +appear. They felt confident that a man who could so carefully and +secretly build up his own fortune had a gift which could be used to +advantage. A man who could be so subterranean in his own affairs would +no doubt be equally secluded in their business. Selfishness would make +him silent. And so it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, +the factotum, who in his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he +brushed his own, after the Kaffir servant had messed them about, came +to be a millionaire and one of the Partners. For him South Africa had +no charms. He was happy in London, or at his country-seat in +Leicestershire, where he followed the hounds with a temerity which was +at base vanity; where he gave the county the best food to be got +outside St. Petersburg or Paris; where his so-called bachelor +establishment was cared for by a coarse, gray-haired housekeeper who, +the initiated said, was De Lancy's South African wife, with a rooted +objection to being a lady or "moving in social circles"; whose +pleasure lay in managing this big household under De Lancy's +guidance. There were those who said they had seen her brush a speck of +dust from De Lancy's coat-collar, as she emerged from her morning +interview with him; and others who said they had seen her hidden in +the shrubbery listening to the rather flaccid conversation of her +splendid poodle of a master. + +There were others who had climbed to success in their own way, some by +happy accident, some by a force which disregarded anything in their +way, and some by sheer honest rough merit, through which the soul of +the true pioneer shone. + +There was also Barry Whalen, who had been educated as a doctor, and, +with a rare Irish sense of adaptability and amazing Celtic cleverness, +had also become a mining engineer, in the days when the Transvaal was +emerging from its pioneer obscurity into the golden light of mining +prosperity. Abrupt, obstinately honest, and sincere; always protesting +against this and against that, always the critic of authority, whether +the authority was friend or foe; always smothering his own views in +the moment when the test of loyalty came; always with a voice like a +young bull and a heart which would have suited a Goliath, there was no +one but trusted Barry, none that had not hurried to him in a +difficulty; not because he was so wise, but because he was so true. He +would never have made money, in spite of the fact that his prescience, +his mining sense, his diagnosis of the case of a mine, as Byng called +it, had been a great source of wealth to others, had it not been for +Wallstein and Byng. + +Wallstein had in him a curious gentleness and human sympathy, little +in keeping with the view held of him by that section of the British +press which would willingly have seen England at the mercy of Paul +Kruger--for England's good, for her soul's welfare as it were, for her +needed chastisement. He was spoken of as a cruel, tyrannical, greedy +German Jew, whose soul was in his own pocket and his hand in the +pockets of the world. In truth he was none of these things, save that +he was of German birth, and of as good and honest German origin as +George of Hanover and his descendants, if not so +distinguished. Wallstein's eye was an eye of kindness, save in the +vision of business; then it saw without emotion to the advantage of +the country where he had made his money, and to the perpetual +advantage of England, to whom he gave an honourable and philanthropic +citizenship. His charities were not of the spectacular kind; but many +a poor and worthy, and often unworthy, unfortunate was sheltered +through bad days and heavy weather of life by the immediate personal +care of "the Jew Mining Magnate, who didn't care a damn what happened +to England so long as his own nest was well lined!" + +It was Wallstein who took heed of the fact that, as he became rich, +Barry Whalen remained poor; and it was he who took note that Barry had +a daughter who might any day be left penniless with frail health and +no protector; and taking heed and note, it was he made all the +Partners unite in taking some financial risks and responsibilities for +Barry, when two new mines were opened--to Barry's large profit. It was +characteristic of Barry, however, that, if they had not disguised +their action by financial devices, and by making him a Partner, +because he was needed professionally and intellectually and for other +business reasons, nicely phrased to please his Celtic vanity, he would +have rejected the means to the fortune which came to him. It was a far +smaller fortune than any of the others had; but it was sufficient for +him and for his child. So it was that Barry became one of the +Partners, and said things that every one else would hesitate to say, +but were glad to hear said. + +Others of the group were of varying degrees of ability and interest +and importance. One or two were poltroons in body and mind, with only +a real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive +individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, +whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose +small part in this veracious tale belongs elsewhere. + +Each had his place, and all were influenced by the great schemes of +Rhodes and their reflection in the purposes and actions of +Wallstein. Wallstein was inspired by the dreams and daring purposes of +Empire which had driven Rhodes from Table Mountain to the kraal of +Lobengula and far beyond; until, at last, the flag he had learned to +love had been triumphantly trailed from the Cape to Cairo. + +Now in the great crisis, Wallstein, of them all, was the most +self-possessed, save Rudyard Byng. Some of the others were +paralyzed. They could only whine out execrations on the man who had +dared something; who, if he had succeeded, would have been hailed as +the great leader of a Revolution, not the scorned and humiliated +captain of a filibustering expedition. A triumphant rebellion or raid +is always a revolution in the archives of a nation. These men were of +a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be +kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of +their backs. Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their +denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their +side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any +rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the +Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were +so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time +to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their +hearts were the disappearing factors. + +At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the +two sections who represented the more extreme views and the +unpolitical minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who +were not cleverer financially than their friends, but who had +political sense and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more +concerned, at this dark moment, for the political and national +consequences of the Raid, than for the certain set-back to the mining +and financial enterprises of the Rand. A few of the richest of them +were the most hopeless politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle +for an extra dividend of a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost +souls, ready to bow the knee to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, +undemocratic, and corrupt government, if only the dividends moved on +and up. + +Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural +political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his +pocket. He had a passionate love for the land--for England--which had +given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good +name. So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the +sordid deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and +manly appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but +have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and +discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his +death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage +at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from +the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched the +tide flow in and out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three +days' trip to the sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling +down, and one day in packing up again." + +Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took +the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow +from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen +to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and +Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South +Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst +happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw-- + + + + . . . The dull dank morn stare in, + Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes. + + +A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England. + +"I will go. I must go," remarked Byng at last, though there was a +strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of +Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his +duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and +that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had +been in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him +the most vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some +regard and much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at +all. + +"I will go," Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard +faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet +their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How +many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions +were not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companionship and +champagne--or something less expensive. + +As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a +dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his +dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile +face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean +hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death +passing the hemlock-brew. + +At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their +conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear +nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being +Byng's servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and +particularly now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and +apparently frank of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but +without avail; and now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful +determination. He knew that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was +sitting opposite the double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes +light up. Instantly, however, that light vanished. They all might have +been wooden men, and Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and +concentrated were his actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some +of them shrank a little as he leaned over and poured the brown, +steaming liquid and the hot milk into the bowls. Only once did the +factotum look at anybody directly, and that was at Byng just as he was +about to leave the room. Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly +at his master's face in a mirror, and again that baleful light leaped +up in his eyes. + +When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: "Byng, it's +all damn foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, +'specially now." + +"Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?" Byug asked with +a contemptuous little laugh. "Sugar--what?" He pushed the great bowl +of sugar over the polished table towards Barry. + +"Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but--" + +"But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on +one another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east +wind blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're +living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, +because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious +beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, +Barry." + +"We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the shore," +was the moody and nervously indignant reply. + +"Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too--with me." + +Barry Whalen persisted. "We're in for complications, Byng. England has +to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any +spies. He's more Boer than native." + +"There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our +mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm +not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside +will sell us perhaps--as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one +inside." + +There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his +fellows furtively. + +"We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we +need not fear any spying," continued Byng. + +"If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, +it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to +prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are +justfiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's +necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my +cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand --if +I can." + +There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one +said: + +"You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to +Johannesburg?" + +"I didn't say anything about wanting to go. I said I'd go because one +of us--or two of us--ought to go. There's plenty to do here; but if I +can be any more use out there, why, Wallstein can stay here, and--" + +He got no further, for Wallstein, to whom he had just referred, and +who had been sitting strangely impassive, with his eyes approvingly +fixed on Byng, half rose from his chair and fell forward, his thick, +white hands sprawling on the mahogany table, his fat, pale face +striking the polished wood with a thud. In an instant they were all on +their feet and at his side. + +Barry Whalen lifted up his head and drew him back into the chair, then +three of them lifted him upon a sofa. Barry's hand felt the breast of +the prostrate figure, and Byng's fingers sought his wrist. For a +moment there was a dreadful silence, and then Byng and Whalen looked +at each other and nodded. + +"Brandy!" said Byng, peremptorily. + +"He's not dead?" whispered some one. + +"Brandy--quick," urged Byng, and, lifting up the head a little, he +presently caught the glass from Whalen's hand and poured some brandy +slowly between the bluish lips. "Some one ring for Krool," he added. + +A moment later Krool entered. " The doctor--my doctor and his own--and +a couple of nurses," Byng said, sharply, and Krool nodded and +vanished. "Perhaps it's only a slight heart-attack, but it's best to +be on the safe side." + +"Anyhow, it shows that Wallstein needs to let up for a while," +whispered Fleming. + +"It means that some one must do Wallstein's work here," said Barry +Whalen. "It means that Byng stays in London," he added, as Krool +entered the room again with a rug to cover Wallstein. + +Barry saw Krool's eyes droop before his words, and he was sure that +the servant had reasons for wishing his master to go to South +Africa. The others present, however, only saw a silent, magically +adept figure stooping over the sick man, adjusting the body to greater +ease, arranging skilfully the cushion under the head, loosening and +removing the collar and the boots, and taking possession of the room, +as though he himself were the doctor; while Byng looked on with +satisfaction. + +"Useful person, eh?" he said, meaningly, in an undertone to Barry +Whalen. + +"I don't think he's at home in England," rejoined Barry, as meaningly +and very stubbornly: "He won't like your not going to South Africa." + +"Am I not going to South Africa?" Byng asked, mechanically, and +looking reflectively at Krool. + +"Wallstein's a sick man, Byng. You can't leave London. You're the only +real politician among us. Some one else must go to Johannesburg." + +"You--Barry?" + +"You know I can't, Byng--there's my girl. Besides, I don't carry +enough weight, anyhow, and you know that too." + +Byng remembered Whalen's girl--stricken down with consumption a few +months before. He caught Whalen's arm in a grip of friendship. "All +right, dear old man," he said, kindly. "Fleming shall go, and I'll +stay. Yes, I'll stay here, and do Wallstein's work." + +He was still mechanically watching Krool attend to the sick man, and +he was suddenly conscious of an arrest of all motion in the +half-caste's lithe frame. Then Krool turned, and their eyes met. Had +he drawn Krool's eyes to his--the master-mind influencing the +subservient intelligence? + +"Krool wants to go to South Africa," he said to himself with a +strange, new sensation which he did not understand, though it was not +quite a doubt. He reassured himself. "Well, it's natural he +should. It's his home.... But Fleming must go to Johannesburg. I'm +needed most here." + +There was gratitude in his heart that Fate had decreed it so. He was +conscious of the perfume from Jasmine's cloak searching his senses, +even in this hour when these things that mattered--the things of +Fate--were so enormously awry. + + + +CHAPTER V + +A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY + + +Soon he will speak you. Wait here, madame." + +Krool passed almost stealthily out. + +Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat +incongruous furnishing--leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins +from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape +Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical +subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the +walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little +roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the +incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was +expressive of tastes and habits not yet settled and consistent. + +Al'mah's eyes had taken it all in rather wistfully, while she had +waited for Krool's return from his master; but the wistfulness was due +to personal trouble, for her eyes were clouded and her motions +languid. But when she saw the banjo, the cornet, and the +roulette-table, a deep little laugh rose to her full red lips. + +"How like a subaltern, or a colonial civil servant!" she said to +herself. + +She reflected a moment, then pursued the thought further: "But there +must be bigness in him, as well as presence of mind and depth of +heart--yes, I'm sure his nature is deep." + +She remembered the quick, protecting hands which had wrapped her round +with Jasmine Grenfel's cloak, and the great arms in which she had +rested, the danger over. + +"There can't be much wrong with a nature like his, though Adrian hates +him so. But, of course, Adrian would. Besides, Adrian will never get +over the drop in the mining-stock which ruined him--Rudyard Byng's +mine.... It's natural for Adrian to hate him, I suppose," she added +with a heavy sigh. + +Mentally she took to comparing this room with Adrian Fellowes' +sitting-room overlooking the Thames Embankment, where everything was +in perfect taste and order, where all was modulated, harmonious, +soigne and artistic. Yet, somehow, the handsome chambers which hung +over the muddy river with its wonderful lights and shades, its mists +and radiance, its ghostly softness and greyness, lacked in something +that roused imagination, that stirred her senses here--the vital being +in her. + +It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She +knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, +art, hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with +the solid achievement of talent and force in the business of +life. Here was a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the +stamps working in the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of +the Kaffir compound at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind +the wire boundaries. + +Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to +the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and +creative Deity--if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on +her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there +was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which +encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity +could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, +like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities +swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal +wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its +thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague +which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or +devastated by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful +breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived +of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their +all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the +poorhouse in the end--ah, if one did not smile, one would die of +weeping, she thought. + +Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of +sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an +open hand for the poor and miserable,--now that she could afford +it--and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her +humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was +sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and +Adrian was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not +to Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph +at Covent Garden--why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a +hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome +face which had told her then of the completeness of her triumph. + +The half-caste valet entered again. "Here come, madame," he said with +something very near a smile; for he liked this woman, and his dark, +sensual soul would have approved of his master liking her. + +"Soon the Baas, madame," he said as he placed a chair for her, and +with the gliding footstep of a native left the room. + +"Sunny creature!" she remarked aloud, with a little laugh, and looked +round. Instantly her face lighted with interest. Here was nothing of +that admired disorder, that medley of incongruous things which marked +the room she had just left; but perfect order, precision, and balance +of arrangement, the most peaceful equipoise. There was a great carved +oak-table near to sun-lit windows, and on it were little regiments of +things, carefully arranged--baskets with papers in elastic bands; +classified and inscribed reference-books, scales, clips, pencils; and +in one clear space, with a bunch of violets before it, the photograph +of a woman in a splendid silver frame--a woman of seventy or so, +obviously Rudyard Byng's mother. + +Al'mah's eyes softened. Here was insight into a nature of which the +world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of +disciplined hours and careful hands--cabinets with initialed drawers, +shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing +moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their +actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive +influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn +quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the +inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life. Her eyes +travelled on with the gratified reflection that she had been admitted +here. Above the books were rows of sketches--rows of sketches! + +Suddenly, as her eyes rested on them, she turned pale and got to her +feet. They were all sketches of the veld, high and low; of natives; of +bits of Dutch architecture; of the stoep with its Boer farmer and his +vrouw; of a kopje with a dozen horses or a herd of cattle grazing; of +a spruit, or a Kaffir's kraal; of oxen leaning against the disselboom +of a cape-wagon; of a herd of steinboks, or a little colony of +meerkats in the karoo. + +Her hand went to her heart with a gesture of pain, and a little cry of +misery escaped her lips. + +Now there was a quick footstep, and Byng entered with a cordial smile +and an outstretched hand. + +"Well, this is a friendly way to begin the New Year," he said, +cheerily, taking her hand. "You certainly are none the worse for our +little unrehearsed drama the other night. I see by the papers that you +have been repeating your triumph. Please sit down. Do you mind my +having a little toast while we talk? I always have my petit dejeuner +here; and I'm late this morning." + +"You look very tired," she said as she sat down. + +Krool here entered with a tray, placing it on a small table by the big +desk. He was about to pour out the tea, but Byng waved him away. + +"Send this note at once by hand," he said, handing him an envelope. It +was addressed to Jasmine Grenfel. + +"Yes, I'm tired--rather," he added to his guest with a sudden +weariness of manner. "I've had no sleep for three nights--working all +the time, every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn't feed +you, one needs plenty of sleep. You can't play with yourself here as +you can on the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will +do. On-saddle and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a +little sleep; and the air does the rest. It has been a worrying time." + +"The Jameson Raid--and all the rest?" + +"Particularly all the rest. I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and +the others. England will demand--so I understand," he added with a +careful look at her, as though he had said too much--"the right to try +Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but +it's different with the Jo'burgers. They will be arrested--" + +"They have been arrested," she intervened. + +"Oh, is it announced?" he asked without surprise. + +"It was placarded an hour ago," she replied, heavily. + +"Well, I fancied it would be," he remarked. "They'll have a close +squeak. The sympathy of the world is with Kruger--so far." + +"That is what I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and +shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls. + +"What you have come about?" he said, putting down his cup of tea and +looking at her intently." How are you concerned? Where do you come +in?" + +"There is a man--he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, +Phillips, Hammond, and the rest--" + +"Oh, that's bad! A relative, or--" + +"Not a relative, exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she +went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches. + +"How did you come by these?" she asked. + +"Blantyre's sketches? Well, it's all I ever got for all Blantyre owed +me, and they're not bad. They're lifted out of the life. That's why I +bought them. Also because I liked to think I got something out of +Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn't. He could paint a bit-- +don't you think so?" + +"He could paint a bit--always," she replied. + +A silence followed. Her back was turned to him, her face was towards +the pictures. + +Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the +tone. "Are you interested in Blantyre?" he asked, cautiously. Getting +up, he came over to her. + +"He has been arrested--as I said--with the others." + +"No, you did not say so. So they let Blantyre into the game, did +they?" he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had +said, he added: "Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest +in Blantyre?" + +She looked at him straight in the eyes. For a face naturally so full +of humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now. + +"Yes, I will tell you as much as I can--enough for you to understand," +she answered. + +He drew up a chair to the fire, and she sat down. He nodded at her +encouragingly. Presently she spoke. + +"Well, at twenty-one I was studying hard, and he was painting--" + +"Blantyre?" + +She inclined her head. "He was full of dreams--beautiful, I thought +them; and he was ambitious. Also he could talk quite marvellously." + +"Yes, Blantyre could talk--once," Byng intervened, gently. + +"We were married secretly." + +Byng made a gesture of amazement, and his face became shocked and +grave. "Married! Married! You were married to Blantyre?" + +"At a registry office in Chelsea. One month, only one month it was, +and then he went away to Madeira to paint--'a big commission,' he +said; and he would send for me as soon as he could get money in +hand--certainly in a couple of months. He had taken most of my +half-year's income--I had been left four hundred a year by my mother." + +Byng muttered a malediction under his breath and leaned towards her +sympathetically. + +With an effort she continued. "From Madeira he wrote to tel1 me he was +going on to South Africa, and would not be home for a year. From South +Africa he wrote saying he was not coming back; that I could divorce +him if I liked. The proof, he said, would be easy; or I needn't +divorce him unless I liked, since no one knew we were married." + +For an instant there was absolute silence, and she sat with her +fingers pressed tight to her eyes. At last she went on, her face +turned away from the great kindly blue eyes bent upon her, from the +face flushed with honourable human sympathy. + +"I went into the country, where I stayed for nearly three years, +till--till I could bear it no longer; and then I began to study and +sing again." + +"What were you doing in the country?" he asked in a low voice. + +"There was my baby," she replied, her hands clasping and unclasping in +pain. "There was my little Nydia." + +"A child--she is living?" he asked gently. + +"No, she died two years ago," was the answer in a voice which tried to +be firm. + +"Does Blantyre know?" + +"He knew she was born, nothing more." + +"We were married secretly." + +"And after all he has done, and left undone, you want to try and save +him now?" + +He was thinking that she still loved the man. "That offscouring!" he +said to himself. "Well, women beat all! He treats her like a +Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the +hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women--always +women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants +him back!" + +She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind. Rising, with a +bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment +in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: + +"You think it is love for him that prompts me now?" Her eyes blazed, +but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously +pulled at the tails of her sable muff. "You are wrong--absolutely. I +would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch +me. Oh, I know what his life must have been--the life of him that you +know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of +Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating +husks with the swine. I realize him now. He was easily susceptible to +good and evil, to the clean and the unclean; and he might have been +kept in order by some one who would give a life to building up his +character; but his nature was rickety, and he has gone down and not +up." + +"Then why try to save him? Let Oom Paul have him. He'll do no more +harm, if--" + +"Wait a minute," she urged. "You are a great man"--she came close to +him--"and you ought to understand what I mean, without my saying it. I +want to save him for his own sake, not for mine--to give him a +chance. While there's life there's hope. To go as he is, with the mud +up to his lips--ah, can't you see! He is the father of my dead +child. I like to feel that he may make some thing of his life and of +himself yet. That's why I haven't tried to divorce him, and--" + +"If you ever want to do so--" he interrupted, meaningly. + +"Yes, I know. I have always been sure that nothing could be quite so +easy; but I waited, on the chance of something getting hold of him +which would lift him out of himself, give him something to think of so +much greater than himself, some cause, perhaps--" + +"He had you and your unborn child," he intervened. + +"Me--!" She laughed bitterly. "I don't think men would ever be better +because of me. I've never seen that. I've seen them show the worst of +human nature because of me--and it wasn't inspiring. I've not met many +men who weren't on the low levels." + +"He hasn't stood his trial for the Johannesburg conspiracy yet. How do +you propose to help him? He is in real danger of his life." + +She laughed coldly, and looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "You +ask that, you who know that in the armory of life there's one +all-powerful weapon?" + +He nodded his head whimsically. "Money? Well, whatever other weapons +you have, you must have that, I admit. And in the Transvaal--" + +"Then here," she said, handing him an envelope--"here is what may +help." + +He took it hesitatingly. "I warn you," he remarked, "that if money is +to be used at all, it must be a great deal. Kruger will put up the +price to the full capacity of the victim." + +"I suppose this victim has nothing," she ventured, quietly. + +"Nothing but what the others give him, I should think. It may be a +very costly business, even if it is possible, and you--" + +"I have twenty thousand pounds," she said. + +"Earned by your voice?" he asked, kindly. + +"Every penny of it." + +"Well, I wouldn't waste it on Blantyre, if I were you. No, by Heaven, +you shall not do it, even if it can be done! It is too horrible." + +"I owe it to myself to do it. After all, he is still my husband. I +have let it be so; and while it is so, and while"--her eyes looked +away, her face suffused slightly, her lips tightened--"while things +are as they are, I am bound--bound by something, I don't know what, +but it is not love, and it is not friendship--to come to his +rescue. There will be legal expenses--" + +Byng frowned. "Yes, but the others wouldn't see him in a hole--yet I'm +not sure, either, Blantyre being Blantyre. In any case, I'm ready to +do anything you wish." + +She smiled gratefully. "Did you ever know any one to do a favor who +wasn't asked to repeat it--paying one debt by contracting another, +finding a creditor who will trust, and trading on his trust? Yet I'd +rather owe you two debts than most men one." She held out her hand to +him. "Well, it doesn't do to mope--'The merry heart goes all the day, +the sad one tires in a mile-a.' And I am out for all day. Please wish +me a happy new year." + +He took her hand in both of his. "I wish you to go through this year +as you ended the last--in a blaze of glory." + +"Yes, really a blaze if not of glory," she said, with bright tears, +yet laughing, too, a big warm humour shining in her strong face with +the dark brown eyes and the thick, heavy eyebrows under a low, broad +forehead like his own. They were indeed strangely alike in many ways +both of mind and body. + +"They say we end the year as we begin it," he said, cheerily. "You +proved to Destiny that you were entitled to all she could give in the +old year, and you shall have the best that's to be had in 1897. You +are a woman in a million, and--" + +"May I come and breakfast with you some morning?" she asked, gaily. + +"Well, if ever I'm thought worthy of that honour, don't hesitate. As +the Spanish say, It is all yours." He waved a hand to the +surroundings. + +"No, it is all yours," she said, reflectively, her eyes slowly roaming +about her. "It is all you. I'm glad to have been here, to be as near +as this to your real life. Real life is so comforting after the mock +kind so many of us live; which singers and actors live anyhow." + +She looked round the room again. "I feel--I don't know why it is, but +I feel that when I'm in trouble I shall always want to come to this +room. Yes, and I will surely come; for I know there's much trouble in +store for me. You must let me come. You are the only man I would go to +like this, and you can't think what it means to me--to feel that I'm +not misunderstood, and that it seems absolutely right to come. That's +because any woman could trust you--as I do. Good-bye." + +In another moment she had gone, and he stood beside the table with the +envelope she had left with him. Presently he opened it, and unfolded +the cheque which was in it. Then he gave an exclamation of +astonishment. + +"Seven thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "That's a better estimate of +Krugerism than I thought she had. It'll take much more than that, +though, if it's done at all; but she certainly has sense. It's seven +thousand times too much for Blantyre," he added, with an exclamation +of disgust. "Blantyre--that outsider!" Then he fell to thinking of all +she had told him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" he said aloud. "But she must +not come here, just the same. She doesn't see that it's not the thing, +just because she thinks I'm a Sir Galahad--me!" He glanced at the +picture of his mother, and nodded toward it tenderly. "So did she +always. I might have turned Kurd and robbed caravans, or become a Turk +and kept concubines, and she'd never have seen that it was so. But +Al'mah mustn't come here any more, for her own sake.... I'd find it +hard to explain if ever, by any chance--" + +He fell to thinking of Jasmine, and looked at the clock. It was only +ten, and he would not see Jasmine till six; but if he had gone to +South Africa he would not have seen her at all! Fate and Wallstein had +been kind. + +Presently, as he went to the hall to put on his coat and hat to go +out, he met Barry Whalen. Barry looked at him curiously; then, as +though satisfied, he said: "Early morning visitor, eh? I just met her +coming away. Card of thanks for kind services au theatre, eh?" + +"Well, it isn't any business of yours what it is, Barry," came the +reply in tones which congealed. + +"No, perhaps not," answered his visitor, testily, for he had had a +night of much excitement, and, after all, this was no way to speak to +a friend, to a partner who had followed his lead always. Friendship +should be allowed some latitude, and he had said hundreds of things +less carefully to Byng in the past. The past--he was suddenly +conscious that Byng had changed within the past few days, and that he +seemed to have put restraint on himself. Well, he would get back at +him just the same for the snub. + +"It's none of my business," he retorted, "but it's a good deal of +Adrian Fellowes' business--" + +"What is a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business?" + +"Al'mah coming to your rooms. Fellowes is her man. Going to marry her, +I suppose," he added, cynically. + +Byng's jaw set and his eyes became cold. "Still, I'd suggest your +minding your own business, Barry. Your tongue will get you into +trouble some day.... You've seen Wallstein this morning--and Fleming?" + +Barry replied sullenly, and the day's pressing work began, with the +wires busy under the seas. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE + + +At a few moments before six o'clock Byng was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room. As he entered, the man who sat at the end of the front +row of stalls the first night of "Manassa" rose to his feet. It was +Adrian Fellowes, slim, well groomed, with the colour of an apple in +his cheeks, and his gold-brown hair waving harmoniously over his +unintellectual head. + +"But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I've ever known," Jasmine +was saying as Byng entered. + +Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she +pretended not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that +Byng heard them as he came forward. + +"Well, he is selfish," she added to Byng, as she shook hands. "I've +known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of +everything and given nothing for it." Turning again to Fellowes, she +continued: "Yes, it's true. The golden apples just fall into your +hands." + +"Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation," +Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an +enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room. + +"Such a boy--Adrian," Jasmine said, as they sat down. + +"Boy--he looks thirty or more!" remarked Byng in a dry tone. + +"He is just thirty. I call him a boy because he is so young in most +things that matter to people. He is the most sumptuous +person--entirely a luxury. Did you ever see such colouring--like a +woman's! But selfish, as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian. Yes, he +really is very useful. He would be a private secretary beyond price to +any one who needed such an article. He has tact--as you saw--and would +make a wonderful master of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the +household and equerry and lord-chamberlain in one. There, if ever you +want such a person, or if--" + +She paused. As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast +between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's +clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who +knew their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The +result was a looseness and carelessness of good things--giving him, in +a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little +crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had +touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with +the square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not +common. + +"Certainly," he intervened, smiling indulgently; "if ever I want a +comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I'll remember +'Adrian.' In these days one can never tell. There's the Sahara. It +hasn't been exploited yet. It has no emperor." + +"I like you in this mood," she said, eagerly. "You seem on the surface +so tremendously practical and sensible. You frighten me a little, and +I like to hear you touch things off with raillery. But, seriously, if +you can ever put anything in that boy's way, please do so. He has had +bad luck--in your own Rand mine. He lost nearly everything in that, +speculating, and--" + +Byng's face grew serious again. "But he shouldn't have speculated; he +should have invested. It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth +to speculate. But I will remember him, if you say so. I don't like to +think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine. I'll keep him +in mind. Make him one of my secretaries perhaps." + +Then Barry Whalen's gossip suddenly came to his mind, and he added: +"Fellowes will want to get married some day. That face and manner will +lead him into ways from which there's only one outlet." + +"Matrimony?" She laughed. "Oh dear, no, Adrian is much too selfish to +marry." + +"I thought that selfishness was one of the elements of successful +marriages. I've been told so." + +A curious look stole into her eyes. All at once she wondered if his +words had any hidden meaning, and she felt angrily self-conscious; but +she instantly put the reflection away, for if ever any man travelled +by the straight Roman road of speech and thought, it was he. He had +only been dealing in somewhat obvious worldly wisdom. + +"You ought not to give encouragement to such ideas by repeating them," +she rejoined with raillery. "This is an age of telepathy and +suggestion, and the more silent we are the safer we are. Now, please, +tell me everything--of the inside, I mean--about Cecil Rhodes and the +Raiders. Is Rhodes overwhelmed? And Mr. Chamberlain--you have seen +him? The papers say you have spent many hours at the Colonial +Office. I suppose you were with him at six o'clock last evening, +instead of being here with me, as you promised." + +He shook his head. "Rhodes? The bigger a man is the greater the crash +when he falls; and no big man falls alone." + +She nodded. "There's the sense of power, too, which made everything +vibrate with energy, which gave a sense of great empty places +filled--of that power withdrawn and collapsed. Even the bad great man +gone leaves a sense of desolation behind. Power--power, that is the +thing of all," she said, her eyes shining and her small fingers +interlacing with eager vitality: "power to set waves of influence in +motion which stir the waters on distant shores. That seems to me the +most wonderful thing." + +Her vitality, her own sense of power, seemed almost incongruous. She +was so delicately made, so much the dresden-china shepherdess, that +intensity seemed out of relation to her nature. Yet the tiny hands +playing before her with natural gestures like those of a child had, +too, a decision and a firmness in keeping with the perfectly modelled +head and the courageous poise of the body. There was something regnant +in her, while, too, there was something sumptuous and sensuous and +physically thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an +exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla +fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no +jewelry whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and +waved like gossamer in the sun. + +"Well, I don't know," he rejoined, admiration unbounded in his eyes +for the picture she was of maidenly charm and womanly beauty, "I +should say that goodness was a more wonderful thing. But power is the +most common ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions +get it in any large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first +heard the stamps pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You +never heard that sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air +reverberates greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives +a sense of power--power that crushes--as the stamps of a great mine +pounding away night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it +seems to you that some unearthly power is hammering the world into +shape. You get up and go to the window and look out into the +night. There's the deep blue sky--blue like nothing you ever saw in +any other sky, and the stars so bright and big, and so near, that you +feel you could reach up and pluck one with your hand; and just over +the little hill are the lights of the stamp-mills, the smoke and the +mad red flare, the roar of great hammers as they crush, crush, crush; +while the vibration of the earth makes you feel that you are living in +a world of Titans." + +"And when it all stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the +stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and +desolate--and frightening?" + +"It is anything you like. If all the mills all at once, with the +thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the +smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more +ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of +peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir +of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they +would dwindle too." + +"If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease--?" + +He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't +want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of +emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly. + +She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging +them afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that +Cecil Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly--I mean +your practical interests?" + +He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this +distance. One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything +may happen." + +She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At +last she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke. + +"I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much +to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you +have a political mind--the statesman's intelligence, the Times +said. That letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of +Commerce dinner--" + +She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence +for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not +myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein +was taken ill suddenly. So I stay--I stay." + +She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The +whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her +cheeks--that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face +while life was left to her. + +"If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked. + +"At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added. + +She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special +Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We +need you here. We--" + +Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was +conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It +stole to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with +enamoured eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a +nature which had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in other +directions had taught him much, but experiences with her sex had been +few. The designs of other women had been patent to him, and he had +been invincible to all attack; but here was a girl who, with her +friendly little fortune and her beauty, could marry with no +difficulty; who, he had heard, could pick and choose, and had so far +rejected all comers; and who, if she had shown preference at all, had +shown it for a poor man like Ian Stafford. She had courage and +simplicity and a downright mind; that was clear. And she was +capable. She had a love for big things, for the things that +mattered. Every word she had ever said to him had understanding, not +of the world alone, and of life, but of himself, Rudyard Byng. She +grasped exactly what he would say, and made him say things he would +never have thought of saying to any one else. She drew him out, made +the most of him, made him think. Other women only tried to make him +feel. If he had had a girl like this beside him during the last ten +years, how many wasted hours would have been saved, how many bottles +of champagne would not have been opened, how many wild nights would +have been spent differently! + +Too good, too fine for him--yes, a hundred times, but he would try to +make it up to her, if such a girl as this could endure him. He was not +handsome, he was not clever, so he said to himself, but he had a +little power. That he had to some degree rough power, of course, but +power; and she loved power, force. Had she not said so, shown it, but +a moment before? Was it possible that she was really interested in +him, perhaps because he was different from the average Englishman and +not of a general pattern? She was a woman of brains, of great +individuality, and his own individuality might influence her. It was +too good to be true; but there had ever been something of the gambler +in him, and he had always plunged. If he ever had a conviction he +acted on it instantly, staked everything, when that conviction got +into his inner being. It was not, perhaps, a good way, and it had +failed often enough; but it was his way, and he had done according to +the light and the impulse that were in him. He had no diplomacy, he +had only purpose. + +He came over to her. "If I had gone to South Africa would you have +remembered my name for a month?" he asked with determination and +meaning. + +"My friends never suffer lunar eclipse," she answered, gaily. "Dear +sir, I am called Hold-Fast. My friends are century-flowers and are +always blooming." + +"You count me among your friends?" + +"I hope so. You will let me make all England envious of me, won't you? +I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny +circle." + +"A hero--you mean me? Well, I begin to think I have some courage when +I ask you to let me inside your 'tiny' circle. I suppose most people +would think it audacity, not courage." + +"You seem not to be aware what an important person you are--how almost +sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like +yours, a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in +vain." + +She got to her feet now. "Oh, but believe me, believe me," she said, +with sweet and sudden earnestness, "I am prouder than I can say that +you will let me be a friend of yours! I like men who have done things, +who do things. My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and--" + +"Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once. He was a big man, big as +can be. He had the world by the ear always." + +"He spoiled me for the commonplace," she replied. "If I had lived in +Pizarro's time, I'd have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber." + +He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy. "If you mean +to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way +you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I've spoiled the +Peruvians, too." + +"I like you when you say things like that," she murmured. "If you said +them often--" + +She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and +excitement. + +Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned. "Will +you--" + +He paused. His courage forsook him. Boldness had its limit. He feared +a repulse which could never be overcome. "Will you, and all of you +here, come down to my place in Wales next week?" he blundered out. + +She was glad he had faltered. It was too bewildering. She dared not +yet face the question she had seen he was about to ask. Power--yes, he +could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious +soul. There were other things. There was the desire of the heart, the +longing which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright +stars, the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and +joy--and Ian Stafford. + +Suddenly she drew herself together. She was conscious that the servant +was entering the room with a letter. + +"The messenger is waiting," the servant said. + +With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the +fire. She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes +at last with a slight sense of dizziness. Then she said to the +servant: + +"Tell the messenger to wait. I will write an answer." + +"I am sure we shall be glad to go to you in Wales next week," she +added, turning to Byng again. "But won't you be far away from the +centre of things in Wales?" + +"I've had the telegraph and a private telephone wire to London put +in. I shall be as near the centre as though I lived in Grosvenor +Square; and there are always special trains." + +"Special trains--oh, but it's wonderful to have power to do things +like that! When do you go down?" she asked. + +"To-morrow morning." + +She smiled radiantly. She saw that he was angry with himself for his +cowardice just now, and she tried to restore him. "Please, will you +telephone me when you arrive at your castle? I should like the +experience of telephoning by private wire to Wales." + +He brightened. "Certainly, if you really wish it. I shall arrive at +ten to-morrow night, and I'll telephone you at eleven." + +"Splendid--splendid! I'll be alone in my room then. I've got a +telephone instrument there, and so we could say good-night." + +"So we can say good-night," he repeated in a low voice, and he held +out his hand in good-bye. When he had gone, with a new, great hope in +his heart, she sat down and tremblingly re-opened the note she had +received a moment before. + +"I am going abroad" it read--"to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and +St. Petersburg. I think I've got my chance at last. I want to see you +before I go--this evening, Jasmine. May I?" + +It was signed "Ian." + +"Fate is stronger than we are," she murmured; "and Fate is not kind to +you, Ian," she added, wearily, a wan look coming into her face. + +"Mio destino," she said at last--"mio destino!" But who was her +destiny--which of the two who loved her? + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THREE YEARS LATER + + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about Kruger an' his guns!" + +The shrll, acrid cry rang down St. James's Street, and a newsboy with +a bunch of pink papers under his arm shot hither and thither on the +pavement, offering his sensational wares to all he met. + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about the war wot's comin'--all +about Kruger's guns!" + +From an open window on the second floor of a building in the street a +man's head was thrust out, listening. + +"The war wot's comin'!" he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And +all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you +do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a +shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, Johnny +Bull." + +He hummed to himself an impromptu refrain to an impromptu tune: + + + +"Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull, Johnny Bull, +Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull!" + + +Stepping out of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down +the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad +looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the +doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good +judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was +speeding upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock--a sharp, +insistent stroke--and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust +forward, his eyes glittering. The fire in such eyes is always cold, +for hunger is poor fuel to the native flame of life. + +"Extra speshul, m'lord--all about Kruger's guns." + +He held out the paper to the figure that darkened the window, and he +pronounced the g in Kruger soft, as in Scrooge. + +The hand that took the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, +skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for +it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers +had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face +regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He +had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was an expert +observer. + +"Thank y' kindly," he said; then, as the fingers made assurance of the +fortune which had come to him, "Ow, thank ye werry much, y'r gryce," +he added. + +Something alert and determined in the face of the boy struck the giver +of the coin as he opened the paper to glance at its contents, and he +paused to scan him more closely. He saw the hunger in the lad's eyes +as they swept over the breakfast-table, still heavy with uneaten +breakfast--bacon, nearly the whole of an omelette, and rolls, toast, +marmalade and honey. + +"Wait a second," he said, as the boy turned toward the door. + +"Yes, y'r gryce." + +"Had your breakfast?" + +"I has me brekfist w'en I sells me pypers." The lad hugged the +remaining papers closer under his arms, and kept his face turned +resolutely away from the inviting table. His host correctly +interpreted the action. + +"Poor little devil--grit, pure grit!" he said under his breath. "How +many papers have you got left?" he asked. + +The lad counted like lightning. "Ten," he answered. "I'll soon get 'em +off now. Luck's wiv me dis mornin'." The ghost of a smile lighted his +face. + +"I'll take them all," the other said, handing over a second shilling. + +The lad fumbled for change and the fumbling was due to honest +agitation. He was not used to this kind of treatment. + +"No, that's all right," the other interposed. + +"But they're only a h'ypenny," urged the lad, for his natural cupidity +had given way to a certain fine faculty not too common in any grade of +human society. + +"Well, I'm buying them at a penny this morning. I've got some friends +who'll be glad to give a penny to know all about Kruger's guns." He +too softened the g in Kruger in consideration of his visitor's +idiosyncrasies. + +"You won't be mykin' anythink on them, y'r gryce," said the lad with a +humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford's heart wide; for to him +heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists. + +"I'll get at them in other ways," Stafford rejoined. "I'll get my +profit, never fear. Now what about breakfast? You've sold all your +papers, you know." + +"I'm fair ready for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's +glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was +relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. + +"Well, sit down--this breakfast isn't cold yet.... But, no, you'd +better have a wash-up first, if you can wait," Stafford added, and +rang a bell. + +"Wot, 'ere--brekfist wiv y'r gryce 'ere?" + +"Well, I've had mine"--Stafford made a slight grimace--" and there's +plenty left for you, if you don't mind eating after me." + +"I dusted me clothes dis mornin'," said the boy, with an attempt to +justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast. "An' I washed me +'ends--but pypers is muck," he added. + +A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the +bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot +again. It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his +bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had +eaten since his return to England after three years' absence, +everything was in order. + +For Gleg was still more the child of habit--and decorous habit--than +himself. It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his +master's philanthropic activities. Much as he disapproved of them, he +could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow +disarmed him. He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and +would have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot +from his hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his +master's smile was worth a good deal to Gleg. It was an exacting if +well-paid service, for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in +Europe, and he had grown excessively so during the past three years, +which, as Gleg observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in +him. He had grown more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his +daily life, and ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct +personal share in his life. There were no more little tea-parties and +dejeuners chez lui, duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or +aunt--for there was no embassy in Europe where he had not relatives. + +"'Ipped--a bit 'ipped. 'E 'as found 'em out, the 'uzzies," Gleg had +observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in +his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who +had `ipped" him. + +As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of +marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, +Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance +at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an +occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the +sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small +fire--for, late September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had +come and gone, leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome. + +At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were +decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is +the coffee hot?" + +"I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time," +the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes. + +"Was there enough?" + +"I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade +and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot--tykes y'r longer +to drink it," he added. + +Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his +money. He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of +a crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not +fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the +neglect of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour +to a waif of humanity. + +As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like +him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them +would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal. The +words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: + +"War Inevitable--Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the +Nozzle with War Stores--Milner and Kruger No Nearer a +Settlement--Sullen and Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." +. . . And so on. + +And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter +and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, +this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this +sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So +much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less +with which to deal with their miseries--perhaps hundreds of millions, +mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease +and loss. + +He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the +heading of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, +aloud, with a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the +breakfasts will be fewer. It works down one way or another--it all +works down to this poor little devil and his kind." + +"Now, what's your name?" he asked. + +"Jigger," was the reply. + +"What else?" + +"Nothin', y'r gryce." + +"Jigger--what?" + +"It's the only nyme I got," was the reply. + +"What's your father's or your mother's name?" + +"I ain't got none. I only got a sister." + +"What's her name?" + +"Lou," he answered." That's her real name. But she got a fancy name +yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a +hunderd uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now." + +"Oh--Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of +his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who +gave her that name? Who were her godfathers and godmothers?" + +"I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd +have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was +always plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy." + +"What did she do before yesterday?" + +"Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't +sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild--for she 'adn't +'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, +'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a +start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, +'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, +an' says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if +you'll be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' +Lou says, says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me +bread-baskit full, an' then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er +flowers, an' give 'er five bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv +that, an' 'ad brekfist; an' sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took +her off. She's in the opery now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist +reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her picture 's on the 'oardings--" + +Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er--that's 'er!" he said, pointing +to the mantel-piece. + +Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait +in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when +Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it +then. It had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had +occupied for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his +country's work--and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to +meet the heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known. + +"So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded +assent. + +"Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford. + +The boy did so. "It's 'er--done up for the opery," he declared. + +"Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to +her." + +"Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to +that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be +cold,' I says to Lou." + +Stafford laughed softly at the illustration. Many a time the lad +snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his +figure of speech from real life. + +"Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked. + +"Me--I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the +two shillings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a +fair start." + +Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's +shoulder. "I'm going to give you a sovereign," he said --"twenty +shillings, for your fair start; and I want you to come to me here next +Sunday-week to breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it." + +"Me--y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's +face. "Twenty bob--me!" + +The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He +seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't +do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst. + +"Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with +the papers, and tell me what you've done." + +"Gawd--my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in +the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a +whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late +visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, +with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way. + +With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he +said. "Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows--who +knows!" + +His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over +and stood looking at it musingly. + +"You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't +pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell +it--not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or +is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that +can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and +kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, +for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? +Vain, vain, vain--and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There +might be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women +weren't so dishonourable--the secret orchard rather than the open +highway and robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!" + +He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight +before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, +coming back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old +memories, empty out the box-room, and come across some useless and +discarded things. I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly +useless business turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all +into the junk-shop, and cuts his losses." + +He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page--the +social column first--with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't +done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, +with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of +them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New +York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little +with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he +had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not +come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not +mattered. And there was no reason why it should matter now. His +England was a land the original elements of which would not change, +had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, +was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That +refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating +and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the +toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the +road. + +It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock +on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as +he went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places +like Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to +stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where +their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got +farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes +of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the +Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years +had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more +keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long +before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and +more the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too +ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge. + +All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following +announcement: + +"Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a +few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to +receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the +Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign +Minister, the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of +Tynemouth, and Mr. Tudor Tempest." + +"'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she +would. She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths +to the claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth +to the desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has +done, and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. The +Slavonian Ambassador--him, and the French Foreign Minister! That looks +like a useful combination at this moment--at this moment. She has a +gift for combinations, a wonderful skill, a still more wonderful +perception--and a remarkable unscrupulousness. She's the naturally +ablest woman I have ever known; but she wants to take short-cuts to a +worldly Elysium, and it can't be done, not even with three times three +millions --and three millions was her price." + +Suddenly he got up and went over to a table where were several +dispatch-boxes. Opening one, he drew forth from the bottom, where he +had placed it nearly three years ago, a letter. He looked at the long, +sliding handwriting, so graceful and fine, he caught the perfume which +had intoxicated Rudyard Byng, and, stooping down, he sniffed the +dispatch-box. He nodded. + +"She's pervasive in everything," he murmured. He turned over several +other packets of letters in the box. "I apologize," he said, +ironically, to these letters. "I ought to have banished her long ago, +but, to tell you the truth, I didn't realize how much she'd influence +everything--even in a box." He laughed cynically, and slowly opened +the one letter which had meant so much to him. + +There was no show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth +showed any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious +and scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and +read it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked +at it since he received it in Vienna and had placed it in the +dispatch-box. + +'Dear Ian," it ran, "our year of probation--that is the word isn't +it?--is up; and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am +going to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very +strong, and not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being +reminded daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I +have had so many good hours together, there has been such confidence +between us, that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall +always want to go to you, and ask your advice, and learn to be +wise. You will not turn a cold shoulder on me, will you? I think you +yourself realized that my wish to wait a year before giving a final +answer was proof that I really had not that in my heart which would +justify me in saying what you wished me to say. Oh yes, you knew; and +the last day when you bade me good-bye you almost said as much! I was +so young, so unschooled, when you first asked me, and I did ot know my +own mind; but I know it now, and so I go to Rudyard Byng for better or +for worse--" + +He suddently stopped reading, sat back in his char, and laughed +sardonically. + +"For richer, for poorer'--now to have launched out on the first +phrase, and to have jibbed at the second was distinctly stupid. The +quotation could only have been carried off with audacity of the ripest +kind. 'For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and +in health, till death us do part, amen--' That was the way to have +done it, if it was to be done at all. Her cleverness forsook her when +she wrote that letter. 'Our year of probation'--she called it +that. Dear, dear, what a poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! +She was sworn to me, bound to me, wanted a year in which to have her +fling before she settled down, and she threw me over--like that." + +He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the +fire, threw it in, and watched it burn. + +"I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly +now. "A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute. It's a +terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to +keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman. If anything had +happened to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor +all the King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" + +Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply. Unlike +him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, +tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the +waste-basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and +humiliation. Finally, she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it +into the flames. She had watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not +hotter than that in her own eyes, which presently were washed by a +flood of bitter tears and passionate and unavailing protest. For hours +she had sobbed, and when she went out into the world the next day, it +was with his every word ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever +since: the sceptic comment at every feast, the ironical laughter +behind every door, the whispered detraction in every loud accent of +praise. + +"Dear Jasmine," his letter had run, "it is kind of you to tell me of +your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands +news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all. I am +fortunate in having my information from the very fountain of first +knowledge. You have seen and done much in the past year; and the end +of it all is more fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire +or conceive. You will adorn the new sphere into which you enter. You +are of those who do not need training or experience: you are a genius, +whose chief characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom +nature and Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you +it is given to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We +have had good times together--happy conversations and some cheerful +and entertaining dreams and purposes. We have made the most of +opportunity, each in his and her own way. But, my dear Jasmine, don't +ever think that you will need to come to me for advice and to learn to +be wise. I know of no one from whom I could learn, from whom I have +learned, so I much. I am deeply your debtor for revelations which +never could have come to me without your help. There is a wonderful +future before you, whose variety let Time, not me, attempt to +reveal. I shall watch your going on"--(he did not say goings +on)--"your Alpine course, with clear memories of things and hours +dearer to me than all the world, and with which I would not have +parted for the mines of the Rand. I lose them now for nothing--and +less than nothing. I shall be abroad for some years, and, meanwhile, a +new planet will swim into the universe of matrimony. I shall see the +light shining, but its heavenly orbit will not be within my +calculations. Other astronomers will watch, and some no doubt will +pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of the flower +that was turned into a star! + +"Always yours sincerely, +IAN STAFFORD." + +From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away to +his writing-table. There he sat for a while and answered several +notes, among them one to Alice + +Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, whose red parasol still hung +above the mantel-piece, a relic of the Zambesi--and of other things. + +Periodically Lady Tynemouth's letters had come to him while he was +abroad, and from her, in much detail, he had been informed of the rise +of Mrs. Byng, of her great future, her "delicious" toilettes, her +great entertainments for charity, her successful attempts to gather +round her the great figures in the political and diplomatic world; and +her partial rejection of Byng's old mining and financial confreres and +their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their +place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately +aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. + +Ian had read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could +and would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in +the not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not +malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, +and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her +invitation now to spend the next week-end with her and her husband; +and then, with letters to two young nephews in his pocket, he prepared +to sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the +children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a +generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had +married, he would not have been content with a childless home--with a +childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to +him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had +no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like +her and me," Lady Tynemouth's letter had said. + +Three millions then--and how much more now?--and big houses, and no +children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had +come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom +life had been checkered but never dull. + +He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes +caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed. + +"It was all done that night at the opera," he said. "Jasmine made up +her mind then to marry him, . . . I wonder what the end will +be.... Sad little, bad little girl.... The mess of pottage at the +last? Quien sabe!" + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" + + +The air of the late September morning smote Stafford's cheeks +pleasantly, and his spirits rose as he walked up St. James's +Street. His step quickened imperceptibly to himself, and he nodded to +or shook hands with half a dozen people before he reached +Piccadilly. Here he completed the purchases for his school-boy +nephews, and then he went to a sweet-shop in Regent Street to get +chocolates for his young relatives. As he entered the place he was +suddenly brought to a standstill, for not two dozen yards away at a +counter was Jasmine Byng. + +She did not see him enter, and he had time to note what matrimony, and +the three years and the three million pounds, had done to her. She was +radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but +increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark +green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and +texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a +single brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In +the hat, too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter +green. + +She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who +was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her +with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always +her way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest, +magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her. nothing of charm +and beauty and eloquence,--how eloquent she had always been!--of +esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full +toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some +piled-up tables in the centre of the shop. + +Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes, +at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance--he could +not say trouble--had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the +corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic, +self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent +and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old +days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of +these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a +lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap +into full exercise, or even to recognize itself. + +So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been +capable--not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to +acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of +fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster, +his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even +wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves--so dead +that no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in +his breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was +conscious of a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to +the situation. + +Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of +the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and contempt +for one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other +women--to that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and +ill-natured soil exhausted of its power, of its generous and native +health. There was a strange apathy in his senses, an emotional +stillness, as it were, the atrophy of all the passionate elements of +his nature. But because of this he was the better poised, the more +evenly balanced, the more perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or +dimmed by any stress of emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and +his forward tread had leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one +part of himself far below the level of activity or sensation, while +new resolves, new powers of mind, new designs were set in motion to +make his career a real and striking success. He had the most friendly +ear and the full confidence of the Prime Minister, who was also +Foreign Secretary--he had got that far; and now, if one of his great +international schemes could but be completed, an ambassadorship would +be his reward, and one of first-class importance. The three years had +done much for him in a worldly way, wonderfully much. + +As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre--not +by her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter +selfishness and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's +fires were out, and that he could meet her without the agitation of a +single nerve. He despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He +knew the strain that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather +plangent grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the +power that it would bring--and the notoriety, too, again an +inheritance from her grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and +he could the more easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion +were still. + +She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, +the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch +of gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and +experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, +then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was +still there, he felt; but how much else was also there--of charm, of +elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to +discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare +splendour, variety and vanity. + +Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His +intellectual side would always be stimulated by her, she would always +"incite him to mental riot," as she had often said. Time had flown, +love had flown, and passion was dead; but friendship stayed. Yes, +friendship stayed--in spite of all. Her conduct had made him blush for +her, had covered him with shame, but she was a woman, and therefore +weak--he had come to that now. She was on a lower plateau of honour, +and therefore she must be- not forgiven--that was too banal; but she +must be accepted as she was. And, after all, there could be no more +deception; for opportunity and occasion no longer existed. He would go +and speak to her now. + +At that moment he was aware that she had caught sight of him, and that +she was startled. She had not known of his return to England, and she +was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. The words of the letter he had +written her when she had thrown him over rushed through her brain now, +and hurt her as much as they did the first day they had been +received. She became a little pale, and turned as though to find some +other egress from the shop. There being none, there was but one +course, and that was to go out as though she had not seen him. He had +not even been moved at all at seeing her; but with her it was +different. She was disturbed--in her vanity? In her peace? In her +pride? In her senses? In her heart? In any, or each, or all? But she +was disturbed: her equilibrium was shaken. He had scorched her soul by +that letter to her, so gently cold, so incisive, so subtly cruel, so +deadly in its irony, so final--so final. + +She was ashamed, and no one else in the world but Ian Stafford could +so have shamed her. Power had been given to her, the power of great +riches--the three millions had been really four--and everything and +everybody, almost, was deferential towards her. Had it brought her +happiness, or content, or joy? It had brought her excitement--much of +that--and elation, and opportunity to do a thousand things, and to +fatigue herself in a thousand ways; but had it brought happiness? + +If it had, the face of this man who was once so much to her, and whom +she had flung into outer darkness, was sufficient to cast a cloud over +it. She felt herself grow suddenly weak, but she determined to go out +of the place without appearing to see him. + +He was conscious of it all, saw it out of a corner of his eye, and as +she started forward, he turned, deliberately walked towards her, and, +with a cheerful smile, held out his hand. + +"Now, what good fortune!" he said, spiritedly. "Life plays no tricks, +practices no deception this time. In a book she'd have made us meet on +a grand staircase or at a court ball." + +As he said this, he shook her hand warmly, and again and again, as +would be fitting with old friends. He had determined to be master of +the situation, and to turn the moment to the credit of his +account--not hers; and it was easy to do it, for love was dead, and +the memory of love atrophied. + +Colour came back to her face. Confusion was dispelled, a quick and +grateful animation took possession of her, to be replaced an instant +after by the disconcerting reflection that there was in his face or +manner not the faintest sign of emotion or embarrassment. From his +attitude they might have been good friends who had not met for some +time; nothing more. + +"Yes, what a place to meet!" she said. "It really ought to have been +at a green-grocer's, and the apotheosis of the commonplace would have +been celebrated. But when did you return? How long do you remain in +England?" + +Ah, the sense of relief to feel that he was not reproaching her for +anything, not impeaching her by an injured tone and manner, which so +many other men had assumed with infinitely less right or cause than +he! + +"I came back thirty-six hours ago, and I stay at the will of the +master-mind," he answered. + +The old whimsical look came into her face, the old sudden flash which +always lighted her eyes when a daring phrase was born in her mind, and +she instantly retorted: + +"The master-mind--how self-centred you are!" + +Whatever had happened, certainly the old touch of intellectual +diablerie was still hers, and he laughed good-humoredly. Yes, she +might be this or that, she might be false or true, she might be one +who had sold herself for mammon, and had not paid tribute to the one +great natural principle of being, to give life to the world, man and +woman perpetuating man and woman; but she was stimulating and +delightful without effort. + +"And what are you doing these days?" he asked. "One never hears of you +now." + +This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and +she replied: "That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten +for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" + +It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough +to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and +buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined. + +"You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily. + +"It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied. "It is sure to +make one a host of enemies." + +"So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined. + +"Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and +there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to +notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however +vaguely, her murderous treatment of him. + +"But your career is not yet begun," he remarked. + +Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire +of intellectual combat? + +"I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort. + +"That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent," +he rejoined. + +"Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly. Suddenly a +thought lighted her eyes. "Are you by any chance free to-morrow night +to dine with us--quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see +you--and hear you," she added, teasingly. + +He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked +her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the +ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend +an evening where she sparkled. + +"I am free, and will come with pleasure," he replied. + +"That is delightful," she rejoined, "and please bring a box of bons +mots with you. But you will come, then--?" She was going to add, +"Ian," but she paused. + +"Yes, I'll come--Jasmine," he answered, coolly, having read her +hesitation aright. + +She flushed, was embarrassed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod +she left him. + +In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny +hand clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in +her eyes. + +"He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall--he +shall--he shall!" she gasped, angrily. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE APPIAN WAY + + +"Cape to Cairo be damned!" + +The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed +slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his +desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, +as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and +beat the floor impatiently with his foot. + +At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly +at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which +Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the +pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in +on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely +realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and +perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had +London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared +with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in +dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just +uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more. + +Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor +further. "Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the +British Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want +is the present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of +us. I want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five +millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native +labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with +Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want +to see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng." + +The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously +bitter. "That's what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry +Whalen? Well, you can want it with a little less blither and a little +more manners." + +A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which +had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened +in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger +looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on: + +"It doesn't matter what you want--not a great deal, if the others +agree generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it +matters much in any case. What have you come to see me about?" + +"I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to +be. It isn't--" + +Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would +do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with +a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he +burst into a laugh. + +"Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I +oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he +broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, +you'd better try to see me at my chambers--or at the office in London +Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles +you. You take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let +me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither +more nor less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we +trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and +both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more +of you than I did then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want +to see you any more or any fewer. But, Barry"--his voice changed, grew +warmer, kinder--" circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of +all of us are shaped differently--yours as well as mine--here in this +pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; +and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our +Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on--in our +front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble +buccaneer--not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, +where Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and-- +and, 'If you please, sir, your bath is ready'! . . . Don't be an +idiot-child, Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let +myself go. I don't do it often these days--not since Jameson spilt the +milk and the can went trundling down the area. It's little time we get +for dreaming, these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the +world's work and our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, +Barry; it's dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the +present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be +Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you +please.... Why, what's got into you? And again, what have you come to +see me about, anyhow? You knew we were to meet at dinner at +Wallstein's to-night. Is there anything that's skulking at our heels +to hurt us?" + +The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came +over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, +Byng resuming his seat meanwhile. + +Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his +words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends +to bring up to-night--a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead +as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite +of Milner and Jo?" + +A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, +loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he +looked as though squaring himself to resist attack. + +"Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to +say--or bring up, you call it?" + +"He's going to say that some one is betraying us--all we do that's of +any importance and most we say that counts--to Kruger and Leyds. He's +going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle." + +Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became +quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming--or you--suspect?" he +asked, with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes. + +Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the +face; then he said, slowly: + +"I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at +least three years old, and you know them. + +"Krool?" + +"Krool--for sure." + +"What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we +say and do?" + +"Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a +consideration." + +"Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort +of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?" + +Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it +very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there +were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or +two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England +knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London +life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by +himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, +had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin +and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the +muscles. Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself +to brandy and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two +or three minutes' silence, and then he said: + +"There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't +Krool." + +"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my +friend." + +"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I +am to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't +know." He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn. + +He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and +with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her +to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to +himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having +babbled. But certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage +regarding most critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause +him to say reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn: + +"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that." + +"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious +tone. + +He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was +against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything +by his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago. + +"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped +in," Barry continued. + +"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where +trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as +his visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he +pointed. "Glue your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell +me if you can hear anything--any word I say." + +Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather +louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for +some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room. + +"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?" + +"Not a word--scarcely a murmur." + +"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like +a glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading +into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside +baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the +two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud." + +The test produced the same result. + +"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical +laugh. + +Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled +him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he +had suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had +regarded Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the +Partners all believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought +came to him, too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind. + +There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to +Byng. There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who +had been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing +the hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind +of master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could +do. Yes, there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there +was Mrs. Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the +private secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each +other. What came to Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out +some words of good-bye with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for +he had a chivalrous heart and mind, and he was not prone to be +malicious. + +"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a +quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, +whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I +think--not here, my friend." + +Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the +veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for +us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm +spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal +jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it +comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one +else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no +good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will +run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, +you and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your +millions, Byng." + +With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the +veld, and shook it warmly. + +"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently." But we're +all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here." + +"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the +music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of +us. I see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong +shop. We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, +let's go where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's +going on round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; +where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; +where you can have a run for your money." + +Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses +strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not +ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an +Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey." + +"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than +the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish --I can see. The Celt can +always see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this +old land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, +and nobody cares a copper about anything that matters--" + +"About Cape to Cairo, eh?" + +"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, +just the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these +isles. We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest +of the organs too." + +Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us +a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects +after the foie gras, Barry." + +Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the +hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he +did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the +mantel-piece. A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened. + +"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've +degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is +the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything." + +Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening +dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof. + +"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me +over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't +go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you." + +His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a +little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time +we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in +the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there +was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning +business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must +commune together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, +there's also the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is +back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a +few days, and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the +dinner. As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your +dressing-table." + +With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her +soft golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he +whispered, softly, "I hate leaving you, but--" + +"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? +It's too late to put him off." + +"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends +as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person +that's got anything to say about that." + +She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten +that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his +friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had +forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and +she had said nothing, done nothing. + +As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far +depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the +obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on +Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no +perplexity-- there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she +answered: + +"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--" + +"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he +rejoined. "What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself +some latitude." + +"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the +responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the +dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she +closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of +satisfaction. + +"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him. + +Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be +inspected. "Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself +and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did +so. "You're wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I +seem to remember that gown before--years ago--" + +She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and +ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you +think I wear my gowns for years?" + +"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a +frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and +it looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as +new." + +"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever +lived. Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them +rather hate wearing them two times." + +"Then what do they do with them--after the two times?" + +"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, +if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor +cousins or their particular friends--" + +"Their particular friends--?" + +"Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her +very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart--" + +"Wait. What's 'the Mart'?" + +"The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked +discount." + +"And what becomes of them then?" + +"They are bought by ladies less fortunate." + +"Ladies who wear them?" + +"Why, what else would they do? Wear them--of course, dear child." + +Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me +there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I +could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours--of yours." + +She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but +you haven't known they were mine; that's all." + +"I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like +you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine." + +She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you +are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my +clothes." + +He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down +approvingly. "Because I only see a general effect, but I always +remember colour. Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, +or whatever the miserable coffin-shop is called?" + +"Well, not directly." + +"What do you mean by 'not directly'?" + +"Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, +then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case--a +girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and +he suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because +we were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of +lucky find--that's what he called it." + +Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of +Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like +that you have on?" + +"This--let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, +of course." + +He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown +cost--perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye. + +"Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty--maybe," she replied, with +a little burst of merriment. + +"And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and +then seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?" + +"Ruddy, do not be nasty--or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more +than twice--some of them a great many times, except when I detested +them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for +trade. That influences many ladies, of course." + +He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, +or something still harsher. + +"'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he +answered. "It's all such a hollow make-believe." + +"What is?" + +She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was +vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him--not exactly toward +her, but a change, nevertheless. + +"The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he +said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but +we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not +putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of +emptiness--of famine somewhere." + +He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow +contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of +life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, +and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to +do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind +of thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had +forgotten. I was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I +was setting up my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other +fellows who hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, +Wilberforce and I--well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into +sets of people who can afford to do certain things, and we leave such +a lot of people behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we +would have clung to, if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, +or been so soddenly selfish." + +A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges--oh, Boanerges +Byng! 'Owever can you be so heloquent!" + +Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that +look which had fascinated him--and so many others--in their day. The +perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of +her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them +again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught +her in his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly. + +"You exquisite siren--you siren of all time," he said, with a note of +joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face +back from him.... " If you had lived a thousand years ago you would +have had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did--who knows! And +now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my +jasmine-flower." + +His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, +belying the passion and rapture of his words. + +In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She +had heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big +impulses working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was +something moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps +it was only a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a +strange impression on her. It was remembered by them both long after, +when life had scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet +and they had passed through flood and fire. + +She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an +element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him +gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye +for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human +nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never +understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business--and +politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to +understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and +insight of which she had not thought him capable. + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers. Perhaps you did--who knows! . . . And now you come down +through the centuries purified by Time--" + +The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a +time she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again +and again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in +wild dreams of her far past--once as a priestess of Isis, once as a +Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a +courtezan of Alexandria or Athens--many times as that: one of the +gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of +culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her +will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world +were well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but +while yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time +had left the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering +look.... Often and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had +haunted her, even before she was married; and she had been alternately +humiliated and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford +of one of the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens +who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her +sing to him, in a voice quite in keeping with her personality, +delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its +quality, with trills like a lark--a little meretricious but +captivating. He had also written for her two verses which were as +sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown +him over so dishonourably: + + + +"Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; +It stilled the tumult and the overthrow +When Athens trembled to the people's will; +I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago. +"I see the fountains, and the gardens where +You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; +I feel the quiver of the raptured air +I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now." + + + +As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband +steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, +where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did +he understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really +talk to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled +out of any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened +up to his sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her +thought, his was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because +it had not been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really +tried to find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness +and subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and +untrammelled exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and +adventure upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of +remorse, went through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length +and looked at her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their +natures a chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth +and excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but +had the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full +soul of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the +governing influence in their marriage where she was concerned? + +Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years +of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone +together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which +he had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had +come of a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and +heart. Even in his faults he had ever been primitively simple and +obvious. She had been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in +philanthropic enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness +preventing him from being robbed right and left by adventurers of all +descriptions; and yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her +activity in good causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one +forlorn soul whom she had directly and personally helped, or sheltered +from the storm for a moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had +dried by her own direct personal sympathy? + +Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a +little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it +that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, +and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him +say hard things about their own two commendable selves? + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purlfied by +Time, to be my jasmine-flower"-- + +She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: +"And what were you a thousand years ago, my man?" + +He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose +fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting +Caesar." + +It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long +ago. + +Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened +wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared +to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have +it. This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we +met. It's the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the +same style. Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the +opera. And you wore blue the day I tried to propose to you and +couldn't, and asked you down to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" +He laughed, happily almost. "Yes, you wore blue the first time we +met--like this." + +"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those +first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily +smoothed out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that +day three years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering +that Ian Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown +just before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she +wore blue this night--to recall to Ian what it appeared he had +forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her +husband's house--and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were +in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was +adamantine; at least she had never met one--not one, neither bishop +nor octogenarian. + +"Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, +lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down +and apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?" + +"Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll--" + +There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that +Mr. Stafford was in the drawing-room. + +"Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," +she added to her husband--"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel +sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house." + +Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her +arm. + +"Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over +things--over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of +life than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; +but perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together--eh?" There +was a strange, troubled longing in his look. + +She nodded and smiled. "Certainly--to-night when you get back," she +said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She +laughed, and so did he. + +As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a +shadow in her eyes and over her face. + +"Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said. + +Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and +looked back, she said: + +"Poor boy . . . Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added +with a nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness +she entered to Ian Stafford. + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST + + +As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and +existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He +was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's +houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, +and many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless +legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had +built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of +people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, +still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was +something that coarsened taste--an unmodulated, if not a garish, +elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He +asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great +mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time +had softened all the outlines, had given that subdued harmony in +architecture which only belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any +money those wonderful Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which +had a glory quite their own. There must, therefore, be an air of +newness in the new mansion, which was too much in keeping with the new +money, the gold as yet not worn smooth by handling, the staring, +brand-new sovereigns looking like impostors. + +As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of +evening, he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic +sense. It was a big building, severely simple in design, yet with the +rich grace, spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian +palace: compact, generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully +proportionate. + +"Egad, Byng, you had a good architect--and good sense!" he said to +himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on +the scene too." + +The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the +essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see. + +When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and +outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be +seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was +noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, +and the old furniture--Italian, Spanish--which relieved the +spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence +to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill. + +As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which +maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the +hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring +of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency +to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate +artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine. + +The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It +was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking +exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its +nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its +half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, +the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too +much like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew +that Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally +flamboyant taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it +were. She had, like a literary artist, polished and refined and +stippled the effect, till something of personal touch had gone, and +there remained classic elegance without the sting of life and the +idiosyncrasy of its creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room +would not quite do, though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment +was not yet complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room his breath came a little quicker, for here would be the +real test; and curiosity was stirring greatly in him. + +Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a +flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous +audacity. Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian +lamps and lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up +cushions, the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; +but everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with +that paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he +picked them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked +by marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all +showing the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, +however, that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them +he had read with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in +one of them he found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath +which she had written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing +point. There were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it +was borne in on him that not many of these annotated books belonged to +the past three years. The millions had come, the power and the place; +but something had gone with their coming. + +He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she +entered; and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of +his figure, the poise of the intellectual head--the type of a perfect, +well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and +executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but +she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of +her skirts and came forward. + +He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and +he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was +near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw +her. She watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was +piqued to observe that he who had in that far past always swept her +with an admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only +gave her deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the +note to all she said and did that evening--the daring, the brilliance, +the light allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment +on the present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by +beauty and by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild +and desperate revolt. + +For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's +association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of +punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing +that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a +combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not +happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet +she had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in +a sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written +her, when she turned from him to the man she married. + +The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for +his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old +place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago--ah, it was so +long!--came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, +still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world--in +that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes +had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her +realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual +passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical +attraction Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that +he gave her mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who +knew the song her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her +and with so cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not +triumph in his self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always +by his careless indifference to everything that had ever been between +them. If he treated her so because of what she had done to him, with +what savagery might not she be treated, if all that had happened in +the last three years were open as a book before him! + +Her husband--she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the +past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and +daring assault upon her heart--or emotions--from quarters of unusual +distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true +proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five +months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make +the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought +a change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard. + +"Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why +did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not +realize that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the +forces contending against her purity and devotion would never have +gathered at her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, +if she had loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have +loved him, ought to have loved him. + +The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men +instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the +imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call +upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without +intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if +not the censure, of the world--or so she thought; and in the main she +was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would +have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three +years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, +putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you--what you +are." + +Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily +greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to +dine with Wallstein. + +"But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said--"such old +friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that +kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he +continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope +Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a +heavy movement of good-nature and magnanimity. + +"Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford +to himself." This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has +vanished, and other things are disappearing." + +At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite +appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare +simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and +stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a +mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat +with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for +clever women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his +life, save with men in his own profession chiefly. + +But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a +change, and the transition was made with much skill and +sensitiveness. Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more +reflective note, and the drift of the conversation changed. Books +brought the new current; and soon she had him moving almost +unconsciously among old scenes, recalling old contests of ideas, and +venturing on bold reproductions of past intellectual ideals. But +though they were in this dangerous field of the past, he did not once +betray a sign of feeling, not even when, poring over Coventry +Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she read the lines which +they had read together so long ago, with no thought of any +significance to themselves: + + + +"With all my will, but much against my heart, +We two now part. +My very Dear, +Our solace is the sad road lies so clear. . . +Go thou to East, I West. +We will not say +There's any hope, it is so far away. . . + + + +He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he +had finished: + +"A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story +was--a hopeless love, of course. An affaire--an 'episode'--London +ladies now call such things. " + +"You find London has changed much since you went away--in three years +only?" she asked. + +"Three years--why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged +to live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of +pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with +the clock." + +She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the +mantel-piece. "See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, +the little silver hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but +what time is it really--for you, for instance?" + +"In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so +intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger. + +"It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so +exactly. You did not miss it by a fraction." + +"It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight +o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been +dead to time--and the world." + +"You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically. + +"Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent." + +"Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?" + +"But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with +a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along +so coolly that it incensed her further. + +"Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to +still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I +could." + +Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as +she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, +childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied +the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her +more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed +him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not +now a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; +that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a +man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was +very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard +to get--by what devious ways had she travelled to find it! + +As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, +and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a +strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came +from her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her +Nelson to the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, +and alone. Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her +sigh--his name, Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came +over him to turn and clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which +never but once he had kissed, and that was when she had plighted her +secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why +not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured +him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, +the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated +since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of +the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark +impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my +exile, as sweet as my revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that +this was the woman to whom he had given the best of which he was +capable and the promise of that other best which time and love and +life truly lived might accomplish; and the wild thing died in him. + +The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of +Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not +for the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in +so much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the +hereditary taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive +and wise, in so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he +determined that she should never have that absolution which any +outward or inward renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too +deep--that arrogant, cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who +has not committed the same sin as the person he despises-- + +"Sweet is the refuge of scorn." + +His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the +price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had +sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a +woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always +present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it +brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It +ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been +impeccable-- + + + +"The shaft of slander shot +Missed only the right blot!" + + + +Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him +with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye. + +She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at +the door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one +lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of +the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans +the veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the +life. His look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and +Stafford inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife +whose hatred was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized +the antipathy. Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had +seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to +send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year +when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which +Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which +she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes +had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been +Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had +made light of Jasmine's prejudices. + +"The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's +servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The +boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens." + +Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, +and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the +reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have +induced his servant to fetch the girl. + +"I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused. + +"Won't you see her here?" she asked. + +Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the +room. + +For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed +herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou--Jigger's sister," she said, with white +lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked +down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer +a promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but +if so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer +himself. 'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all +right--the best as ever--the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded +her eyes and streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best--my +Gawd, 'e was the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r +gryce, wouldn't y'r?" + +Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was +simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like +Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep +black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech +that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that +Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in +the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and +friendly help. + +"Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked. + +"It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, +Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it +ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, +not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year." + +Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her +impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to +help. Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three +hours ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they +had done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past +three years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, +mothering, passionately pitiful girl. + +"What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford. + +"I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to +Krool, who stood outside the door. + +"Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the +suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never +miss the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you"ll not miss it--an' 'e ain't +got much left." + +"I will go, too--if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You +must let me go. I want to help--so much." + +"No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in +Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you +must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you +will. Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know." + +He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with +Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help. + +Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that +Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, +somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than +in all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all +her art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one +tiny stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous +incident had softened him, had broken down the barriers which had +checked and baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his +smile as he said good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the +clasp of his hand. + +Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered +in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, +were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were +never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor +royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there +had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish? + +The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses +and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and +luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone +with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the +corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play +softly. Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things +she knew years before, improvising soft, passionate little +movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, +and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which +Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was +simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished +disappointment, of wasted chances was in it-- + + + +"Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, +A word came to me, beautiful and good; +If I had spoken it, that message of the stars, +Love would have filled thy blood: +Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, +Thy heart a nestling bird; +A moment fled--it passed: +I seek in vain +For that forgotten word." + + + +In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away +into an aching silence. + +She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead +on them. + +"When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that +strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the +beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were +brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing, +nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk +in it." + +With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went +over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in +with the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about +to drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a +curious stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to +the door that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light +was still burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was +clumsily, heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the +balustrade. He was singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin +harmony with an occasional laugh-- + + + +"For this is the way we do it on the veld, +When the band begins to play; +With one bottle on the table and one below the belt, +When the band begins to play--" + + + +It was Rudyard, and he was drunk--almost helplessly drunk. + +A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped +it. With a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing +herself on the divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried +her face in her arms. The hours went by. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART + + +"Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own +lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden +days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything--all scientifically +measured." + +With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated +surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at +Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales. + +Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then +remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill +yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of +potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting +razor? You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world +is the same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices +any difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by +jumping into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all +concerned. That was what he wanted--to end his own life and exasperate +the foreman." + +"Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to +the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you +mean. It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives +or other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to +detect it?" + +The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert +couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; +but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly +verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of +injury artificially inflicted." + +"It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," +interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than +suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their +melodramatic indulgences--disfiguring themselves unnecessarily." + +Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" +of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose +handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the +conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it +can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll +promise not to use it." + +The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes +passed from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to +Ian Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased +smile of gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past +three years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain +successful operation in royal circles. + +Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and +held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he +asked. "Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there +would be little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done +except by the aroused expert." + +"If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the +needle above her palm. " Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, +which has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as +surely as though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would +leave scarcely the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny +pin-prick, as it were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average +coroner's jury and the average examination of the village doctor, who +would die rather than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart +failure' as the cause of death." + +Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being +so near the point," she said. + +"Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically. + +"How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, +Mr. Mappin?" asked Stafford. + +The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have +a favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the +minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men." + +He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes +held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the +needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so +far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high +price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, +perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very +reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their +friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a +great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the +thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament +Square." + +The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument +will be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, +and this is an ancient art." He tapped the case." Turkey and the +Mongol lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for +the dog!" He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke. + +This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the +sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the +hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been +smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the +dark news had brought no personal shock. + +They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit +to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special +carriage, and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On +the night of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's +house had caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, +saving the lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it +was almost as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader +than to take him to a London hospital. + +Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and +Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and +there had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at +breakfast in St. James's Street. + +Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely +done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, +Stafford had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the +surgeon said that if the journey was successfully made, the +after-results would be all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had +allowed himself to be included in the house-party at Glencader. + +It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have +gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if +it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her +motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do +all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian +and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful +pleasure. Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together +with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that +scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so--her +husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song. + +The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to +her. She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that +every moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that +Rudyard had been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying +to settle a struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the +mine itself, of whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said +before he left the house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with +Stafford, persistently recurred to her mind. + +"What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got +everything--everything, and yet--!" Her eyes were not opened. She had +had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there +had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed--no +more. She did not see that the man she had married to love and to +cherish was slowly changing--was the change only a slow one +now?--before her eyes; losing that brave freshness which had so +appealed to London when he first came back to civilization. Something +had been subtracted from his personality which left it poorer, +something had been added which made it less appealing. Something had +given way in him. There had been a subsidence of moral energy, and +force had inwardly declined, though to all outward seeming he had +played a powerful and notable part in the history of the last three +years, gaining influence in many directions, without suffering +excessive notoriety. + +On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand +rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from +drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo +and the Vaal. + +As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, +putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: + +"The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, +my locum tenens, will give him every care." + +"When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on +towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled. + +"To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can +help it." + +"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, +graciously. "Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us +this evening. Is it not thrilling?" + +There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian +Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an +enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry +Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was +cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely +bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him. + +Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that +Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was +an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have +been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few +times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at +the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her +husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the +value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the +vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his +friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had +been set free. + +Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to +his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the +opera, where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around +her admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that +first production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she +had seen her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for +society or for social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine +led had no charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it +suited Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social +environment of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were +well rewarded. + +When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had +hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at +length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see +Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with +her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her +husband, and he might return--and return still less a man than when he +deserted her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, +because of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively +set, whose transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous +impulses. Last of all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and +influences where his days had been constantly spent during the past +three years. + +Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, +deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and +his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first +time,--she had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was +given--a vague suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled +her. His letter had arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her +answer was immediate--she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance +first through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long +"acquaintance" with the great singer. + +From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that +rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did +not occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a +man of the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no +particular fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's +face to that of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was +nothing behind her glance which had to do with Al'mah. + +In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley +still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, +and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded. + +Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the +Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, +and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a +vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really +was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the +limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex +who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had +provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able +and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to +treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant +wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities +of Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute +politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and +outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue +and of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the +arena of international politics. + +As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of +Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the +former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply +engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised +negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in +Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet +pierced. This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an +almost scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The +author of the profoundly planned international scheme was this young +man, who had already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look +about them in dismay; for its activities were like those of +underground wires; and every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most +remote, was mined and primed, so that each embassy played its part +with almost startling effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and +France was not too near to prevent the incalculably smooth working of +a striking and far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing +that England's Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with +his equally extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, +delighted in; and Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American +high in place had colloquially said, "that they were up against a +proposition which would take some moving." + +The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if +M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, +pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian +Stafford's coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame +in diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the +Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not +captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which +lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who +worked with him. + +With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was +a matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of +England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South +Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she +would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed +to the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, +would come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her +knees. This diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent +the worst in any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be +working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give +England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new +territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre. + +Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to +Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through +Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was +mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed +save in a general way by the smoking-room fire. + +Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming +to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation +to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of +the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent +accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who +had saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still +garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a +place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of +his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she +knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she +married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written +him about Jasmine, again and again,--of what she did and what the +world said--and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the +most jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously +jealous, and, of course, had no right to be. + +She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy +which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court +proceedings. Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and +Tynemouth gave it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond +of outdoor life, of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and +travel, to have his eye unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. + +"Play the game--play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of +the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it +would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of +his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he +had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's +interest in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never +learned. Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by +nice, clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be +pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice +something to do, and prevented her from being lonely--and all that +kind of thing." + +Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round +according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of +her weakness for Ian Stafford--of her open and rather gushing +friendship for him --had an almost honest dislike to seeing him +brought into close relations again with the woman who had +dishonourably treated him. Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly +for herself; but that selfish consideration did not overshadow the +feeling that Jasmine had cheated at cards, as it were; and that Ian +ought not to be compelled to play with her again. + +"But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth +concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so +strong--sometimes." + +At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted +laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love +with you." + +To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's +aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" +(he made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you +did." + +To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and +was told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This +conversation had occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; +and henceforth Alice had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and +wherever possible. So far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine +had, not ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed +to Jasmine that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was +some new cause to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The +Jigger episode had done much, had altered the latitudes of their +association, but the perihelion of their natures was still far off; +and she was apprehensive, watchful, and anxious. + +This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting +and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the +child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, +however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador +and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward +to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him. + +A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm +afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble +again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go +there--and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had +hoped. Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are +ready. There's the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the +Murderer's Leap, and Lover's Land--something for all tastes," he +added, with a dry note to his voice. + +"Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them +hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these +mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange +the afternoon. + +She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the +only ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it +impossible to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and +welcome Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she +said. Adrian stayed behind because he must superintend the +arrangements of the ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian +Stafford stayed because he had letters to write--ostensibly; for he +actually meant to go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message +to the Prime Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning. + +When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the +hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the +ball-room about those arrangements?" + +Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign +that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she +laughingly asked him if he would come also. + +"If you don't mind--!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he +walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at +the corridor leading to his own little sitting-room. + +A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down +into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the +servants' quarters. + +"He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but +he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words--"the best +ever!" + +Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and +presently made her way to the housekeeper's room. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE KEY IN THE LOCK + + +A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room +where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the +bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she +had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the +least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian +sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the +gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting +revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed. + +Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of +delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of +the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people +played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in +making believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She +was dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, +but of exquisite material--the soft green velvet which she had worn +when she met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a +perfect gold, wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were +shining--so blue, so deep, so alluring. + +The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and +interest. + +"It's her--me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him +like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, +delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those +flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a +holiday by some philanthropic society. + +Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the +tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical--almost +suspicious--then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden +she carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger +she had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which +he had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the +old days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the +best feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to +grow at the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried +away by a great temptation--the glitter and show of power and all that +gold can buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and +vanity. If she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be +living in a small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable +quarter, with just enough to enable them to keep their end up with +people who had five thousand a year--with no box at the opera, or +house in the country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a +thriving nursery which would be a promise of future expense--if she +had married him! . . . A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in +him, and he did not despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw +him coming nearer, as, standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, +one sees trailing over the distant hills, with the light behind, a +welcome and beloved figure with face turned towards the home in the +green glade. + +A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he +said: "This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see +Mr. Mappin about it." + +As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the +nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative +person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all +right; and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she +added, quizzically. + +"Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the +bowl of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly +left the room. + +"Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, +some without solution." + +"Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly. + +"Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was +the Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by +profession you were by nature." + +Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low +tone, "M. Mennaval--you know him well?" + +She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying +her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's +pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship +worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased +pleasures. + +"I know him well--yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes +of an afternoon, and if he had more time--or if I had--he would no +doubt come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I +have less of it than anything else." + +"A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind +was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though +its full significance did not possess him yet. + +"The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone +of meaning. + +"Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in +the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had +opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count +Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some +deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the +engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it +was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different +way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain +and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct +so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what +Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future +hung in the balance--dependent upon the success of his great +diplomatic scheme. + +Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she +could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he +held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind +before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish +hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, +of an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she +could do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the +unsettled claim? If she could help to give him success, would not +that, in the end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon +fade, the dust would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; +but his success would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising +through long years to a great height, and remaining fixed and +exalted. With a great belief she believed in him and what he could +do. He was a Sisyphus who could and would roll the-huge stone to the +top of the hill--and ever with easier power. + +The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing +forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however +essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth +while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her +pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing +brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her +enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an +overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift--or curse--of +imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, +of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am +doomed--doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian +Stafford went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often +in her heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when +Rudyard reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties +of her temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the +radiance which broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and +wonderful a figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, +that Fate seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making +pitfalls for her feet. + +Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to +smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the +effort to know. + +"But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in +Moravia--which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study +it." + +"If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little +difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he +himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not +got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his +diplomacy. Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian +ambassador, had checkmated him at every move towards the final +victory. + +"It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling +down at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, +suddenly turning towards him again, she said: + +"But you are interested in Moravia--do you find it worth the time?" + +"Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked. + +"And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and +least consequential way," she replied. + +She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now--is it a kind of +telepathy'--that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the +power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and +Slavonia. Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning +now, and I feel"--she smiled significantly--"that I am standing on the +brink of some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, +prevents me from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a +low voice. + +He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though +he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if +what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came +to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help +him as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was +trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be +the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and +better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; +could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not +dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes? + +It was for Britain--for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of +the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race +in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; +and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of +intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and +those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; +only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching +further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had +dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the +Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of +territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and +the settlement of outstanding difficulties. + +His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door +to possibilities of prodigious consequence. + +He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The +crisis was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it +works itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was +spinning hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and +he must presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called +his Patent, or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In +three months--in two months--in one month--it might be too late, for +war was coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not +furfilled now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever +abandoned. + +This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she +was skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually +discreet. She had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia +had paid her the compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would +not grieve him to see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable +yet adroit diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, +and who had a passion for philandering--unlike Count Landrassy, who +had no inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct +attack in great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the +dead years when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his +existence, they understood each other without words. + +"It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding +her with almost painful intensity. + +"Do you trust me--now--again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and +her small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, +whose eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration. + +A mournful smile stole to his lips--and stayed. "Come where we can be +quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe." + +"I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room +again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think +he ought to sleep now"; and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger +comfortable. + +When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear +the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says +she's a fair wonder." + +"We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is +just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly." + +"Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed. + +"Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk +undisturbed." + +They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors +and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of +secret triumph. + +"We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they +entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between +her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her. + +"He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room +enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the +fire. + +Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing +into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful +enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened +with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on +his face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made +dear by the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low +exclamation of wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, +turning to her as though from some vision that had chained him, he saw +the glow in her eyes, the profound interest, which was like the +passion of a spirit moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as +in the years gone by--he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of +himself he had now given his very life into her hands, was making her +privy to great designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the +chancelleries of Europe. + +Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his +shoulder. "It is wonderful--wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help +you. Will let you let me win back your trust--Ian?" + +"I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last +turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally." + +"It shall be life," she said, softly. + +He turned slowly from her and went towards the door. + +"Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened--"before I drive to the +station for Al'mah?" + +He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the +corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought +Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said. + +"He did," was the reply. + +"Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his +glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added. + +"Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of +wonder. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +"I WILL NOT SING" + + + +"I will not sing--it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid +with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in +determination. Her words came with low vehemence. + +Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing +and gentle. + +"Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred +people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear +you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement." + +"I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep--you +understand!" she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do +what I please with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the +morning. I sang before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," +she added, with bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng +shall not be my paying hostess." + +Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with +excitement. "I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said +helplessly and with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do +that kind of thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a +social standpoint, it isn't well-bred." + +"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry +disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the +washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in +manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile +Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?" + +"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a +desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous +mood. Only once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air +charged with catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at +nothing a dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking +indigestion." + +Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of +humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained. + +"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with +a jerk of her shoulders, turned away. + +"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What +has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; +now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--" + +She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of +passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up +close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes. + +"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly. + +His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her +inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" +he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice. + +"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady +voice. "Nothing. But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me +suddenly, at dinner, as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had +never before seen you in surroundings like these. But I realized you +then: I had a revelation. You need not ask me what it was. I do not +know quite. I cannot tell. It is all vague, but it is startling, and +it has gone through my heart like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell +you quite calmly, that if you prove to be what, for the first time, I +have a vision you are, I shall never look upon your face again if I +can help it. If I come to know that you are false in nature and in +act, that all you have said to me is not true, that you have degraded +me-- Oh," she fiercely added, breaking off and speaking with infinite +anger and scorn--"it was only love, honest and true, however mistaken, +which could make what has been between us endurable in my eyes! What I +have thought was true love, and its true passion, helped me to forget +the degradation and the secret shame--only the absolute honesty of +that love could make me forget. But suppose I find it only imitation; +suppose I see that it is only selfishness, only horrible, ugly +self-indulgence; suppose you are a man who plays with a human soul! If +I find that to be so, I tell you I shall hate you; and I shall hate +myself; but I shall hate you more--a thousand times more." + +She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror +in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of +sullen fire. + +"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this +later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I +will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--" + +"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I +had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It +left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a +moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of +Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come +back. Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something +whispers, 'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to +anything or anybody.'" + +He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great +sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things +seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always +responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be +tragical. He essayed the old way now. + +"This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are +mad. Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I +always was to you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and +your friend. I'll talk it all over with you later. It's impossible +now. They're ready for you in the ball-room. The accompanist is +waiting. Do, do, do be reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late." + +A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther +away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me +'afterwards--late.' No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am +natural, I am true, I hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I +do not hide my head in the sands. I have given, because I chose to +give, and I made and make no presences to myself. I answer to myself, +and I do not play false with the world or with you. Whatever I am the +world can know, for I deceive no one, and I have no fears. But +you--oh, why, why is it I feel now, suddenly, that you have the strain +of the coward in you! Why it comes to me now I do not know; but it is +here"--she pressed her hand tremblingly to her heart--"and I will not +act as though it wasn't here. I'm not of this world." + +She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that +lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and +lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others--all +unreal, unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to +act in our own lives, but to be true--real and true. For one's own +life as well as one's work to be all grease-paint--no, no, no. I have +hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing +to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or +pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin--" + +"The sin of an angel--" + +She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more +from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before? + +"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued. + +"And you don't believe it now?" + +"To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I +shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their +minds or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing +helplessness. "But we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go +back to London. I am going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that +I am not well enough to sing--and indeed I am not well," she added, +huskily. "I am sick at heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched +and angry and dangerous--and bad." + +Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is +Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?" + +He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He +was kept at the mine. There's trouble--a strike. He was needed. He has +great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard +Mrs. Byng say why he had not returned." + +"No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted--I want to see +him. When will he be back?" + +"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel +about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in +there, a hundred of the best people of the county--" + +"The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted, +sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me +well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at +last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell +Mrs. Byng so." + +Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another +voice, a pleasant voice, which said: + +"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite +right.... Fellowes, won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be +there in five minutes?" + +It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, +and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a +scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be +better arranged by a third disinterested person. + +After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, +Fellowes disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark +inquisition. Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of +malice. Did this elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had +to do was to speak, and she would succumb to his blandishment? He +should see. + +He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair. + +"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she +remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the +chair, nevertheless. + +"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of +the five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world." + +"I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a +protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself. + +"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that +low, soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one +chancellerie of Europe. . . . "What are you going to sing to-night?" +he added. + +"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I +said to Mr. Fellowes." + +"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely +you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to +me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!" + +His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the +instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his +assumption of dominancy had its advantage. + +"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same +thing. I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately. + +"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is +a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the +five," he added, looking at his watch. + +"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her +firm lips did not soften. + +He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be +final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. + +"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine +that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that +ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down +there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and +this is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my +life, do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something +quite big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you +had let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give +them drink." + +"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution +slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her. + +"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between +ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as +it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on +humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a +service--" + +"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it +as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he +saved me from the flames, and since then--" + +Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a +far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised +some one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he +should hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--" + +"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from +her face and leaving a strange softness behind it. + +"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. He's +an original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what you have +done for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any humiliation not to +disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over his +disappointment--he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, and +he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's +essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much +pain you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your +little voice oh, madame la cantatrice?" + +Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. +"I've been upset and angry and disturbed--and I don't know what," she +said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once +in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." . . . She +stopped and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in +her eyes. "You are very understanding and gentle--and sensible," she +added, with brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for +Rudyard Byng and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever +diplomatist." She gave a spasmodic laugh. + +"Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said +you'd sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way." + +He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he +hurried her to the ball-room. + +Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to +that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds +and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she +sang. + +Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well--with so +much feeling and an artist's genius-- not even that night of all when +she made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past +hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with +thrilling power the story of a soul. + +Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there +came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, +enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned +towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the +light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, +after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's +memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the +audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone +before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great +chamber. Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the +song, and the soft night filled its soul with melody. + +A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly +of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were +those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide +of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now +flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the +strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World. + +Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of +Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child +lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the +misery of that time swept over her--its rebellion, its hideous fear, +its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, +now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her +then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her +own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound +save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke +back their tears. + +Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more +grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly +up the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were +sunken and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow +voice: + +"At the mine--an accident. The Baas he go down to save--he not come +up." + +With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her +in an instant. + +"The Baas--the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the +horses--come." + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE BAAS + + +There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had +been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was +it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes +all men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful +body, to produce other men who will in due days return to the same +great mother to rest and be still? It mattered little whether +malevolence had planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident +alone had been responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, +woebegone women wrung their hands, and haggard, determined men stood +by with bowed heads, ready to offer their lives to save those other +lives far down below, if so be it were possible. + +The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars +and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night +and darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre +was travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made +beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities +of progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque +country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, +and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a +cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, +fed by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and +level-headed labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and +threatening; then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some +foolishness on the part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening +the field, adding bitterness profound to the discontent and strife. + +Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the +struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its +dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in +South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be +the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to +the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had +given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had +been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had +afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carying +it better than any. + +If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a +settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had +it not been for a collision between a government official and a +miners' leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, +when Byng had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the +quarrel. He had laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest +and threats of violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking +heavily--but without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and +there, mostly among the men themselves, talking to them in little +groups, arguing simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and +figures, quietly showing them the economic injustice which lay behind +their full demands, and suggesting compromises. + +He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was +"class against class--labour against capital, the man against the +master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not +man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some +were disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort +as that sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained +obstinate. The most that he did during the long afternoon and evening +was to prevent the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a +miner's kitchen, there came the explosion: the accident or +crime--which, like the lances in an angry tumour, let out the fury, +enmity, and rebellion, and gave human nature its chance again. The +shock of the explosion had been heard at Glencader, but nothing was +thought of it, as there had been much blasting in the district for +days. + +"There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the +news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups +running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as +curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on +the lower levels with life on the higher plateaux. + +Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against +the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade +him, he took his place with two miners with the words: + +"I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there +knowing the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so +lower away, lads." + +He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last +there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead +bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did +not come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the +places of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril +of falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men +were rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the +surface and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose +husbands or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without +time to strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left +below, and these were brothers who had married but three months +before. They were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just +begun, and home still welcome and alluring--warm-faced, bonny women to +meet them at the door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and +cheer them away to work in the morning. These four lovers had been the +target for the good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the +whole field; for the twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two +peas, and their wives were cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, +and estate. These twin toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng +forcing his way to the place where they had worked. With him was one +other miner of great courage and knowledge, who had gone with other +rescue parties in other catastrophes. + +It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small +explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the +rescuer of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and +imprisoned near a spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed. + +Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, +Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian +Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, +stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans +that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they +had not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking +miner, called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in +command. His look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on +whom you could rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable +expression. Behind him were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their +faces showing nothing of that pity in their hearts which drove them to +risk all to save the lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity +and humanity? Was there also something of that perdurable cohesion of +class against class; the powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, +the shoulder-to-shoulder combination of war; the tribal fanaticism +which makes brave men out of unpromising material? Maybe something of +this element entered into the heroism which had been displayed; but +whatever the impulse or the motive, the act and the end were the +same--men's lives were in peril, and they were risking their own to +rescue them. + +When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself +to the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing +Brengyn approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart +miner a leader of men. + +"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose +white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with +courage. There was something akin in the expression of her face and +that of other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood +apart, some with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst +with regnant resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so +much more poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the +weariness of labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the +same look in them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this +communion of suffering and danger. + +"Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where +they are, but--" + +"You think they are--dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice. + +"I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring +them out. It's more lives to be wasted." + +Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a +thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, +Mr. Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you." + +Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to +say?" he asked, gloomily. + +"I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I +was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you +about mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've +been down, I know." + +Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," +he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, +and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is +taking it on?" + +"I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward. + +"I--I," answered three other men of the house-party. + +Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on +Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart +almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer? + +Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes +dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to +himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games +of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always. + +Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a +weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been +suddenly emptied. + +Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his +eyes. "There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How +many gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!" he added, as +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded. + +Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was +happening. But presently she understood that there was one near, owing +everything to her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save +him--on the thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken. + +"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at +Adrian Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame. + +Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who +sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty +shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he +asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?" + +Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's +back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which +filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the +men. + +"Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's +only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a +small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--"here, Jim +Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, +no," he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no +missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small +places, and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said +to Stafford--" if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a +try. You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was +set. + +"You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say." + +"My word goes?" + +"Right. Your word goes. Let's get on." + +Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth +laid a hand on her arm. + +"He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered. + +Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to +Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside +Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth. + +Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the +chances are?" he asked in a low tone. + +"Go to--bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice +was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left +behind. Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded +to Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the +white feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of +class his own class had suffered. + +"Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em +comfortable. You've got a gift that way." + +Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit +and watched the preparations for the descent. + +Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so +bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on +the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though +wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of +ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the +valley. All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the +valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled +life--that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck +terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when +it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, +discontented toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, +wrapped in a warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and +waited also, she seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was +being worked out in these labour-centres where, between capital and +the work of men's hands, there was so apparent a gulf of +disproportionate return. + +The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the +men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to +those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were +houses of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth +had gone from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and +had left everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt +to soften the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended +on the weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a +dark corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had +suddenly grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival +at Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on. + +Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by +Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved +living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men +near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried +to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy +and whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked +at her in wonder. + +Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being +of a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works +which Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich +and the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit +and great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? +Yes, there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her +husband's life was in infinite danger,--had not Brengyn said that his +chances were only one in a thousand?--death stared her savagely in the +face; yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not +afford the luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing +indolence; to whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them +into action. How well they all behaved, these society +butterflies--Jasmine, Lady Tynemouth, and the others! But what a +wonderful motherliness and impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense +did Al'mah the singing-woman show! + +Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people +felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every +motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work +of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the +valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming +hair and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the +hills to the deep woods, insane with grief and woe. + +Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the +coverings from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for +in her life she had loved two men who had trampled on her +self-respect, had shattered all her pride of life, had made her +ashamed to look the world in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been +despicable and cruel, a liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen +the man to whom she had given all that was left of her heart and faith +disgrace himself and his class before the world by a cowardice which +no woman could forgive. + +Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to +prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the +respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the +moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken +him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in +a few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done. + +About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage +where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous +operation, she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, +whose peace had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that +distracted waif of the world, fleeing from the pain of life. + +An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees +against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light. + +"No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing +for me--nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast +in pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star +caught her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness +stole over her. + +"My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered. + +Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, +the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with +sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she +thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe +him--ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he +had only been a man to-night--" + +At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's +mouth--a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past +her. One was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering +her cloak around her Al'mah sped after them. + +A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward +it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way +for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild +murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from +the tower of a mosque--a resonant monotony, in which a dominant +principle cries. + +A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, +gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride. + +Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies +carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men +whom fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them +were the young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured +endearments grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried +Rudyard Byng, who could command the less certain concentration of a +heart. The men whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater +wealth, a more precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of +the interests of these workers were limited, but their souls were +commingled with other souls bound to them by the formalities; and +every minute of their days, every atom of their forces, were moving +round one light, the light upon the hearthstone. These men were +carried ahead of Byng now, as though by the ritual of nature taking +their rightful place in life's procession before him. + +Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was +an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the +tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in +part, the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there +was, too, a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her +heart,--pity for Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly +even to her own soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of +inevitableness, of the continuance of things which she was too weak to +alter. + +Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as +she walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office +near by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a +tall figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two +dark eyes were turned towards her ever and anon. + +Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that +was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have +saved Rudyard--you, Ian," it said. + +With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the +manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my +life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you." + +"I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's +emotions. The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness +in its train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their +eyes or feeling a flush in their cheeks. + +To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were +restored to them. + +"Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast +and nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye." + +That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down +his life for his friend--and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two +rescued men were in one sense--young socialists--enemies to the +present social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the +aristocrat and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their +hands in the same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same +sense of elementary justice, pity, courage, and love. + +"Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own--to their +capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was +theirs, complete and paying large dividends. + +To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim +Gawley, he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it +prime. We couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng +as had sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; +an' there was Mr. Stafford--him--" pointing to Ian, who, with misty +eyes, was watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit +better nor any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank +their stars that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done +my duty, I hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done +more--Mr. Byng and Mr. Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads--no, this +ain't a time for cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands." + +His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as +old as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same. + +The strike was over--at a price too big for human calculation; but it +might have been bigger still. + +Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and +waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his +feet and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to +the darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep +as in that of the singing-woman. + +"Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily. + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WORLD WELL LOST + + +People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived +before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were +in the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, +and the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and +otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high +command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of +title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels +of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; +high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or +commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of +contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic +amateurs who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian +auxiliary to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a +home of convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing +for chance of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, +good for anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit +by hard riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical +culture, that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was +going. + +Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation +and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he +was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there +almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see +Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see +M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house, +but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable +restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been +difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the +lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman +and to diplomacy. + +Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning +the ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information +as to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also +so constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to +Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less +dangerous than impressionable. + +In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for +beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost +unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked +preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from +Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, +however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking +pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once +became possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all +others in London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a +kind that stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily +dulled by dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but +there was in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through +it the material became alive, buoyant and magnetic. + +Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her +she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was +keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real +power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled +and well-disciplined adroitness and evasions. + +Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to +intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of +rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he +allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery +inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its +ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international +relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which +might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of +international attachments not unlike treachery. + +Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of +M. Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no +intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him +strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, +but the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully +protects a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away +from it; which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive +women into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if +they climb at all. + +He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a +great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at +the Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude +for his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a +passing effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of +making light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their +case an evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it +all. If they had been less rich, if their house had been small, if +their acquaintances had been fewer, if . . . + +It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with +the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his +success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been +obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got +beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life +itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged +her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had +changed, and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was +now a dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy +circumstances, might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all +served to twist her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she +was engaged in a game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the +thread of sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she +started aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the +deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home +life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of +the chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring +kept her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure. + +Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing +Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of +her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new +intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and +thrived. Ian scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between +them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with +another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such +deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They +both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret +knowledge and a pact of mutual silence and purpose. + +"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been +able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had +turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with +him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose +influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there +still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the +removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would +be secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that +case Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office +itself, or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that +splendid sphere. + +"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near +reality as her own deceived soul could permit. + +With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in +which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied: + +"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and +you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of +youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of +hope. I feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood +tree, and--" + +"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a +little laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen +them. They were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a +fever devouring the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate +or tragedy behind. + +Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her +eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned +his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions +marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of +vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he +gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, +with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition +smothered him. + +But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near +the end of the journey." + +"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered +her eyes, and then raised them again to his. + +The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any +one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he +had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable +force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping +him as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had +reached the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by +thread, the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the +best as the worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land +enchanted--for a brief moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a +veil of plague over the scene of beauty, passion, and madness. + +Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body +swayed slightly towards him. + +With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms +and buried his face in the soft harvest of her +hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine, my love!" he murmured. + +Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not +done. I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such +pay." + +He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It +stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, +I--" + +He drew her closer. + +"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell +me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not +only because--" + +He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. " It belonged at first +to what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for +good or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing." + +She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting +joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter." + +He looked at her questioningly. + +"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched +her arms up joyously, radiantly. + +"The world well lost!" she cried. + +Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which +intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole +being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment +in daring draughts of it. + +"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers. + +Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to +his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had +won back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its +millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and +skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers +again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for +this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her +will had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was +possible to mortal pleasure. + +Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a +new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon +the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no +abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those +joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and +the mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable. + +A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones +like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts +that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in +peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded. + +Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical +change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a +servant now entered with a note. + +Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of +excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was +sufficient. + +"Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into +his hands. + + "Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The +Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be +ratified. May I dine with you to-night? + + "Yours, M. + + "P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our +young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.' + + "M." + +"Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater +thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can +do our work without interference." + +"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was +clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during +the past few moments. + +Then he clasped her in his arms again. + +As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain +putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this +international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had +written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine +with you to-night? . . . M." + +His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in +the tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and +humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this +intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the +philanderer. His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns. + +A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He +carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction. + +"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We +will clinch it instantly. Let us have the code." + +As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, +dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger +may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, +for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I +wonder how Landrassy will take it." + +He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a +better one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," +he added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to +clinch it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives." + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE COMING OF THE BAAS + + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" + +Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the +doorway. "Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the +faithful, loyal offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of +the Baas.... For God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled +with an oath, and, snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw +the contents at the half-caste. + +Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the +face. Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his +cheeks, his eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry +Whalen and the scene before him. + +The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation +pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was +thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs +of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were +everywhere. Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct +satisfied for the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; +and the tables where they had sat were in a state of disorder more +suggestive of a "dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor +Square. + +No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the +establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host +and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De +Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he +was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by +being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous +to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was +hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of +that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and +his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance--save when he had +his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of +murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it +was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within +these walls "between drinks." + +The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or +the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at +which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer +took away a pocketful of gold--partly fee. Only a few of all the +group, great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves +against possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward +anxiety, because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, +for the wise act and the manoevre that would win. + +Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both +elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but +he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he +had, in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a +banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, +Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a +good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them--not without +some truth--valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the +early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to +most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their +general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose. + +Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any +real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a +doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health +fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, +and the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, +from his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the +day when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at +Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, +and Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the +gallows for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly +resented the change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had +gripped the situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, +giving as much help to the government of the day as to his colleagues +and all British folk on the Rand. + +But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this +time. The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng +was not the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour +at the Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain +physical degeneracy--he had been too slow in recovering from the few +bad hours spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still +consulted him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; +but secret as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not +so secret that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of +Jasmine, financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful +of his influence, did their best to present him in the worst light +possible. It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his +wine, and that his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times +was not in keeping with the English climate, but belonged to lands of +drier weather and more absorptive air. + +"What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool +dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his +pocket. The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own +glasses, and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their +eyes. + +"Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle +of coins followed. + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the +doorway. + +"Gone--went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What +is it, Krool?" + +"The Baas--" + +"The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is +gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at +Lichtenburg." + +Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry +Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," +he said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom." + +He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his +body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his +teeth showing like those of a wolf. + +"The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will +have your heart--and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved +into the darkness without, closing the door behind him. + +A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the +weird utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the +gamblers suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half +furtively at one another. + +The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered. + +"Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the +green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though +by common consent. + +"Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with +irritation. "What's the sense in saying things like that to a +servant?" + +"How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I +didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you--to +any of you?" + +"Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen. + +"And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the +Rand had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but +this not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the +directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination +of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into +the hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him +into--what he was. + +"Yes, Byng thed good-night to me--deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so +damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to +me." + +"Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up +his arms and yawning. + +"Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier," +interposed De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice. + +"Why?" growled out Barry Whalen. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was +the slow reply. + +For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though +some one had heard what had been said--some one who ought not to have +heard. + +That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had +started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at +twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the +cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into +a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw +himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South +Africa must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an +ultimatum before the British government was ready to act; and that +preparations must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and +consequences. Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from +day to day, and what had been arranged yesterday morning required +modification this evening. + +He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the +gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be +alone. Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged +by Jasmine, though he liked to be with her--liked so much to be with +her, and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside +her. This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with +her, to dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find +that she had arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh +he had begged her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual +depression, he had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De +Lancy Scovel's house. + +Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were +walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden +his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet +inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked +excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell +like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment +wrong. Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his +attitude toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a +warmth which more than surprised them. It was as though he was +subconsciously aware of some great impending change. It may be there +whispered through the clouded space that lies between the +dwelling-house of Fate and the place where a man's soul lives the +voice of that Other Self, which every man has, warning him of +darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak coming on. + +However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had +drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly +heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had +fallen asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room. + +Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble +or our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy +Scovel said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much +earlier." + +Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring--just a wide opening +of the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new +sense of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his +friends talked loudly in his very ears. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm." + +His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the +moment's silence following these suggestive words. + +"Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the +stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after +ourselves, and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us." + +"But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us +but 'd put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature +to sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going +right for him in the place where things matter most. + +"Can't he see? Doesn't he see--anything?" asked a little wizened +lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of +three of their great companies. + +"See--of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell--at least," +replied Barry Whalen, scornfully. + +"He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming. + +"He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower--wrong for +him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name +is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism. + +"They they there's no doubt about it--she's throwing herself +away. Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed +Clifford Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen." Diplomathy is all +very well, but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He +laughed as only one of his kidney can laugh. + +Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was +standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat +in every muscle. + +"Shut up--curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to +cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got +to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is +Byng--before the world. We've got to help him--got to help him, I +say." + +"Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," +interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's +asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing." + +"And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, +acidly. "One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can +put it right." + +No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to +say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for +the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the +silence. + +De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards +the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all +stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little +room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared. + +For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did +not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make +way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway. + +At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, +impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips +opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of +their sight. + +No one followed. They knew their man. + +"My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at +the table, with his head between his hands. + +The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De +Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the +night remorsefully. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? + + +Slowly, heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through +the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some +engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and +lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his +humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was +not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been +essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized +surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to +come into his own--the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His +powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big +essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had +little intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the +situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly +paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its +punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it +were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance +of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever +been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their +married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to +it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her--that +freshness of mind and body, that resilience of temper and spirit, +without which all talk is travail and weariness? He had never thought +it out, though he was dimly conscious of some great loss--of the light +gone from the evening sky. + +Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his +girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial +stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and +turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had +really been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine +had made it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was +the product of her taste and design. It had been home because it was +associated with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to +South Africa without her the year before--there had come a change, at +first almost imperceptible, then broadening and deepening. + +At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a +feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which +they saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other +people. His primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not +bitterly, but confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it +was; and he thought that if he had patience he would come to +understand it in time. But the understanding did not come, and on that +ominous, prophetic day before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian +Stafford had dined with Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent +Street, there had been a wild, aching protest against it all. Not +against Jasmine--he did not blame her; he only realized that she was +different from what he had thought she was; that they were both +different from what they had been; and that--the light had gone from +the evening sky. + +But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed +his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking, +intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply +never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which +he had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the +universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had +married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, +except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as +Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to +the woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and +there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not +a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration. + +Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had +involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in +the distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And +now, as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,--so +did the weight of slander drag him down--his thoughts suddenly saw a +picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was +after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives +lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the +Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in +arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face +danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open +road together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where +the great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a +stray lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on +alone to a spot in the Matoppos, since made famous and sacred. + +Where John Cecil Rhodes sleeps on that high plateau of convex hollow +stone, with the great natural pillars standing round like sentinels, +and all the rugged unfinished hills tumbling away to an unpeopled +silence, he came that time to rest his sorrowing soul. The woods, the +wild animal life, had been left behind, and only a peaceful middle +world between God and man greeted his stern eyes. + +Now, here in London, at that corner where the lonely white statue +stands by Londonderry House, as he moved in a dream of pain, with vast +weights like giant manacles hampering every footstep, inwardly raging +that into his sweet garden of home the vile elements of slander had +been thrown, yet with a terrible and vague fear that something had +gone terribly wrong with him, that far-off day spent at the Matoppos +flashed upon his sight. + +Through streets upon streets he had walked, far, far out of his way, +subconsciously giving himself time to recover before he reached his +home; until the green quiet of Hyde Park, the soft depths of its empty +spaces, the companionable and commendable trees, greeted his +senses. Then, here, suddenly there swam before his eyes the bright sky +over those scarred and jagged hills beyond the Matoppos, purple and +grey, and red and amethyst and gold, and his soul's sight went out +over the interminable distance of loneliness and desolation which only +ended where the world began again, the world of fighting men. He saw +once more that tumbled waste of primeval creation, like a crazed sea +agitated by some Horror underneath, and suddenly transfixed in its +plunging turmoil--a frozen concrete sorrow, with all active pain +gone. He heard the loud echo of his feet upon that hollow plateau of +rock, with convex skin of stone laid upon convex skin, and then +suddenly the solid rock which gave no echo under his tread, where +Rhodes lies buried. He saw all at once, in the shining horizon at +different points, black, angry, marauding storms arise and roar and +burst: while all the time above his head there was nothing but sweet +sunshine, into which the mists of the distant storms drifted, and +rainbows formed above him. Upon those hollow rocks the bellow of the +storms was like the rumbling of the wheels of a million gun-carriages; +and yet high overhead there were only the bright sun and faint drops +of rain falling like mystic pearls. + +And then followed--he could hear it again, so plainly, as his eyes now +sought the friendly shades of the beeches and the elms yonder in Hyde +Park!--upon the air made denser by the storm, the call of a lonely +bird from one side of the valley. The note was deep and strong and +clear, like the bell-bird of the Australian salt-bush plains beyond +the Darling River, and it rang out across the valley, as though a soul +desired its mate; and then was still. A moment, and there came across +the valley from the other side, stealing deep sweetness from the +hollow rocks, the answer of the bird which had heard her master's +call. Answering, she called too, the viens ici of kindred things; and +they came nearer and nearer and nearer, until at last their two voices +were one. + +In that wild space there had been worked out one of the great wonders +of creation, and under the dim lamps of Park Lane, in his black, +shocked mood, Rudyard recalled it all by no will of his own. Upon his +eye and brain the picture had been registered, and in its appointed +time, with an automatic suggestion of which he was ignorant and +innocent, it came to play its part and to transform him. + +The thought of it all was like a cool hand laid upon his burning +brow. It gave him a glimpse of the morning of life. + +The light was gone from the evening sky: but was it gone forever? + +As he entered his house now he saw upon a Spanish table in the big +hall a solitary bunch of white roses--a touch of simplicity in an area +of fine artifice. Regarding it a moment, black thoughts receded, and +choosing a flower from the vase he went slowly up the stairs to +Jasmine's room. + +He would give her this rose as the symbol of his faith and belief in +her, and then tell her frankly what he had heard at De Lancy Scovel's +house. + +For the moment it did not occur to him that she might not be at +home. It gave him a shock when he opened the door and found her room +empty. On her bed, like a mesh of white clouds, lay the soft linen and +lace and the delicate clothes of the night; and by the bed were her +tiny blue slippers to match the blue dressing-gown. Some gracious +things for morning wear hung over a chair; an open book with a little +cluster of violets and a tiny mirror lay upon a table beside a sofa; a +footstool was placed at a considered angle for her well-known seat on +the sofa where the soft-blue lamp-shade threw the light upon her book; +and a little desk with dresden-china inkstand and penholder had little +pockets of ribbon-tied letters and bills--even business had an air of +taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a +large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward +the pillow where she would lay her head. + +How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the +room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first +time. There was another photograph of himself on her +dressing-table. It had no companion there; but on another table near +were many photographs; four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, +old friends like Ian Stafford--and M. Mennaval. + +His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his +veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers +clinched. + +Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, +Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, +but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held +in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over +to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid +the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to +the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged, +his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he +laid with the rose on her pillow. + +As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat +of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue +slippers, blue dressing-gown--all blue, the colour in which he had +first seen her. + +Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the +picture followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face +suddenly darkened it. + +"You not ring, Baas," Krool said. + +Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury +in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so? + +"Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed. + +Krool returned. + +"Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at +midnight, as I told you?" + +"Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, +Baas. There the cable--two." He pointed to the dressing-table. + +Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them. + +One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The +code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words. + +They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and +that the worst must be faced. + +He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, +covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny. + +"That will do, Krool; wake me at seven," he said, quietly, but with +suppressed malice in his tone. + +Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by +the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he +had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool--without +reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had +whispered something to his mind about Krool--something terrible and +malign? + +In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine +till the morning. How late she was! It was one o'clock, and yet this +was not the season. She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the +months of late parties. + +As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, +Krool's face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, +ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep. + +Perhaps the most troubled moment of the night came an hour after he +went to bed. + +Then it was that a face bent over him for a minute, a fair face, with +little lines contracting the ripe lips, which were redder than usual, +with eyes full of a fevered brightness. But how harmonious and sweetly +ordered was the golden hair above! Nothing was gone from its lustre, +nothing robbed it of its splendour. It lay upon her forehead like a +crown. In its richness it seemed a little too heavy for the tired face +beneath, almost too imperial for so slight and delicate a figure. + +Rudyard stirred in his sleep, murmuring as she leaned over him; and +his head fell away from her hand as she stretched out her fingers with +a sudden air of pity--of hopelessness, as it might seem from her +look. His face restlessly turned to the wall--a vexed, stormy, anxious +face and head, scarred by the whip of that overlord more cruel and +tyrannous than Time, the Miserable Mind. + +She drew back with a little shudder. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, as she +had said that evening when Ian Stafford came to her after the +estranging and scornful years, and she had watched Rudyard leave +her--to her fate and to her folly. + +"Poor Ruddy!" + +With a sudden frenzied motion of her hands she caught her breath, as +though some pain had seized her. Her eyes almost closed with the shame +that reached out from her heart, as though to draw the veil of her +eyelids over the murdered thing before her--murdered hope, slaughtered +peace: the peace of that home they had watched burn slowly before +their eyes in the years which the locust had eaten. + +Which the locust had eaten--yes, it was that. More than once she had +heard Rudyard tell of a day on the veld when the farmer surveyed his +abundant fields with joy, with the gay sun flaunting it above; and +suddenly there came a white cloud out of the west, which made a weird +humming, a sinister sound. It came with shining scales glistening in +the light and settled on the land acre upon acre, morgen upon morgen; +and when it rose again the fields, ready for the harvest, were like a +desert--the fields which the locust had eaten. So had the years been, +in which Fortune had poured gold and opportunity and unlimited choice +into her lap. She had used them all; but she had forgotten to look for +the Single Secret, which, like a key, unlocks all doors in the House +of Happiness. + +"Poor Ruddy!" she said, but even as she said it for the second time a +kind of anger seemed to seize her. + +"Oh, you fool--you fool!" she whispered, fiercely. "What did you know +of women! Why didn't you make me be good? Why didn't you master +me--the steel on the wrist--the steel on the wrist!" + +With a little burst of misery and futile rage she went from the room, +her footsteps uneven, her head bent. One of the open letters she +carried dropped from her hand onto the floor of the hall outside. She +did not notice it. But as she passed inside her door a shadowy figure +at the end of the hall watched her, saw the letter drop, and moved +stealthily forward towards it. It was Krool. + +How heavy her head was! Her worshipping maid, near dead with fatigue, +watched her furtively, but avoided the eyes in the mirror which had a +half-angry look, a look at once disturbed and elated, reckless and +pitiful. Lablanche was no reader of souls, but there was something +here beyond the usual, and she moved and worked with unusual +circumspection and lightness of touch. Presently she began to unloose +the coils of golden hair; but Jasmine stopped her with a gesture of +weariness. + +"No, don't," she said. "I can't stand your touch tonight, +Lablanche. I'll do the rest myself. My head aches so. Good-night." + +"I will be so light with it, madame," Lablanche said, protestingly. + +"No, no. Please go. But the morning, quite early." + +"The hour, madame?" + +"When the letters come, as soon as the letters come, Lablanche--the +first post. Wake me then." + +She watched the door close, then turned to the mirror in front of her +and looked at herself with eyes in which brooded a hundred thoughts +and feelings: thoughts contradictory, feelings opposed, imaginings +conflicting, reflections that changed with each moment; and all under +the spell of a passion which had become in the last few hours the most +powerful influence her life had ever known. Right or wrong, and it was +wrong, horribly wrong; wise or unwise, and how could the wrong be +wise! she knew she was under a spell more tyrannous than death, +demanding more sacrifices than the gods of Hellas. + +Self-indulgent she had been, reckless and wilful and terribly modern, +taking sweets where she found them. She had tried to squeeze the +orange dry, in the vain belief that Wealth and Beauty can take what +they want, when they want it, and that happiness will come by +purchase; only to find one day that the thing you have bought, like a +slave that revolts, stabs you in your sleep, and you wake with +wide-eyed agony only to die, or to live--with the light gone from the +evening sky. + +Suddenly, with the letters in her hand with which she had entered the +room, she saw the white rose on her pillow. Slowly she got up from the +dressing-table and went over to the bed in a hushed kind of way. With +a strange, inquiring, half-shrinking look she regarded the flower. One +white rose. It was not there when she left. It had been brought from +the hall below, from the great bunch on the Spanish table. Those white +roses, this white rose, had come from one who, selfish as he was, knew +how to flatter a woman's vanity. From that delicate tribute of +flattery and knowledge Rudyard had taken this flowering stem and +brought it to her pillow. + +It was all too malevolently cynical. Her face contracted in pain and +shame. She had a soul to which she had never given its chance. It had +never bloomed. Her abnormal wilfulness, her insane love of pleasure, +her hereditary impulses, had been exercised at the expense of the +great thing in her, the soul so capable of memorable and beautiful +deeds. + +As she looked at the flower, a sense of the path by which she had +come, of what she had left behind, of what was yet to chance, +shuddered into her heart. + +That a flower given by Adrian Fellowes should be laid upon her pillow +by her husband, by Rudyard Byng, was too ghastly or too devilishly +humorous for words; and both aspects of the thing came to her. Her +face became white, and almost mechanically she put the letters she +held on a writing-table near; then coming to the bed again she looked +at the rose with a kind of horror. Suddenly, however, she caught it +up, and bursting into a laugh which was shrill and bitter she threw it +across the room. Still laughing hysterically, with her golden hair +streaming about her head, folding her round like a veil which reached +almost to her ankles, she came back to the chair at the dressing-table +and sat down. + +Slowly drawing the wonderful soft web of hair over her shoulders, she +began to weave it into one wide strand, which grew and grew in length +till it was like a great rope of spun gold. Inch by inch, foot by foot +it grew, until at last it lay coiled in her lap like a golden serpent, +with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must +have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is--or was--in +Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her +hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her +horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as +she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon +with which she had tied the shining rope. + +With the mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she +held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that +it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her +fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again--a low and +discordant laugh it was now. + +"Such imaginings--I think I must be mad," she murmured. + +Then she leaned her elbows on the dressing-table and looked at herself +in the glass. + +"Am I not mad?" she asked herself again. Then there stole across her +face a strange, far-away look, bringing a fresh touch of beauty to it, +and flooding it for a moment with that imaginative look which had been +her charm as a girl, a look of far-seeing and wonder and strange +light. + +"I wonder--if I had had a mother!" she said, wistfully, her chin in +her hand. "If my mother had lived, what would I have been?" + +She reached out to a small table near, and took from it a miniature at +which she looked with painful longing. "My dear, my very dear, you +were so sweet, so good," she said. "Am I your daughter, your own +daughter--me? Ah, sweetheart mother, come back to me! For God's sake +come--now. Speak to me if you can. Are you so very far away? +Whisper--only whisper, and I shall hear. + +"Oh, she would, she would, if she could!" her voice wailed, softly. +"She would if she could, I know. I was her youngest child, her only +little girl. But there is no coming back. And maybe there is no going +forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops--all stops, for +ever and ever and ever, amen! . . .Amen--so be it. Ah, I even can't +believe in that! I can't even believe in God and Heaven and the +hereafter. I am a pagan, with a pagan's heart and a pagan's ways." + +She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment. "Ruddy had a +glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back. Ruddy said +to me that day, 'If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers.' . . . And it is true--by all the gods of all +the worlds, it is true. Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared +for--pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower. And Ian--and Ian, yes, +Ian! I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not +true." + +She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a +great burning. + +"But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even! I wonder.... Not +then, not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now--now? +Do--do I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, +or is it only beauty and pleasure and--me? . . . Are they really happy +who believe in God and live like--like her?' She gazed at her mother's +portrait again. "Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then +she was gone--so soon. And I shall never see her, I who never saw her +with eyes that recall.... And if I could see her, would I? I am a +pagan--would I try to be like her, if I could? I never really prayed, +because I never truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and +that was all soul and understanding. And what is to come of it, or +what will become of me? . . . I can't go back, and going on is +madness. Yes, yes, it is madness, I know--madness and badness--and +dust at the end of it all. Beauty gone, pleasure gone.... I do not +even love pleasure now as I did. It has lost its flavour; and I do not +even love beauty as I did. How well I know it! I used to climb hills +to see a sunset; I used to walk miles to find the wood anemones and +the wild violets; I used to worship a pretty child . . . a pretty +child!" + +She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly. "A pretty +child.... Other people's pretty children, and music and art and trees +and the sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild +animals . . and a pretty child. I wonder, I wonder if--" + +But she got no farther with that thought. "I shall hate everything on +earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is +going. The freshness of sense has gone, somehow. I am not stirred as I +used to be, not by the same things. If I lose that sense I shall kill +myself. Perhaps that would be the easiest way now. Just the overdose +of--" + +She took a little phial from the drawer of the dressing-table. "Just +the tiny overdose and 'good-bye, my lover, good-bye.'" Again that hard +little laugh of bitterness broke from her. "Or that needle Mr. Mappin +had at Glencader. A thrust of the point, and in an instant gone, and +no one to know, no one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to +pile shame upon shame. Just blackness--blackness all at once, and no +light or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the +garden all withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead-- the +pretty children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were +born, that never lived in Jasmine's garden." + +As there had come to Rudyard premonition of evil, so to-night, in the +hour of triumph, when, beyond peradventure, she had got for Ian +Stafford what would make his career great, what through him gave +England security in her hour of truth, there came now to her something +of the real significance of it all. + +She had got what she wanted. Her pride had been appeased, her vanity +satisfied, her intellect flattered, her skill approved, and Ian was +hers. But the cost? + +Words from Swinburne's threnody on Baudelaire came to her mind. How +often she had quoted them for their sheer pagan beauty! It was the +kind of beauty which most appealed to her, which responded to the +element of fatalism in her, the sense of doom always with her since +she was a child, in spite of her gaiety, her wit, and her native +eloquence. She had never been happy, she had never had a real +illusion, never aught save the passion of living, the desire to +conquer unrest: + +"And now, no sacred staff shall break in blossom, +No choral salutation lure to light +The spirit sick with perfume and sweet night, +And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. +There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar +Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make Death clear or make Life durable +But still with rose and ivy and wild vine, +And with wild song about this dust of thine, +At least I fill a place where white dreams dwell, +And wreathe an unseen shrine." + +"'And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. . . . There is no +help for these things, none to mend and none to mar....'" A sob rose +in her throat. "Oh, the beauty of it, the beauty and the misery and +the despair of it!" she murmured. + +Slowly she wound and wound the coil of golden hair about her neck, +drawing it tighter, fold on fold, tighter and tighter. + +"This would be the easiest way--this," she whispered. "By my own hair! +Beauty would have its victim then. No one would kiss it any more, +because it killed a woman. . . . No one would kiss it any more." + +She felt the touch of Ian Stafford's lips upon it, she felt his face +buried in it. Her own face suffused, then Adrian Fellowes' white rose, +which Rudyard had laid upon her pillow, caught her eye where it lay on +the floor. With a cry as of a hurt animal she ran to her bed, crawled +into it, and huddled down in the darkness, shivering and afraid. + +Something had discovered her to herself for the first time. Was it her +own soul? Had her Other Self, waking from sleep in the eternal spaces, +bethought itself and come to whisper and warn and help? Or was it +Penalty, or Nemesis, or that Destiny which will have its toll for all +it gives of beauty, or pleasure, or pride, or place, or pageantry? + +"Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom"-- + +The words kept ringing in her ears. They soothed her at last into a +sleep which brought no peace, no rest or repose. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE + + +Midnight--one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Big Ben boomed the +hours, and from St. James's Palace came the stroke of the quarters, +lighter, quicker, almost pensive in tone. From St. James's Street +below came no sounds at last. The clatter of the hoofs of horses had +ceased, the rumble of drays carrying their night freights, the shouts +of the newsboys making sensation out of rumours made in a newspaper +office, had died away. Peace came, and a silver moon gave forth a soft +light, which embalmed the old thoroughfare, and added a tenderness to +its workaday dignity. In only one window was there a light at three +o'clock. It was the window of Ian Stafford's sitting-room. + +He had not left the Foreign Office till nearly ten o'clock, then had +had a light supper at his club, had written letters there, and after a +long walk up and down the Mall had, with reluctant feet, gone to his +chambers. + +The work which for years he had striven to do for England had been +accomplished. The Great Understanding was complete. In the words of +the secretary of the American Embassy, "Mennaval had delivered the +goods," and an arrangement had been arrived at, completed this very +night, which would leave England free to face her coming trial in +South Africa without fear of trouble on the flank or in the rear. + +The key was turned in the lock, and that lock had been the original +device and design of Ian Stafford. He had done a great work for +civilization and humanity; he had made improbable, if not impossible, +a European war. The Kaiser knew it, Franz Joseph knew it, the Czar +knew it; the White House knew it, and its master nodded with +satisfaction, for John Bull was waking up--"getting a move on." +America might have her own family quarrel with John Bull, but when it +was John Bull versus the world, not even James G. Blaine would have +been prepared to see the old lion too deeply wounded. Even Landrassy, +ambassador of Slavonia, had smiled grimly when he met Ian Stafford on +the steps of the Moravian Embassy. He was artist enough to appreciate +a well-played game, and, in any case, he had had done all that mortal +man could in the way of intrigue and tact and device. He had worked +the international press as well as it had ever been worked; he had +distilled poison here and rosewater there; he had again and again +baffled the British Foreign Office, again and again cut the ground +from under Ian Stafford's feet; and if he could have staved off the +pact, the secret international pact, by one more day, he would have +gained the victory for himself, for his country, for the alliance +behind him. + +One day, but one day, and the world would never have heard of Ian +Stafford. England would then have approached her conflict with the cup +of trembling at her lips, and there would be a new disposition of +power in Europe, a new dominating force in the diplomacy and the +relations of the peoples of the world. It was Landrassy's own last +battle-field of wit and scheming, of intellect and ambition. If he +failed in this, his sun would set soon. He was too old to carry on +much longer. He could not afford to wait. He was at the end of his +career, and he had meant this victory to be the crown of his long +services to Slavonia and the world. + +But to him was opposed a man who was at the beginning of his career, +who needed this victory to give him such a start as few men get in +that field of retarded rewards, diplomacy. It had been a man at the +end of the journey, and a man at the beginning, measuring skill, +playing as desperate a game as was ever played. If Landrassy +won--Europe a red battle-field, England at bay; if Ian Stafford +won--Europe at peace, England secure. Ambition and patriotism +intermingled, and only He who made human nature knew how much was pure +patriotism and how much pure ambition. It was a great stake. On this +day of days to Stafford destiny hung shivering, each hour that passed +was throbbing with unparalleled anxiety, each minute of it was to be +the drum-beat of a funeral march or the note of a Te Deum. + +Not more uncertain was the roulette-wheel spinning in De Lancy +Scovel's house than the wheel of diplomacy which Ian Stafford had set +spinning. Rouge et noire--it was no more, no less. But Ian had won; +England had won. Black had been beaten. + +Landrassy bowed suavely to Ian as they met outside Mennaval's door in +the early evening of this day when the business was accomplished, the +former coming out, the latter going in. + +"Well, Stafford," Landrassy said in smooth tones and with a jerk of +the head backward, "the tables are deserted, the croupier is going +home. But perhaps you have not come to play?" + +Ian smiled lightly. "I've come to get my winnings--as you say," he +retorted. + +Landrassy seemed to meditate pensively. "Ah yes, ah yes, but I'm not +sure that Mennaval hasn't bolted with the bank and your winnings, +too!" + +His meaning was clear--and hateful. Before Ian had a chance to reply, +Landrassy added in a low, confidential voice, saturated with sardonic +suggestion, "To tell you the truth, I had ceased to reckon with women +in diplomacy. I thought it was dropped with the Second Empire; but you +have started a new dispensation-- evidemment, evidemment. Still +Mennaval goes home with your winnings. Eh bien, we have to pay for our +game! Allons gai!" + +Before Ian could reply--and what was there to say to insult couched in +such highly diplomatic language?--Landrassy had stepped sedately away, +swinging his gold-headed cane and humming to himself. + +"Duelling had its merits," Ian said to himself, as soon as he had +recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence. "There +is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have +done, in the business of life." + +He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to +soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the +arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; +and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his +club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his +pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign +Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force. + +Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in +his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so +long ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from +the first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, +shouting to the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on +air, finding the world a good, kind place made especially for him--his +oyster to open, his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh +from the applause of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, +a gloom upon his mind. + +Victory in his great fight--and love; he had them both and so he said +to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their +comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had +helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and +so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of +water, however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success +and its value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the +love was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, +in some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing +could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at +this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could +be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while +she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean +a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a +rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just +in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must +beat in his veins till the end of all things. + +Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her +wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the +instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and +himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and +Nemesis might demand--any price save one. + +As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, +his eyes half closed with shame. + +Rudyard Byng was his friend, whose bread he had eaten, whom he had +known since they were boys at school. He remembered acutely Rudyard's +words to him that fateful night when he had dined with Jasmine +alone--"You will have much to talk about, to say to each other, such +old friends as you are." He recalled how Rudyard had left them, +trusting them, happy in the thought that Jasmine would have a pleasant +evening with the old friend who had first introduced him to her, and +that the old friend would enjoy his eager hospitality. Rudyard had +blown his friend's trumpet wherever men would listen to him; had +proclaimed Stafford as the coming man: and this was what he had done +to Rudyard! + +This was what he had done; but what did he propose to do? What of the +future? To go on in miserable intrigue, twisting the nature, making +demands upon life out of all those usual ways in which walk love and +companionship--paths that lead through gardens of poppies, maybe, but +finding grey wilderness at the end? Never, never the right to take the +loved one by the hand before all the world and say: "We two are one, +and the reckoning of the world must be made with both." Never to have +the right to stand together in pride before the wide-eyed many and +say: "See what you choose to see, say what you choose to say, do what +you choose to do, we do not care." The open sharing of worldly +success; the inner joys which the world may not see--these things +could not be for Jasmine and for him. + +Yet he loved her. Every fibre in his being thrilled to the thought of +her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness +suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened +the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing +into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with +dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented +quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, +feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a +single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable in the vast +proportions of eternity. It had only little sips of happiness to give, +not long draughts of joy. Who drank deep, long draughts--who of all +the men and women he had ever known? Who had had the primrose path +without the rain of fire, the cinders beneath the feet, the gins and +the nets spread for them? + +Yet might it not be that here and there people were permanently happy? +And had things been different, might not he and Jasmine have been of +the radiant few? He desired her above all things; he was willing to +sacrifice all--all for her, if need be; and yet there was that which +he could not, would not face. All or nothing--all or nothing. If he +must drink of the cup of sorrow and passion mixed, then it would be +from the full cup. + +With a stifled exclamation he sat down and began to write. Again and +again he stopped to think, his face lined and worn and old; then he +wrote on and on. Ambition, hope, youth, the Foreign Office, the +chancelleries of Europe, the perils of impending war, were all +forgotten, or sunk into the dusky streams of subconsciousness. One +thought dominated him. He was playing the game that has baffled all +men, the game of eluding destiny; and, like all men, he must break his +heart in the playing. + +"Jasmine," he wrote, "this letter, this first real letter of love +which I have ever written you, will tell you how great that love +is. It will tell you, too, what it means to me, and what I see before +us. To-day I surrendered to you all of me that would be worth your +keeping, if it was so that you might take and keep it. When I kissed +you, I set the seal upon my eternal offering to you. You have given me +success. It is for that I thank you with all my soul, but it is not +for that I love you. Love flows from other fountains than +gratitude. It rises from the well which has its springs at the +beginning of the world, where those beings lived who loved before +there were any gods at all, or any faiths, or any truths save the +truth of being. + +"But it is because what I feel belongs to something in me deeper than +I have ever known that, since we parted a few hours ago, I see all in +a new light. You have brought to me what perhaps could only have come +as it did--through fire and cloud and storm. I did not will it so, +indeed, I did not wish it so, as you know; but it came in spite of +all. And I shall speak to you of it as to my own soul. I want no +illusions, no self-deception, no pretense to be added to my debt to +you. With wide-open eyes I want to look at it. I know that this love +of mine for you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my +soul. And to have known it with all its misery,--for misery there must +be; misery, Jasmine, there is--to have known it, to have felt it, the +great overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it +so terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's +ambition. With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came +that which gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to +open doors which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for +me, but what have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon +me, which I must do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to +understand. + +"I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and +give myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, +I could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will +be paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable +as it would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small +enough to be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices +of intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a +thousand times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the +stress and meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you +smiled; you would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my +hungry heart. You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me +help you. Yet, Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine +long ago, even when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity +to do what, with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by +it; but it has not proved what it promised. You have not made the best +of the power into which you came, and you could not do so, because the +spring from which all the enriching waters of married life flow was +dry. Poor Jasmine--poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached +out for the golden city of the mirage! + +"But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I +must take--for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take +it--for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already +my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke +and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and +gather up the chances that are left. + +"You must come with me away--away, to start life afresh, somewhere, +somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not +return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the +world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing +that we had been at least true to each other, true at the last to the +thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because +we had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean +that I should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has +possessed me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have +done the one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the +field. I have made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It +may be I have done all I was meant to do in doing that--it may be. In +any case, the thing I did would stand as an accomplished work--it +would represent one definite and original thing; one piece of work in +design all my own, in accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go +then-- together--with only the one big violence to the conventions of +the world, and take the law into our own hands? Rudyard, who +understands Life's violence, would understand that; what he could +never understand would be perpetual artifice, unseemly +secretiveness. He himself would have been a great filibuster in the +olden days; he would have carried off the wives and daughters of the +chiefs and kings he conquered; but he would never have stolen into the +secret garden at night and filched with the hand of the +sneak-thief--never. + +"To go with me--away, and start afresh. There will be always work to +do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we +would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake +you made in not coming to me and so furfilling the old promise. To set +that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great +stroke--that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease +of that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I +seem to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone +forever, saying that you had given me gifts--success and love; and now +to go and leave you in peace. + +"Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens +for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the +strife of the soul for peace, for fruition. + +"That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now, +before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in +chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, +binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something +accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last +effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and +be lost forever--do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to +see it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton--you know +him. He is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the +necessary thing so far as the knowledge of the world is +concerned. With him, then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces +to find peace--forever. + +"You? . . . Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not +fixed, and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then +the comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things +right. Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to +you, the kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of +a great love ended--yours and mine--would help you to give what you +can give with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the +last! Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing +pulse of being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to +you in the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no +more: to some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a +great deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over +long years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may +be, in what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the +business of life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have +had my share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and +peace I can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was +not accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to +save you from the worst. But it must be the one or the other. + +"The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it +willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all +that makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and +your friend. I give you love and I give you friendship-- whatever +comes; always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est. + +"In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; +but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in +life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow. + +"Your Man, + +"IAN. + +"P.S.--I wiU come for your reply at eleven to-morrow. + +'IAN." + +He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was +lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the +Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post. When he had put the letter +inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one +carrying the mark of the Club. By accident he had brought it with the +letters written there. He hesitated a moment, then refrained from +opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and +posted all his letters. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +TO-MORROW . . . PREPARE! + + +Krool did not sleep. What he read in a letter he had found in a +hallway, what he knew of those dark events in South Africa, now to +culminate in a bitter war, and what, with the mysterious psychic +instinct of race, he divined darkly and powerfully, all kept his eyes +unsleeping and his mind disordered. More than any one, he knew of the +inner story of the Baas' vrouw during the past week and years; also he +had knowledge of what was soon to empty out upon the groaning earth +the entrails of South Africa; but how he knew was not to be +discovered. Even Rudyard, who thought he read him like a book, only +lived on the outer boundaries of his character. Their alliance was +only the durable alliance of those who have seen Death at their door, +and together have driven him back. + +Barry Whalen had regarded Krool as a spy; all Britishers who came and +went in the path to Rudyard's door had their doubts or their dislike +of him; and to every servant of the household he was a dark and +isolated figure. He never interfered with the acts of his +fellow-servants, except in so far as those acts affected his master's +comfort; and he paid no attention to their words except where they +affected himself. + +"When you think it's a ghost, it's only Krool wanderin' w'ere he ain't +got no business," was the angry remark of the upper-housemaid, whom +his sudden appearance had startled in a dim passage one day. + +"Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where +there's no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs +she had enlarged upon his enormities greatly. + +"And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of +Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass--that is what Madame +think." + +Slowly the night passed for Krool. His disturbed brain was like some +dark wood through which flew songless birds with wings of night; +through which sped the furtive dwellers of the grass and the +earth-covert. The real and the imaginative crowded the dark +purlieus. He was the victim of his blood, his beginnings off there +beyond the Vaal, where the veld was swept by the lightning and the +storm, the home of wild dreams, and of a loneliness terrible and +strange, to which the man who once had tasted its awful pleasures +returned and returned again, until he was, at the last, part of its +loneliness, its woeful agitations and its reposeless quiet. + +It was not possible for him to think or be like pure white people, to +do as they did. He was a child of the kopje, the spruit, and the dun +veld, where men dwelt with weird beings which were not men--presences +that whispered, telling them of things to come, blowing the warnings +of Destiny across the waste, over thousands and thousands of +miles. Such as he always became apart and lonely because of this +companionship of silence and the unseen. More and more they withdrew +themselves, unwittingly and painfully, from the understanding and +companionship of the usual matter-of-fact, commonplace, sensible +people--the settler, the emigrant, and the British man. Sinister they +became, but with the helplessness of those in whom the under-spirit of +life has been working, estranging them, even against their will, from +the rest of the world. + +So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, +jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to +him, not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused +utterances and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion +for him to know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be +in the midst of them, an instrument of Fate. All night strange shapes +trooped past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he +called out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when +that master rescued him from death. + +Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither +and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy +himself with his master's clothes, boots, and belongings. At last he +stole into Byng's room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; +then reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, +and thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room. His face had a +sombre and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light +the discarded messages with their thunderous warnings--"To-morrow +. . . Prepare!" + +He knew their meaning well enough. "To-morrow" was here, and it would +bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against +the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of +sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek. + +"Prepare!" He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position +or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more. He +knew so much that was useful--to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not +himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and +grimly. All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and +knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing. + +Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the +reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be +the means and the messenger of betrayal. So he soothed his conscience. + +A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had +discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart +of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the +worst passions of an outcast mind. Since then there had been no +trafficking with the traitor--the double traitor, whom he was now +plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but +because he was a traitor to the Baas. In his evil way, he loved his +master as a Caliban might love an Apollo. That his devotion took forms +abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his +blood. That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas' country and +the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the +Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul. + +He had one obsession now--to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for +Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of +the Partners, as it were. But how should it be done? What should be +the means? On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, +the means came to his hand. + +"Prepare!" the cable to the Baas had read. The Baas would be prepared +for the thunderbolt to be hurled from Pretoria; but he would have no +preparation for the thunderbolt which would fall at his feet this day +in this house, where white roses welcomed the visitor at the door-way +and the beauty of Titians and Botticellis and Rubens' and Goyas +greeted him in the luxuriant chambers. There would be no preparation +for that war which rages most violently at a fireside and in the human +heart. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE FURNACE DOOR + + +It was past nine o'clock when Rudyard wakened. It was nearly ten +before he turned to leave his room for breakfast. As he did so he +stooped and picked up an open letter lying on the floor near the door. + +His brain was dazed and still surging with the terrible thoughts which +had agonized him the night before. He was as in a dream, and was only +vaguely conscious of the fugitive letter. He was wondering whether he +would go at once to Jasmine or wait until he had finished +breakfast. Opening the door of his room, he saw the maid entering to +Jasmine with a gown over her arm. + +No, he would not go to her till she was alone, till she was dressed +and alone. Then he would tell her all, and take her in his arms, and +talk with her--talk as he had never talked before. Slowly, heavily, he +went to his study, where his breakfast was always eaten. As he sat +down he opened, with uninterested inquiry, the letter he had picked up +inside the door of his room. As he did so he vaguely wondered why +Krool had overlooked it as he passed in and out. Perhaps Krool had +dropped it. His eyes fell on the opening words. . . His face turned +ashen white. A harsh cry broke from him. + +At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion +and was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared +on the staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant +away. Ian was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's +appearance. His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place +to a strange blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor--the +deathly look to be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal +disease. All strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, +leaving it tragic with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was +uppermost, while desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The +balance was gone from the general character and his natural force was +like some great gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a +sea-stricken ship. He was no longer the stalwart Outlander who had +done such great work in South Africa and had such power in political +London and in international finance. The demoralization which had +stealthily gone on for a number of years was now suddenly a debacle of +will and body. Of the superb physical coolness and intrepid mind with +which he had sprung upon the stage of Covent Garden Opera House to +rescue Al'mah nothing seemed left; or, if it did remain, it was +shocked out of its bearings. His eyes were almost glassy as he looked +at Ian Stafford, and animal-like hatred was the dominating note of his +face and carriage. + +"Come with me, Stafford: I want to speak to you," he said, +hoarsely. "You've arrived when I wanted you--at the exact time." + +"Yes, I said I would come at eleven," responded Stafford, +mechanically. "Jasmine expects me at eleven." + +"In here," Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room. + +As Stafford entered, he saw Krool's face, malign and sombre, show in a +doorway of the hall. Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a +look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning? Warning? There was +trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought +had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was +to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings. + +He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the +room--of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the +adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only +by Indian bead-curtains. He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, +as he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him. He was also +subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there +with such pleasant skill. Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, +he would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a +love-song from the light opera "A Lady of London," which had just +caught the ears of the people in the street. + +Of one thing he was sure: the end of things had come--the end of all +things that life meant to him had come. Rudyard knew! Rudyard, sitting +there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a +face where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion--he +knew. + +The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching. As Ian +waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of +the silly, futile love-song + +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear +Never shall its lovely petals fade, +Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year +Happy as the song-birds in the glade." + +Through it all now came Rudyard's voice. + +"I have a letter here," the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take +it from his pocket. "I want you to read it, and when you have read it, +I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it." + +He threw a letter down on the table--a square white envelope with the +crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it. It lay face downward, waiting for +his hand. + +So it had come. His letter to Jasmine which told all--Rudyard had read +it. And here was the end of everything--the roses faded before they +had bloomed an hour. It was not for them to flourish "till the world's +last year." + +His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised +it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the +envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a +devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time--he must have +time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he +had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its +mists. + +So this was the end of it all--friendship gone with the man before +him; shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a +home-life shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished +for evermore. + +He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, +while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table +spasmodically. Still the music from the other room with cheap, +flippant sensuousness stole through the burdened air: + +"Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year--" + +He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted +of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for +this handwriting was not his--this letter was not his; these wild, +passionate phrases--this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these +references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love +together, this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear +one of his white roses when he saw her the next day--would she not see +him between eleven and twelve o'clock?--all these words were not his. + +They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next +room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had +the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; +who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the +innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the +master of it. + +The letter was signed, Adrian. + +His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had +braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman +he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another +man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He +was face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, +Jasmine, to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give +up all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all, +caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how +many others? He choked back a cry. + +"Well--well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one +thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the +music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill +him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old +friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!" + +His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were +ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind +fury. He was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing +on a sea of disorder. + +"Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give +that to me." + +He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were +suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so +strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not +have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which +followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, +with exasperating insistence: + +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--" + +Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held +Rudyard's eyes. + +"You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this +letter," he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, +regaining his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you +think--all you think; but I would not do what you want to do." + +As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon +him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and +that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A +woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes +before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance +which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, +with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate +life with another of another scx still untried. With the transition +from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet +unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the +revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It +was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was +merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been +wronged--terribly wronged--by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved +Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came--in truth, he all +but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, +if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it +was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that +overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and +whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed +deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might +make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To +do--what? Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him +over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had +married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second +betrayal? His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business +dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence. + +What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but +one thing to do--only one thing to do--save her at any cost, somehow +save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had +spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had +betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an +animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her +shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust +which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity--even as it +sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest +depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the +thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, +deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring +all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing--the +indestructible thing. + +He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw +that Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any +moment. There was in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, +unseeing thing which disregards consequences, which would rush blindly +on the throne of God itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: +and just in time. + +"I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to +do. I would do something else." + +His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which +caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just +left. Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not +pursue, all would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense +anger and indignation. + +"Sit down, Byng," he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over +the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched +hand. "Kill him--," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which +came the maddening iteration of the jingling song--"you would kill him +for his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife +astray, but what good will it do to kill him?" + +"Not him alone, but her too," came the savage, uncontrolled voice from +the uncontrolled savagery of the soul. + +Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford's heart. His breath came in +sharp, breaking gasps. Had he--had he killed Jasmine? + +"You have not--not her?" + +"No--not yet." The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and +they shut with ominous certainty. + +An iron look came into Stafford's face. He had his chance now. One +word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost--sunk in +a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face +and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater +than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and +scornful surprise. + +"You think--you dare to think that she--that Jasmine--" + +"Think, you say! The letter--that letter--" + +"This letter--this letter, Byng--are you a fool? This letter, this +preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate +erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine--you know +her. Indiscreet--yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, +and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; +she cannot help it. She doesn't even know it. She led him on from +sheer wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! +She led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and +better men--like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want +to master us? She has coquetted since--ah, you do not know as I do, +her old friend! She has coquetted since she was a little +child. Coquetted, and no more. We have all been her slaves--yes, long +before you came--all of us. Look at Mennaval! She--" + +With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. "The world believes the +worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel's house +that she and Mennaval--and now this--!" + +But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping +an eager look--not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that +were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in +the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the +strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing +castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved. + +"Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day--this!" Stafford held +up the letter. "This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, +and indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been +what he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has +dared--!" + +"He has dared, by God--!" + +All Byng's rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, +the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the +cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends--of De Lancy +Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the +rest. The pity of these for him--for Rudyard Byng, because the flower +in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! +He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath. + +But Stafford stepped in front of him. "Sit down, Byng, or damn +yourself forever. If she is innocent--and she is--do you think she +would ever live with you again, after you had dragged her name into +the dust of the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha'penny +press? Do you think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? +If you want to drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and +tell her that you suspect her. I know her--I have known her all her +life, long before you came. I care what becomes of her. She has many +who care what becomes of her--her father, her brother, many men, and +many women who have seen her grow up without a mother. They understand +her, they believe in her, because they have known her over all the +years. They know her better than you. Perhaps they care for her-- +perhaps any one of them cares for her far more than you do." + +Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one +fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, +his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face. + +"She was more to me than all the world--than twenty worlds. She--" + +He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook +violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried +to reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward +hands. + +Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went +on quickly. "You have neglected her "--Rudyard's head came up in angry +protest--"not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too +easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All +women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; +but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according +to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are +concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, +'This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and +come now.' She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while +you did not have her on the leash she went playing--playing. That is +it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her +to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult +this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you +suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She +has bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather--" + +"I know--I know." The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope +stole into the distorted face. + +"She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, +not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she +would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, +that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who +would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in +there, to Al'mah's lover--" + +"Good God, Stafford--wait!" + +"I don't mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the +rest. They are not her old friends, and they weren't yours once--that +breed; but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there +in Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people +lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, +Byng. Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter--" + +Byng reached out his hand for it. + +"No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your +hands, you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish +thing, for you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for +such stuff--an outburst of sensuality!" + +He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet +as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw +Stafford push it farther into the coals. + +Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and +women in courts of law. + +"Leave the whole thing--leave Fellowes to me," Stafford said, after a +slight pause. "I will deal with him. He shall leave the country +to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do +not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of +happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all +now." + +"He has keys, papers--" + +"I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There +is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul's war, will be on us to +day. Do you hear, Byng-- to-day! And you have work to do for this your +native country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and +the Transvaal will be at each other's throat before night. You have +work to do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched +business in my hands. I will deal with Fellowes--adequately." + +The rage had faded from Byng's fevered eyes, and now there was a +moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in +Jasmine, that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not +since he left the white rose on her pillow last night--Adrian +Fellowes' tribute; and after he had read the letter, he had had no +wish to see her till he had had his will and done away with Fellowes +forever. Then he would see her--for the last time: and she should die, +too,--with himself. That had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He +would not see her now, not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he +would come again, and say no word which would let her think he knew +what Fellowes had written. Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, +and they must start again, begin life again together, a new +understanding in his heart, new purposes in their existence. In these +few minutes Stafford had taught him much, had showed him where he had +been wrong, had revealed to him Jasmine's nature as he never really +understood it. + +At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took +a revolver from his pocket. + +"That's the proof of what I meant to do," he said; "and this is proof +of what I mean to do," he added, as he handed over the revolver and +Stafford's fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he +misinterpreted. + +"Ah yes," he exclaimed, sadly, "you don't quite trust me yet--not +quite, Stafford; and I don't wonder; but it's all right.... You've +been a good, good friend to us both," he added. "I wish Jasmine might +know how good a friend you've been. But never mind. We'll pay the debt +sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?" + +At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the +distance. "Rudyard--where are you, Ruddy?" it called. + +A light broke over Byng's haggard face. "Not yet?" he asked Stafford. + +"No, not yet," was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open +door into the street. + +"Ruddy--where are you, Ruddy?" sang the voice like a morning song. + +Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the +little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago. + +The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was +"Pagliacci"--that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours +out his soul in agony. + +Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had +sat, and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the +passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of +the character of the man who played--sensuous emotion, sensual +delight. There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the +night, primary prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a +sensuous organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the +life is never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy. + +In Stafford's pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He +took it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every +nerve of his body tingled. + +"That way out?" he thought. "How easy--and how selfish.... If one's +life only concerned oneself.... But it's only partly one's own from +first to last." . . . Then his thoughts turned again to the man who +was playing " Pagliacci." " I have a greater right to do it than Byng, +and I'd have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not +all his fault." Again he shuddered. "No man makes love like that to a +woman unless she lets him, . . . until she lets him." Then he looked +at the fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. "If +it had been read to a jury . . . Ah, my God! How many he must have +written her like that ... How often...." + +With an effort he pulled himself together. "What does it matter now! +All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My +letter to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see +her for the last time, to make her understand...." + +He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood +of warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over +him. Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a +stream which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford +remarked, cynically, to himself. + +"A moment--Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +The music frayed into a discord and stopped. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE + + +There was that in Stafford's tone which made Fellowes turn with a +start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come +this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for +his master to find, after having read it himself with minute +scrutiny. It was in this room they had met so often in those days when +Rudyard was in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an +intimacy which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and +curiosity, the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that +Krool's antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been +nurtured. Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but +he had been disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine's part, which +shook his purpose again and again. + +It had all been a problem which Krool's furtive mind failed to +master. If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was +that he would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if +he warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had +at last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had +challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the +hated English. + +Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine's and Rudyard's +rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes' letter; and he +had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of +importance, for he had seen Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among +those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had +waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, +without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to +the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. + +He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he +rose in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, +with his ear against the door which led from the music-room, he +strained to hear what passed between Stafford and Fellowes. + +"Well, what is it?" asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, +though there was that in Stafford's face which gave him anxiety, he +knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was +Stafford, who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, +had occupied so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, +and, when she did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from +intimate consideration. + +His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark +intensity of Stafford's. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks +faded and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the +leather-trimming of the piano-stool. + +"Anything I can do for you, Stafford?" he added, with attempted +nonchalance. + +"There is nothing you can do for me," was the meaning reply, "but +there is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will +think it worth while." + +"Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?" + +"You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn +in not avoiding it." + +"Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles--cryptic, they call +it, don't they?" + +Stafford's chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed +over his face. + +"It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you +to do yourself a good turn." + +Now Fellowes' face turned white. "What letter?" he asked, in a sharp, +querulous voice. + +"The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday." + +Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. "What business is it of +yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng's letters?" + +"Only what I get from a higher authority." + +"Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?" + +"The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with +words, you fool." + +Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession. + +"What the devil . . . why should I listen to you?" There was a peevish +stubbornness in the tone. + +"Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your +life. That should be sufficient reason for you to listen." + +"Damnation--speak out, if you've got anything to say! I don't see what +you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it--damned +officious." The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness. + +Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given +him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back +against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid. + +Stafford's lips curled with contempt. "Don't squirm so, Fellowes. I'm +not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use +it. He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him . . . I +will tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was +absolutely innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, +presumptuous, and lecherous cad--which is true. I said that, though +you deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's +honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the +would-be betrayer of an honest girl--of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you +may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and +body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in +your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! +. . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to +do to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"--he handled the little +steel weapon with an eager fondness--" I think I'd do it. You are a +pest." + +Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body +crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous +discord. Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made +gestures of appeal. + +"Don't--don't! Can't you see I'm willing! What is it you want me to +do? I'll do it. Put it away.... Oh, my God--Oh!" His bloodless lips +were drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror. + +With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his +pocket again. "Pull yourself together," he said. "Your life is safe +for the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved +the lady's innocence--you understand, after I had proved the lady's +innocence to him--" + +"Yes, I understand," came the hoarse reply. + +"After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be +trusted to do so. I said that you would leave England within +twenty-four hours, and that you would not return within three +years. That was my pledge. You are prepared to fulfil it?" + +"To leave England! It is impossible--" + +"Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, +either, might be worse," was the cold, savage reply. "Mr. Byng made +his terms." + +Fellowes shivered. "What am I to do out of England--but, yes, I'll go, +I'll go," he added, as he saw the look in Stafford's face and thought +of the revolver so near to Stafford's hand. + +"Yes, of course you will go," was the stern retort. "You will go, just +as I say." + +"What shall I do abroad?" wailed the weak voice. + +"What you have always done here, I suppose--live on others," was the +crushing reply. "The venue will be changed, but you won't change, not +you. If I were you, I'd try and not meet Jigger before you go. He +doesn't know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him +reckless." + +Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. "I have +some things up-stairs," he said. + +"They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the +desk in the secretary's room." + +"I'll go myself, and--" + +"You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after +you--everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your +letters and private papers will not be read.... You feel you can rely +on me for that--eh?" + +"Yes . . . I'll go now . . . abroad . . . where?" + +"Where you please outside the United Kingdom." + +Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter +had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on +his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door. + +Stafford came up to him again. "You understand, there must be no +attempt to communicate here.... You will observe this?" + +Fellowes nodded. "Yes, I will.... Good-night," he added, absently. + +"Good-day," answered Stafford, mechanically. + +The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room +where so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so +many tears, divert so many streams of life. + +How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and +homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming +through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains +shine like gold. + +As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with +bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come--his +meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of +a truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep +behind him. It was Krool. + +Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; +but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool's impassive look. The +eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they +seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all. + +"Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say--" + +Krool, with a gesture, stopped him. + +"Mrs. Byng is come now," he said, making a gesture towards the +staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants' quarters of the +house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now +await consequences. + +Stafford turned to the staircase and saw--in blue, in the old +sentimental blue--Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of +apprehension in her face. + +Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she +had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes' letter. Hours before this +she had read and re-read Ian's letter, that document of pain and +purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly +conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it +that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes' +letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it +was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it--if Rudyard had found +it . . . ! + +Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten +the breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? +Where was Rudyard ? + +Ian's eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, +and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort +to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul. + +"Good-morning. Am I so very late?" she said, gaily, to him, though +there was a hollow note in her voice. + +"You are just in time," he answered in an even tone which told +nothing. + +"Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There +seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place--and so early in +the day, too." + +"It is full noon--and past," he said, with acute meaning, as her +daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards +him. How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet! + +As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder +of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the +modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange +tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by +Greuze. All last night's agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose +lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there +as she looked at Ian now. + +She beat a foot nervously on the floor. "What is it--why this +Euripidean air in my simple home? There's something wrong, I see. What +is it? Come, what is it, Ian?" + +Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no +loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday--only +yesterday--had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now +hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard. + +"Will you come in here," he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the +door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of +the future and closed the book of the past. + +She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an +accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with +Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, +and looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing +over her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, +giving her eyes a staring and solicitous look. + +"Well, what is it? Can't you speak and have it over?" she asked, with +desperate impatience. + +"Fellowes' letter to you--Rudyard found it," he said, abruptly. + +She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered +herself. "You read it?" she gasped. + +"Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill +Fellowes." + +She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her +fingers stopped. + +"Kill him--why?" she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her +trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her. + +"The letter--Fellowes' letter to you." + +"I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely +impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I +suppose." + +She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but +to be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, +though her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed +the lifeblood. + +Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. "He read it--Rudyard read a +letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to +me--he read my letter.... It gave me no chance." + +"No chance--?" + +A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her +tones. "Yes, I had a chance, a last chance--if he had not read the +letter. But now, there is no chance.... You read it, too. You read the +letter which was addressed to me. No matter what it was--my letter, +you read it." + +"Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, 'Read that letter, and +then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.' . . . I thought +it was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last +night. I thought it was my letter to you." + +Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking +in a trance. "I answered that letter--your letter. I answered it this +morning. Here is the answer . . . here." She laid a letter on the +table before him, then drew it back again into her lap. "Now it does +not matter. But it gives me no chance...." + +There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was +wan and strained. "No chance, no chance," she whispered. + +"Rudyard did not kill him?" she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a +moment, as though repeating a lesson. " Why?" + +"I stopped him. I prevented him." + +"You prevented him--why?" Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion +and trouble. "Why did you prevent it--you?" + +"That would have hurt you--the scandal, the grimy press, the world." + +Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous +poignancy. "It would have hurt me--yes. Why did you not want to hurt +me?" + +He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to +steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon +of steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, +malignant effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he +was suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same +region where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In +it one moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward +things, numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one's own agony, +which seems to neutralize the universe and reduce all life's problems +to one formula of solution. + +"What did you say to him that stopped him?" she asked in a whisper of +awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would +speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions. + +"I said the one thing to say," he answered after a moment, +involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him--doing it, as +it were, without conscious knowledge. + +It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of +oblivion. Her eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it +transfixed; then she recovered herself and spoke again. + +"What was the one thing to say?" she whispered. + +"That you were innocent--absolutely, that--" + +Suddenly she burst into wild laughter--shrill, acrid, cheerless, +hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, +her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying +agitation of a broken organism. + +He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his +words. + +"I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes' letter was +the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been +wilful and indiscreet, and that--" + +In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told +her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to +him. Every word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word +was now repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped +on the table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went +from the house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst +again into laughter, mocking, wilful, painful. + +"You were left to set things right, to be the lord high +executioner--you, Ian!" + +How strange his name sounded on her lips now--foreign, distant, +revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words +which had been said, than all that had been done. + +"Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose," she went on, +presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note +creeping into the voice. + +"No, I thought of that," he answered, quietly, "as you know." His eyes +sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. "That would have been +easy enough," he added. "I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, +but only of you--and Rudyard." + +"Only of me--and Rudyard," she repeated with drooping eyes, which +suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and +wildness. "Wasn't it rather late for that?" + +The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the +table towards her. + +"At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried +to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But +nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you--ever. I loved +you--ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! . . . But you, you +might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the +mistake once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely +more. I was ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the +winds, and prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I +was willing to eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing +to pay the price--any price--just to stand by what was the biggest +thing in my life. But you were true to nothing--to nothing--to +nobody." + +"If one is untrue--once, why be true at all ever?" she said with an +aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her +eyes. "If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?" + +Again a mocking laugh burst from her. "Don't you see? One kiss, a +wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment +that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the +thousand after." + +There came to her mind again--and now with what sardonic +force--Rudyard's words that day before they went to Glencader: "If you +had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers." + +"And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard," she added, +mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me--that I go on +living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him +anything has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, +and to be repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been +arranged, has it, that Rudyard is to believe in me?" + +"That has not been arranged." + +"It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that +he is to pretend to love me as before, and--" + +"He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, +was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter--" + +"Where is the letter?" + +He pointed to the fire. + +"Who put it in the fire?" she asked. "You?" + +He inclined his head. + +"Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to +suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the +evidence. Here is yours--your letter. Would you like to put it into +the fire also?" she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her +dress. + +"But, no, no, no--" She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had +a look of agonized agitation. "When I have learned every word by +heart, I will burn it myself--for your sake." Her voice grew softer, +something less discordant came into it. "You will never +understand. You could never understand me, or that letter of Adrian +Fellowes to me, and that he could dare to write me such a letter. You +could never understand it. But I understand you. I understand your +letter. It came while I was--while I was broken. It healed me, +Ian. Last night I wanted to kill myself. Never mind why. You would not +understand. You are too good to understand. All night I was in +torture, and then this letter of yours--it was a revelation. I did not +think that a man lived like you, so true, so kind, so mad. And so I +wrote you a letter, ah, a letter from my soul! and then came down to +this--the end of all. The end of everything--forever." + +"No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you . . ." + +She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake--oh, for God's sake, hush! +. . . You think that now I could . . ." + +"Begin again with new purpose." + +"Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool--you who are so wise +sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not +want me to begin again--with you?" + +He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily. + +"You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe +me--because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian +Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not +believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and +that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has +done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have +spoken to me about it if you had not warned him." + +"Then begin again--" + +"You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry +of the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted +yesterday--for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? +You hate me." + +His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment. + +In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she +caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it +from her hand. + +"Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in +his heart for her." That would only hurt those who have been hurt +enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give +others a chance." + +"You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. +"You were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in +that? Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in +me, of course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was +magnanimous--when you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in +order to cure her? Oh, how little you know! . . . But you do not want +me now. You do not believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter +had not fallen into Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on +our way to begin life again together. Does that look as though there +was some one else that mattered--that mattered?" + +He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one +way, and only one way," he said, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin +again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of +your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay +your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It +would bind you. A child . . ." + +"Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday--and now +. . . No, no, no," she added, " I will not, cannot live with +Rudyard. I cannot wrench myself from one world into another like +that. I will not live with him any more.... There--listen." + +Outside the newsboys were calling: + +"Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra +speshul!" + +"War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard +and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way +of escape--the war." + +"The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of +determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight +pause. "There is nothing more to say." + +He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at +her. + +"Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian +Fellowes--did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend +me?" + +"He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly. + +Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last +half-hour, and they deepened still more. + +"He did not say one word to put me right?" + +Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said. + +She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, +something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of +her pain-worn, exquisite face. + +So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent +over her. + +"Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I--in +different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the +road--peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, +Jasmine." + +"He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying +to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her. + +He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and +me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard--you must +help him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De +Lancy Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all +the lie.... Good-bye." + +In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her +feet. "Ian--Ian--come back," she cried. "Ian, one word--one word." + +But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one +transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a +moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one +demented. + +Once the door opened quietly, and Krool's face showed, sinister and +furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly. + +At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the +world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery. + +"He did not defend me--the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a +sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the +mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But +before he leaves . . . before he leaves England . . . " + +As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard's portrait on the wall met +her eyes. "I can't go on, Rudyard," she said to it. "I know that now." + +Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the +newsboys were calling: + +"War declared! All about the war!" + +"That is the way out for me," Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened +on. "That opens up the road.... I'm still an artillery officer." + +He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY + + +Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing +had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national +excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination. + +An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that +strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, +the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which +had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money +which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized +by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; +who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the +principal feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public +objects. Men who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or +wool or silver or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported +schemes for the public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely +because the ladies were fine; and they gave substantial sums--upon +occasion--for these fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed +rich men, whose wives never appeared, who were kept in secluded +quarters in Bloomsbury or Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the +Carlton which the scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these +gave no dinners in return. + +To get money to do things, no matter how,--or little matter how; to be +in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real +people--that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real +people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly into +the necessary and appointed places with the automatic precision of the +disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; and behind them were +folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle-class, the +labouring-man. Of these were the landpoor peer, with his sense of +responsibility cultivated by daily life and duty in his county, on the +one hand; the professional man of all professions, the little +merchant, the sailor, the clerk and artisan, the digger and delver, on +the other; and, in between, those people in the shires who had not yet +come to be material and gross, who had old-fashioned ideas of the duty +of the citizen and the Christian. In the day of darkness these came +and laid what they had at the foot of the altar of sacrifice. + +This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, +and it served as the solvent of many a life-problem. + +Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered "the way out," who +went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he +stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed +into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, +"War declared!" had told him the path he must tread. + +He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the +Front with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished +by the instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he +was on his way to do two things--to see whether Adrian Fellowes was +keeping his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister. + +There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not +gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to +hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days +before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at +the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled +forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be +settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be +cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start +in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his +life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought +of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle +it. Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot. + +When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it +was a question as to what he--Jigger --should now do, in what sphere +of life his abnormally "cute" mind must run, he answered, instantly. + +"I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce," he said. "That's it-- stryght. I'm goin' +out there wiv you." + +Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not for you, +Jigger. No, think again." + +"Ain't there work in Souf Afriker--maybe not in the army itself, y'r +gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I +bet; an' I could go as easy as can be." + +"Yes, Lou will be all right now," remarked Stafford, with a reflective +irony. + +"I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, +ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, +or cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about--couldn't I, y'r gryce? +I'm only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I +was run over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?" + +With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you +are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and +artillery. There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, +or--" + +"Or bust, y'r gryce?" + +So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the +difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe +and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a +comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, +clever waif who had drifted across his path. + +To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed +him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life--of +life that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his +life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life +behind him, all mile-stones passed except one. + +So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and +there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little +distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian +Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in +front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the +jostle and the crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw +Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his +eyes. Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did +not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same +destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into +an eddy of torturing thoughts. + +The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on +a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also--derelicts +of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of +life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon +women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish +and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the +thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending +their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even +the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, +the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in +their purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves +forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and +nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, +made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with +shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere +eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy +sensational rags. + +Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing +word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook +his head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led +nowhere--nowhere. + +"Coming home with me, darling?" she added in response to his +meditative look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to +her blunted sense. "Coming home with me--?" + +Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through +Stafford's brain. Home--where the business of this poor wayfarer's +existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the +inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and +hastened on. + +Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not +moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word +Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a +corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years +ago,--his mother had died when he was very young--and his eldest +brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in +the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in +her place at table. + +He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he +could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the +interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had +longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of +interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be. + +The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all +possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in +blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like +Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the +picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would +read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events +in which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, +influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard--he loved +orchards--the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey +and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; +the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of +the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodcock +awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over +now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert +alone. + +A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of +marching men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, +forced him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, +were alongside of him--a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to +see "Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"--a six months' excursion, as +they thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the +wall of the shops, and presently he found himself forced down +Buckingham Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach +Adrian Fellowes' apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically +thrown into the street, that Krool was almost beside him. + +The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor +left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, +if, and when, he saw him. + +But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker +shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure +followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment +where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were; then it fell behind a little, +for here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way +and watched him as he approached the door of the big building where +Adrian Fellowes lived. + +Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before +the door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the +pause, the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got +into the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the +man did who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round +and rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far +from the entrance, however, another cab--a four-wheeler--discharged +its occupant at a point nearer to the building than where he +waited. It was a woman. She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with +quick and grateful emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, +clattered away. The woman glanced along the empty street swiftly, and +then hurried to the doorway which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers. + +Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black +and heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure--there was none +other like it; or the turn of her head--there was only one such head +in all England. She entered the building quickly. + +There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion +stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why +she had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had +said no word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let +the worst be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she +thought of him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, +and they must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when +the crisis of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all. + +One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know--the intimacy between +Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in +their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The +ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond +her endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the +nature of the interview which she must have, at the thought of the +meeting at all. + +He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in +the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had +used. He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the +cigars for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not +soothe him. He had passed beyond the artificial. + +His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after +Jasmine's entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after +a hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she +could, and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her +movements had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her +head down into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain. + +The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone +abroad. He would soon find out. + +He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes' +door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked +again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It +turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked +at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the +room. He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and +looked round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of +things gathered together hastily. + +Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked +round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and +on it lay a figure--Adrian Fellowes, straight and still--and sleeping. + +Stafford went over. "Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" +he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely +at the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew. + +Adrian Fellowes was dead. + +Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once +more and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There +was no sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, +only a look of sleep--a pale, motionless sleep. + +But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched +the shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while. + +Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the +house with agitated footsteps. + +"He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud. + +He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and +then a lazy porter came. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +"MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" + + +Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this +October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered +the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten +the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed +preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She +was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her +footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the +butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave +with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, +when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at +the corner of Piccadilly. + +When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, +the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being +laid down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came +up the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the +staircase with marked deliberation. + +"Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an +airin' on shanks' hosses." + +"And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara," sniggered the +second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." + +"Swells, the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an +Emperor--'struth!" + +"I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares +on the Rand, me boy." + +"I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come--not forgetting th' +grub and the fizz." + +"What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like +tips down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard--and a +lot of hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political +grease does. But what price a title--Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!" + +"Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a +coronet 'ers! W'y--" + +But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of +imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of +the household. + +Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of +the British royal family was, with the member of another great +reigning family, honouring her table--though the ladies of neither +were to be present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her +cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of +late,--though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of +it--and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this +day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel's +house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been +sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People +came--almost "everybody" came--to her house, and would come, of +course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband +intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not +found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very +much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for +dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter +at all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to +come and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night +of nights. + +In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible +thing, though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as +usual, and with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty +toilette. Her face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots +which took the place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her +cheeks, and in its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most +delicate film--the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great +pain gives. + +Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her +husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted +sharply--something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was +uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did +now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which +came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not +the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of +Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in +broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her +marriage--that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a +cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two +would meet, and she knew how it would be--an outward semblance, a +superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of +intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be +again; only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit. + +Yet when she was dressed--in pure white, with only a string of pearls, +the smallest she had, round her neck-- she was like that white flower +which had been placed on her pillow last night. + +Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure +again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other +woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that +transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone +slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did +not belong to her. + +As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a +knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a +pencilled note in Rudyard's handwriting. + +White violets--white violets! + +The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine." + +White violets--how strange that he should send them! These they send +for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to +her--from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet +he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was +concerned. + +She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few +others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could +separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the +past. She had realized that the night before, when still that chance +of which she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the +coil of her wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that +self-destruction which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than +herself. It was melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the +emotional, the theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her +tragedy, which is just as real as that which comes to those of more +spiritual vein, just as real as that which comes to the more classical +victim of fate. Jasmine had the deep defects of her qualities. Her +suffering was not the less acute because it found its way out with +impassioned demonstration. + +There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she +took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure +that Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that +did not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep +for tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb +endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little +routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of +convention are so powerful that life's great issues are often obscured +by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last +careful touch to her hair--the mechanical obedience to long habit. It +is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler +irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to +her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and +fastened it in her gown--the tyranny of habit. + +Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the +closed door of Rudyard's room. Only a step--and yet she was kept apart +from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not +penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could +not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be +bridged. + +There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the +surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said +through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no +response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make +believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank +within herself at the idea of being alone with him. + +As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, +from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It +was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must +stay there forever. + +When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on +the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would +ask how he died--the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask +how he died. + +How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had +Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, +the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? +She shuddered. They might say that she killed him. + +She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had +dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and +there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all. + +Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as +though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment--her own +bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face +turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold +voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch +of the wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence +which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and +will.... And then--music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from +somewhere inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song +she had heard once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, +"More Was Lost at Mohacksfield." It was a tale of love and loss and +tragedy and despair. + +Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that +with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved +herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy +through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very +softly as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down +the staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music. + +It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized +exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a +music-box which could be timed to play at will--even days ahead, and +he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a +strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, +nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased +to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it +began again as he said over the dead body, "He did not die by his own +hand." + +Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first +guest, Jasmine said to herself: "No, no, he had not the courage to +kill himself." + +Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed +him--Rudyard--Ian--who? But how? There was no sign of violence. That +much she had seen. He lay like one asleep. Who was it killed him? + +"Lady Tynemouth." + +Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler's voice broke the +spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her. + +"So handsome you look, my darling--and all in white. White violets, +too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it's +chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny +string of pearls, like a young under-secretary's wife, to show what +she might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful +Jasmine!" + +"My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I +compromised," was Jasmine's reply, with a really good imitation of a +smile. + +As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with +swift inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did +to-night, so ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under +the eyes, the curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish +brightness and far-awayness of the look. She was about to say +something in comment, but other guests entered, and it was +impossible. She watched, however, from a little distance, while +talking gaily to other guests; she watched at the dinner-table, as +Jasmine, seated between her two royalties, talked with gaiety, with +pretty irony, with respectful badinage; and no one could be so daring +with such ceremonious respect at the same time as she. Yet through it +all Lady Tynemouth saw her glance many times with a strange, strained +inquiry at Rudyard, seated far away opposite her; at another big, +round table. + +"There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and +wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly +seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and +apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least +compromising. Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed +to herself, and presently she even laughed with her neighbour about +them. + +"What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng +doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval." + +"Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added, +with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: +"Where is the great man--where's Stafford to-night?" + +"Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew +soft. "He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he +has gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi +Falls!" + +Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite +happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying +herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to +spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled +by her frank platonic affection. + +"Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion +after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still +might do. + +"The war--it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had +seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was +happening in this household. + +The other demurred. + +"But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He +didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed +upset too, so pale and anxious-looking." + +"I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is +anything," said Lady Tynemouth to herself. "I'll ask myself to stay +with her for a couple of days." + +Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, +and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much +as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at +Jasmine's face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an +undertone of misery: + +"She looks as if she needed a friend." + +After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, +and gave it an endearing pressure. "May I come to you for a few days, +Jasmine?" she asked. + +"I was going to ask if you would have me," answered Jasmine, with a +queer little smile. "Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, +and that's a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other +things together, isn't it?" + +She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from +Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be +arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go +on in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what +he knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but +that was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was +that which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a +complete revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of +things. Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of +Fellowes' death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be +temporary expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had +its great advantages. + +She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of +hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; +but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to +have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to +get his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, +magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable +reaction, which would be the real test and trial. + +Love and forgiveness--what had she to do with either! She did not wish +forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in +that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved +another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, +the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his +own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might +the next few days bring forth? + +Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own +life--who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said +to Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of +revenge and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from +one moment to another. + +The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, +one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had +kissed their wives and then killed them--fondled them, and then +strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to +kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now +might come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the +first flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers +of life and love. + +If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to +everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand +of steel to clutch him--what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean +finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing! + +And she would have been the cause of everything. + +The thought scorched her soul. + +Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from +their cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the +range of her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the +handcuffs on Rudyard's--or Ian's--wrists. + +Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and +Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they +spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal +relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a +matter-of-fact voice said: "I suppose Al'mah will be here. You haven't +heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical." + +There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far +entrances of the drawing-room Al'mah entered. Her manner was +composed--if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around +her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It +contained only a few words, and it ran: + +"DEAR BYNG,--Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An +inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; +neither of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my +rooms after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours +ever, + +IAN STAFFORD." + +Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over +his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his +pocket. She then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward +to greet her. + +On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear +that Al'mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be +here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told +Jasmine. Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al'mah would not be +where she was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the +letter for which he had paid with his life. + +Al'mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both +Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing. + +"Yes, I think I am in good voice," she said to Jasmine, +presently. Then Rudyard went, giving his wife's arm a little familiar +touch as he passed, and said: + +"Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I'm sure Al'mah +will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall +need it--yes we shall need cheering very badly before we've +done. We're not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up +is what we want, and we must have it." + +Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al'mah, to which he got no +response, and to himself he said, grimly: "Well, it's better she +should not know it--here." + +His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he +had an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he +righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at +his neighbour. + +"It's true, then, what we hear about him," the neighbour said, and +suggestively raised fingers to his mouth. + +Al'mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an +abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which +captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she +sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of +country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to +every patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal +to the spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an +invocation. Men's eyes grew moist. + +And now another, a final song, a combination of all--of love, and loss +and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the +first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a +dream, and stood staring blindly at Al'mah. The great voice swelled +out in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that +gripped the heart. + +"But more was lost at Mohacksfield--" + +Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as +the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though +she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, +she gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell +heavily on the polished floor. + +Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was +beside him in an instant. + +"Yes, that's right--you come," he said to her, and he carried the limp +body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his +breast. + +"Poor child--the war, of course; it means so much to them." + +Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING + + +"A lady to see you, sir." + +"A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?" + +"I'm sure I have no use for them, sir," replied Gleg, sourly. He was +in no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master +was going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but +that he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of +receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner +which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not +even offered thanks. + +"Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?" + +"I don't know about that, sir. It's her ladyship, sir." + +"It's what 'ladyship,' Gleg?" + +"Her ladyship, sir--Lady Tynemouth." + +Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said +quietly: + +"Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've +forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten +yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a +small pension. Show her ladyship in." + +Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room. + +"Seven-and-six a week, I suppose," he said to himself as he went down +the stairs. "Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy." + +With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the +door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its +antipodes. + +Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand. + +"Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I +ought to be." + +"I am sure you are," answered Stafford, drily. + +"Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the +lion's mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped +once," she rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green +leather-chair. "Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world +couldn't think that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or +that I would pay for the candle without burning it." + +"On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them." + +She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as +ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after +Gleg's icy welcome." + +He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines +of Swinburne, alive with cynicism: + +"And the worst and the best of this is, +That neither is most to blame +If she has forgotten my kisses, +And I have forgotten her name." + +Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able +to endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny +past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our +friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent +flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a +needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian +Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle." + +"'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went +over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it +meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor +impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a +little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth. + +"The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good +deal," he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember +Mr. Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?" + +"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng +won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like +martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night +it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly +by --guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a +little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such +a wurra-wurra, as he called it." + +"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to +make a needle-point dipped in it deadly." + +"I don't believe it a bit, but--" + +Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--she was +all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her +shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently--"for it's one of the +reasons why I'm here now--what happened at the inquest to-day? The +evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave +evidence, I suppose. Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've +never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You +don't mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, +just when you should look so well." + +"Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any +glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, +and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine +had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at +Mohacksfield." + +"Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they +say. It makes me so proud to be your friend--even your neglected, if +not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such +splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you +want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a +morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it +only the reaction after all you've done?" + +"No doubt it's the reaction," he replied. + +"I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching +him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine +affair--shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and +taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that +all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the +verdict?" + +"Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut +short, and sympathy with the relatives." + +"I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative +response. "But--well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart +stops beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!" + +"It sounded rather worse than silly," was Ian's comment. + +"Did--did they cut him up, to see if he'd taken morphia, or an +overdose of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died +of taking quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long--a South +American, she was." + +He nodded. "It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, +they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been +what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not +sufficient strength for recovery." + +"I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn't present?" she asked, curiously. "I know +it is silly in a way, but don't you remember how interested +Mr. Fellowes was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?" + +"There was no reason why he should be there." + +"What witnesses were called?" + +"Myself and the porter of Fellowes' apartments, his banker, his +doctor--" + +"And Al'mah?" she asked, obliquely. + +He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly. + +"You needn't be afraid to speak about Al'mah," she continued. "I saw +something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me +that--well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al'mah there? Did +she give evidence?" + +"She was there to be called, if necessary," he responded, "but the +coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said +evidence was unnecessary, and--" + +"You arranged that, probably?" + +"Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid--and so kind." + +She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as +if with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale +now, and her eyes were greatly troubled. + +"Ian," she said, in a low voice, "I don't believe that Adrian Fellowes +died a natural death, and I don't believe that he killed himself. He +would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never +go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do +so. He--did--not--kill--himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did +not die a natural death, either." + +"Who killed him?" Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his +eyes remaining steady and quiet. + +She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. "Oh, it all seems so +horrible! I've tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, +and I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your +face I knew I couldn't have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not +by the same thoughts, but through the same people." + +"Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank," he said, heavily. "I +will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly +frank with me." + +"As I have always been. I can't be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so +much that you have the right to ask me what you will.... There it is, +the fatal thing," she added. + +Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her +over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls. + +"No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt," he responded, +gallantly. "I was merely selfish in saving you. + +Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little +laugh. + +"Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want +me, while I didn't want you. That's the woman, and that's all women, +and there's no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had +saved me than any one else who wasn't bound, like Tynie, to do so." + +"Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a +sixpenny umbrella," he rejoined, drily. + +"How we play on the surface while there's so much that is wearing our +hearts out underneath," she responded, wearily. "Listen, Ian, you know +what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn't, I am sure that +Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill +to bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside +hers. The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or +three times she half waked, and--and it was very painful. It made my +heart ache, for I knew it wasn't all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian +Fellowes lying dead in his room.... Ian, it is awful, but for some +reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the +truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you--no, no, don't mind my saying +it. She didn't care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she +does care for you--cares for you. She oughtn't to, but she does, and +she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please +don't think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better +friend than I am. But there's something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is +looking like a giant that's had blood-letting, and he never goes near +Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It's a bad sign when two +people must have some third person about to insulate their +self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to +be just their own selves, and have it out." + +"You think there's been trouble between them?" His voice was quite +steady, his manner composed. + +"I don't think quite that. But there is trouble in that +palace. Rudyard is going to South Africa." + +"Well, that is not unnatural. I should expect him to do so. I am going +to South Africa also." + +For a moment she looked at him without speaking, and her face slowly +paled. "You are going to the Front-- you?" + +"Yes--'Back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again.' I +was a gunner, you know, and not a bad one, either, if I do say it." + +"You are going to throw up a great career to go to the Front? When you +have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her +voice was choking a little. + +He made a little whimsical gesture. "There's another ladder to +climb. I'll have a try at it, and do my duty to my country, too. I'll +have a double-barrelled claim on her, if possible." + +"I know that you are going because you will not stay when Rudyard +goes," she rejoined, almost irritably. + +"What a quixotic idea! Really you are too impossible and +wrong-headed." + +He turned an earnest look upon her. "No, I give you my word, I am not +going because Rudyard is going. I didn't know he was going till you +told me. I got permission to go three hours after Kruger's message +came." + +"You are only feckless--only feckless, as the Scotch say," she +rejoined with testy sadness. " Well, since everybody is going, I am +going too. I am going with a hospital-ship. " + +"Well, that would pay off a lot of old debts to the Almighty," he +replied, in kindly taunt. + +"I haven't been worse than most women, Ian," she replied. "Women +haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up +bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them +off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so +few, and so uninteresting." + +Suddenly she took from her pocket a letter. "Here is a letter for +you," she said. "It was lying on Jasmine's table the night she was +taken ill. I don't know why I did it, but I suppose I took it up so +that Rudyard should not see it; and then I didn't say anything to +Jasmine about it at once. She said nothing, either; but to-day I told +her I'd seen the letter addressed to you, and had posted it. I said it +to see how she would take it. She only nodded, and said nothing at +first. Then after a while she whispered, 'Thank you, my dear,' but in +such a queer tone. Ian, she meant you to have the letter, and here it +is." + +She put it into his hands. He remembered it. It was the letter which +Jasmine had laid on the table before him at that last interview when +the world stood still. After a moment's hesitation he put it in his +pocket. + +"If she wished me to have it--" he said in a low voice. + +"If not, why, then, did she write it? Didn't she say she was glad I +posted it?" + +A moment followed, in which neither spoke. Lady Tynemouth's eyes were +turned to the window; Stafford stood looking into the fire. + +"Tynie is sure to go to South Africa with his Yeomanry," she continued +at last. "He'll be back in England next week. I can be of use out +there, too. I suppose you think I'm useless because I've never had to +do anything, but you are quite wrong. It's in me. If I'd been driven +to work when I was a girl, if I'd been a labourer's daughter, I'd have +made hats--or cream-cheeses. I'm not really such a fool as you've +always thought me, Ian; at any rate, not in the way you've thought +me." + +His look was gentle, as he gazed into her eyes. "I've never thought +you anything but a very sensible and alluring woman, who is only +wilfully foolish at times," he said. "You do dangerous things." + +"But you never knew me to do a really wrong thing, and if you haven't, +no one has." + +Suddenly her face clouded and her lips trembled. "But I am a good +friend, and I love my friends. So it all hurts. Ian, I'm most +upset. There's something behind Adrian Fellowes' death that I don't +understand. I'm sure he didn't kill himself; but I'm also sure that +some one did kill him." Her eyes sought his with an effort and with +apprehension, but with persistency too. "I don't care what the jury +said--I know I'm right." + +"But it doesn't matter now," he answered, calmly. "He will be buried +to-morrow, and there's an end of it all. It will not even be the usual +nine days' wonder. I'd forget it, if I were you." + +"I can't easily forget it while you remember it," she rejoined, +meaningly. "I don't know why or how it affects you, but it does affect +you, and that's why I feel it; that's why it haunts me." + +Gleg appeared. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said, and handed Ian +a card. + +"Where is he?" + +"In the dining-room, sir." + +"Very good. I will see him in a moment." + +When they were alone again, Lady Tynemouth held out her hand. "When do +you start for South Africa?" she asked. + +"In three days. I join my battery in Natal." + +"You will hear from me when I get to Durban," she said, with a shy, +inquiring glance. + +"You are really going?" + +"I mean to organize a hospital-ship and go." + +"Where will you get the money?" + +"From some social climber," she replied, cynically. His hand was on +the door-knob, and she laid her own on it gently. "You are ill, Ian," +she said. "I have never seen you look as you do now." + +"I shall be better before long," he answered. "I never saw you look so +well." + +"That's because I am going to do some work at last," she +rejoined. "Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great +deal, and perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you +if you get fever or anything," she added, laughing nervously--"you and +Tynie." + +When she was gone he stood looking at the card in his hand, with his +mind seeing something far beyond. Presently he rang for Gleg. + +"Show Mr. Mappin in," he said. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND + + +In a moment the great surgeon was seated, looking reflectively round +him. Soon, however, he said brusquely, "I hope your friend Jigger is +going on all right?" + +"Yes, yes, thanks to you." + +"No, no, Mr. Stafford, thanks to you and Mrs. Byng chiefly. It was +care and nursing that did it. If I could have hospitals like Glencader +and hospital nurses like Mrs. Byng and Al'mah and yourself, I'd have +few regrets at the end of the year. That was an exciting time at +Glencader." + +Stafford nodded, but said nothing. Presently, after some reference to +the disaster at the mine at Glencader and to Stafford's and Byng's +bravery, Mr. Mappin said. "I was shocked to hear of Mr. Fellowes' +death. I was out of town when it happened--a bad case at Leeds; but I +returned early this morning." He paused, inquiringly but Ian said +nothing, and he continued, "I have seen the body." + +"You were not at the inquest, I think," Ian remarked, casually. + +"No, I was not in time for that, but I got permission to view the +body." + +"And the verdict--you approve?" + +"Heart failure--yes." Mr. Mappin's lip curled. "Of course. But he had +no heart trouble. His heart wasn't even weak. His life showed that." + +"His life showed--?" Ian's eyebrows went up. + +"He was very much in society, and there's nothing more strenuous than +that. His heart was all right. Something made it fail, and I have been +considering what it was." + +"Are you suggesting that his death was not natural?" + +"Quite artificial, quite artificial, I should say." + +Ian took a cigarette, and lighted it slowly. "According to your +theory, he must have committed suicide. But how? Not by an effort of +the will, as they do in the East, I suppose?" + +Mr. Mappin sat up stiffly in his chair. "Do you remember my showing +you all at Glencader a needle which had on its point enough poison to +kill a man?" + +"And leave no trace--yes." + +"Do you remember that you all looked at it with interest, and that +Mr. Fellowes examined it more attentively than any one else?" + +"I remember." + +"Well, I was going to kill a collie with it next day." + +"A favourite collie grown old, rheumatic--yes, I remember." + +"Well, the experiment failed." + +"The collie wasn't killed by the poison?" + +"No, not by the poison, Mr. Stafford." + +"So your theory didn't work except on paper." + +"I think it worked, but not with the collie." + +There was a pause, while Stafford looked composedly at his visitor, +and then he said: "Why didn't it work with the collie?" + +"It never had its chance." + +"Some mistake, some hitch?" + +"No mistake, no hitch; but the wrong needle." + +"The wrong needle! I should not say that carelessness was a habit with +you." Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. + +"Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. + +"You were over-confident then?" + +"Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." + +There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some +cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of +reproach do you apply to Glencader?" + +"Thieving." + +"That sounds reprehensible--and rude." + +"If you were not beyond reproach, it would be rude, Mr. Stafford." + +Stafford chafed at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit +of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; +but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was +hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from +making mischief. The compliment had been smug, and smugness irritated +Stafford. + +"Well, thanks for your testimonial," he said, presently, and then he +determined to cut short the tardy revelation, and prick the bubble of +mystery which the great man was so slowly blowing. + +"I take it that you think some one at Glencader stole your needle, and +so saved your collie's life," he said. + +"That is what I mean," responded Mr. Mappin, a little discomposed that +his elaborate synthesis should be so sharply brought to an end. + +There was almost a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the +collie--were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you +prepare another needle, or do it in the humdrum way?" + +"I let the collie live." + +"Hoping to find the needle again?" asked Stafford, with a smile. + +"Perhaps to hear of it again." + +"Hello, that is rather startling! And you have done so? + +"I think so. Yes, I may say that." + +"Now how do you suppose you lost that needle?" + +"It was taken from my pocket-case, and another substituted. + +"Returning good for evil. Could you not see the difference in the +needles?" + +"There is not, necessarily, difference in needles. The substitute was +the same size and shape, and I was not suspicious. " + +"And what form does your suspicion take now?" + +The great man became rather portentously solemn--he himself would have +said "becomingly grave." "My conviction is that Mr. Fellowes took my +needle." + +Stafford fixed the other with his gaze. "And killed himself with it?" + +Mr. Mappin frowned. "Of that I cannot be sure, of course." + +"Could you not tell by examining the body?" + +"Not absolutely from a superficial examination." + +"You did not think a scientific examination necessary?" + +"Yes, perhaps; but the official inquest is over, the expert analysis +or examination is finished by the authorities, and the superficial +proofs, while convincing enough to me, are not complete and final; and +so, there you are." + +Stafford got and held his visitor's eyes, and with slow emphasis said: +"You think that Fellowes committed suicide with your needle?" + +"No, I didn't say that." + +"Then I fear my intelligence must be failing rapidly. You said--" + +"I said I was not sure that he killed himself. I am sure that he was +killed by my needle; but I am not sure that he killed himself. Motive +and all that kind of thing would come in there." + +"Ah--and all that kind of thing! Why should you discard motive for his +killing himself?" + +"I did not say I discarded motive, but I think Mr. Fellowes the last +man in the world likely to kill himself." + +"Why, then, do you think he stole the needle?" + +"Not to kill himself." + +Stafford turned his head away a little. "Come now; this is too +tall. You are going pretty far in suggesting that Fellowes took your +needle to kill some one else." + +"Perhaps. But motive might not be so far to seek." + +"What motive in this case?" Stafford's eyes narrowed a little with the +inquiry. + +"Well, a woman, perhaps." + +"You know of some one, who--" + +"No. I am only assuming from Mr. Fellowes' somewhat material nature +that there must be a woman or so." + +"Or so--why 'or so?'" Stafford pressed him into a corner. + +"There comes the motive--one too many, when one may be suspicious, or +jealous, or revengeful, or impossible." + +"Did you see any mark of the needle on the body?" + +"I think so. But that would not do more than suggest further delicate, +detailed, and final examination." + +"You have no trace of the needle itself?" + +"None. But surely that isn't strange. If he had killed himself, the +needle would probably have been found. If he did not kill himself, but +yet was killed by it, there is nothing strange in its not being +recovered." + +Stafford took on the gravity of a dry-as-dust judge. "I suppose that +to prove the case it would be necessary to produce the needle, as your +theory and your invention are rather new." + +"For complete proof the needle would be necessary, though not +indispensable." + +Stafford was silent for an instant, then he said: "You have had a look +for the little instrument of passage?" + +"I was rather late for that, I fear." + +"Still, by chance, the needle might have been picked up. However, it +would look foolish to advertise for a needle which had traces of atric +acid on it, wouldn't it?" + +Mr. Mappin looked at Stafford quite coolly, and then, ignoring the +question, said, deliberately: "You discovered the body, I hear. You +didn't by any chance find the needle, I suppose?" + +Stafford returned his look with a cool stare. "Not by any chance," he +said, enigmatically. + +He had suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this +astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of +Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry +could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin +had surmised, there was more than one woman,--there may have been a +dozen, of course--but chance might just pitch on the one whom +investigation would injure most. + +If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his +grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general +excitement and agitation of the nation. The war-drum would drown any +small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence. Suppose some one +did kill Adrian Fellowes? He deserved to die, and justice was +satisfied, even if the law was marauded. There were at least four +people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse. There was +Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile +flower-girl--and himself. It was necessary that Mappin, however, +should be silenced, and sent about his business. + +Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with +an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural +irritability behind all, said "Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not +gone elsewhere with your suspicions?" + +The other shook his head in negation. + +"Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as +an expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche +occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes. Your suspicions may +have some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, +tact, and knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive +clues and, when finding them, making them fit in with fact--only a man +like yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it. You +are not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in +causing pain and annoyance beyond calculation. Just imagine a Scotland +Yard detective with such a delicate business to do. We have no Hamards +here, no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of +special sense. Can you not see the average detective blundering about +with his ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never +traced a motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue? Well, it +is the business of the Law to detect and punish crime. Let the Law do +it in its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to +solve. Why should you complicate things? The official fellows could +never do what you could do, if you were a detective. They haven't the +brains or initiative or knowledge. And since you are not a detective, +and can't devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be +any problem at all, I would suggest--I imitate your own rudeness--that +you mind your own business." + +He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes. + +At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but +under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of +Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke +made by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended +dignity and feebly returned the smile. + +"You are at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; +"but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is +beneath contempt. I know of cases--but I will not detain you with them +now. They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective +should be a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of +human nature. In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find +motives, to construct them and put them into play, as though they were +real--work till a clue was found. Then, if none is found, find another +motive and work on that. The French do it. They are marvels. Hamard is +a genius, as you say. He imagines, he constructs, he pursues, he +squeezes out every drop of juice in the orange.... You see, I agree +with you on the whole, but this tragedy disturbed me, and I thought +that I had a real clue. I still believe I have, but cui bono?" + +"Cui bono indeed, if it is bungled. If you could do it all yourself, +good. But that is impossible. The world wants your skill to save life, +not to destroy it. Fellowes is dead--does it matter so infinitely, +whether by his own hand or that of another?" + +"No, I frankly say I don't think it does matter infinitely. His type +is no addition to the happiness of the world." + +They looked at each other meaningly, and Mappin responded once again +to Stafford's winning smile. + +It pleased him prodigiously to feel Stafford lay a firm hand on his +arm and say: "Can you, perhaps, dine with me to-night at the +Travellers' Club? It makes life worth while to talk to men like you +who do really big things." + +"I shall be delighted to come for your own reasons," answered the +great man, beaming, and adjusting his cuffs carefully. + +"Good, good. It is capital to find you free." Again Stafford caught +the surgeon's arm with a friendly little grip. + +Suddenly, however, Mr. Mappin became aware that Stafford had turned +desperately white and worn. He had noticed this spent condition when +he first came in, but his eyes now rediscovered it. He regarded +Stafford with concern. + +"Mr. Stafford," he said, "I am sure you do not realize how much below +par you are.... You have been under great strain--I know, we all know, +how hard you have worked lately. Through you, England launches her +ship of war without fear of complications; but it has told on you +heavily. Nothing is got without paying for it. You need rest, and you +need change." + +"Quite so--rest and change. I am going to have both now," said +Stafford with a smile, which was forced and wan. + +"You need a tonic also, and you must allow me to give you one," was +the brusque professional response. + +With quick movement he went over to Stafford's writing-table, and +threw open the cover of the blotter. + +In a flash Stafford was beside him, and laid a hand upon the blotter, +saying with a smile, of the kind which had so far done its work-- + +"No, no, my friend, I will not take a tonic. It's only a good sleep I +want; and I'll get that to-night. But I give my word, if I'm not all +right to-morrow, if I don't sleep, I'll send to you and take your +tonic gladly." + +"You promise?" + +"I promise, my dear Mappin." + +The great man beamed again: and he really was solicitous for his +new-found friend. + +"Very well, very well--Stafford," he replied. "It shall be as you +say. Good-bye, or, rather, au revoir!" + +"A la bonne heure!" was the hearty response, as the door opened for +the great surgeon's exit. + +When the door was shut again, and Stafford was alone, he staggered +over to the writing-desk. Opening the blotter, he took something up +carefully and looked at it with a sardonic smile. + +"You did your work quite well," he said, reflectively. + +It was such a needle as he had seen at Glencader in Mr. Mappin's +hand. He had picked it up in Adrian Fellowes' room. + +"I wonder who used you," he said in a hard voice. "I wonder who used +you so well. Was it--was it Jasmine?" + +With a trembling gesture he sat down, put the needle in a drawer, +locked it, and turned round to the fire again. + +"Was it Jasmine?" he repeated, and he took from his pocket the letter +which Lady Tynemouth had given him. For a moment he looked at it +unopened--at the beautiful, smooth handwriting so familiar to his +eyes; then he slowly broke the seal, and took out the closely written +pages. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JASMINE'S LETTER + + +"Ian, oh, Ian, what strange and dreadful things you have written to +me!" Jasmine's letter ran--the letter which she told him she had +written on that morning when all was lost. "Do you realize what you +have said, and, saying it, have you thought of all it means to me? You +have tried to think of what is best, I know, but have you thought of +me? When I read your letter first, a flood of fire seemed to run +through my veins; then I became as though I had been dipped in ether, +and all the winds of an arctic sea were blowing over me. + +"To go with you now, far away from the world in which we live and in +which you work, to begin life again, as you say--how sweet and +terrible and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I +know you! I am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am +not foolish, I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that +visionary world where you and I could live and work and wander, and be +content with all that would be given us--joy, seeing, understanding, +revealing, doing. + +"But Ian, it is only a visionary world, that world of which you +speak. It does not exist. The overmastering love, the desire for you +that is in me, makes for me the picture as it is in your mind; but +down beneath all, the woman in me, the everlasting woman, is sure +there is no such world. + +"Listen, dear child--I call you that, for though I am only twenty-five +I seem as aged as the Sphinx, and, like the Sphinx that begets +mockery, so my soul, which seems to have looked out over unnumbered +centuries, mocks at this world which you would make for you and +me. Listen, Ian. It is not a real world, and I should not--and that is +the pitiful, miserable part of it--I should not make you happy, if I +were in that world with you. To my dire regret I know it. Suddenly you +have roused in me what I can honestly say I have never felt +before--strange, reckless, hungry feelings. I am like some young +dweller of the jungle which, cut off from its kind tries, with a +passion that eats and eats and eats away his very flesh to get back to +its kind, to his mate, to that other wild child of nature which waits +for the one appeasement of primeval desire. + +"Ian, I must tell you the whole truth about myself as I understand +it. I am a hopeless, painful contradiction; I have always been so. I +have always wanted to be good, but something has always driven me +where the flowers have a poisonous sweetness, where the heart grows +bad. I want to cry to you, Ian, to help me to be good; and yet +something drives me on to want to share with you the fruit which turns +to dust and ashes in the long end. And behind all that again, some +tiny little grain of honour in me says that I must not ask you to help +me; says that I ought never to look into your eyes again, never touch +your hand, nor see you any more; and from the little grain of honour +comes the solemn whisper, 'Do not ruin him; do not spoil his life.' + +"Your letter has torn my heart, so that it can never again be as it +was before, and because there is some big, noble thing in you, some +little, not ignoble thing is born in me. Ian, you could never know the +anguished desire I have to be with you always, but, if I keep sane at +all, I will not go--no, I will not go with you, unless the madness +carries me away. It would kill you. I know, because I have lived so +many thousands of years. My spirit and my body might be satisfied, the +glory in having you all my own would be so great; but there would be +no joy for you. To men like you, work is as the breath of life. You +must always be fighting for something, always climbing higher, because +you see some big thing to do which is so far above you. + +"Yes, men like you get their chance sooner or later, because you work, +and are ready to take the gifts of Fate when they appear and before +they pass. You will be always for climbing, if some woman does not +drag you back. That woman may be a wife, or it may be a loving and +living ghost of a wife like me. Ian, I could not bear to see what +would come at last--the disappointment in your face the look of hope +gone from your eyes; your struggle to climb, and the struggle of no +avail. Sisyphus had never such a task as you would have on the hill of +life, if I left all behind here and went with you. You would try to +hide it; but I would see you growing older hourly before my eyes. You +would smile--I wonder if you know what sort of wonderful, alluring +thing your smile is, Ian?--and that smile would drive me to kill +myself, and so hurt you still more. And so it is always an everlasting +circle of penalty and pain when you take the laws of life you get in +the mountains in your hands and break them in pieces on the rocks in +the valleys, and make new individual laws out of harmony with the +general necessity. + +"Isn't it strange, Ian, that I who can do wrong so easily still know +so well and value so well what is right? It is my mother in me and my +grandfather in me, both of them fighting for possession. Let me empty +out my heart before you, because I know--I do not know why, but I do +know, as I write--that some dark cloud lowers, gathers round us, in +which we shall be lost, shall miss the touch of hand and never see +each other's face again. I know it, oh so surely! I did not really +love you years ago, before I married Rudyard; I did not love you when +I married him; I did not love him, I could not really love any one. My +heart was broken up in a thousand pieces to give away in little bits +to all who came. But I cared for you more than I cared for any one +else--so much more; because you were so able and powerful, and were +meant to do such big things; and I had just enough intelligence to +want to understand you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its +meaning, however dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick +and rather clever-- sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, +too. I have made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I +think and talk and write, I only give out in a new light what others +like you have taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; +blow a drop of water into a bushel of bubbles. No, I did not love you, +in the big way, in those old days, and maybe it is not love I feel for +you now; but it is a great and wonderful thing, so different from the +feeling I once had. It is very powerful, and it is also very cruel, +because it smothers me in one moment, and in the next it makes me want +to fly to you, heedless of consequences. + +"And what might those consequences be, Ian, and shall I let you face +them? The real world, your world, England, Europe, would have no more +use for all your skill and knowledge and power, because there would be +a woman in the way. People who would want to be your helpers, and to +follow you, would turn away when they saw you coming; or else they +would say the superficial things which are worse than blows in the +face to a man who wants to feel that men look to him to help solve the +problems perplexing the world. While it may not be love I feel for +you, whatever it is, it makes me a little just and unselfish now. I +will not--unless a spring-time madness drives me to it to-day--I will +not go with you. + +"As for the other solution you offer, deceiving the world as to your +purposes, to go far away upon some wild mission, and to die! + +"Ah, no, you must not cheat the world so; you must not cheat yourself +so! And how cruel it would be to me! Whatever I deserve--and in +leaving you to marry Rudyard I deserved heavy punishment--still I do +not deserve the torture which would follow me to the last day of my +life if, because of me, you sacrificed that which is not yours alone, +but which belongs to all the world. I loathe myself when I think of +the old wrong that I did you; but no leper woman could look upon +herself with such horror as I should upon myself, if, for the new +wrong I have done you, you were to take your own life. + +"These are so many words, and perhaps they will not read to you as +real. That is perhaps because I am only shallow at the best; am only, +as you once called me, 'a little burst of eloquence.' But even I can +suffer, and I believe that even I can love. You say you cannot go on +as things are; that I must go with you or you must die; and yet you do +not wish me to go with you. You have said that, too. But do you not +wonder what would become of me, if either of these alternatives is +followed? A little while ago I could deceive Rudyard, and put myself +in pretty clothes with a smile, and enjoy my breakfast with him and +look in his face boldly, and enjoy the clothes, and the world and the +gay things that are in it, perhaps because I had no real moral +sense. Isn't it strange that out of the thing which the world would +condemn as most immoral, as the very degradation of the heart and soul +and body, there should spring up a new sense that is moral--perhaps +the first true glimmering of it? Oh, dear love of my life, comrade of +my soul, something has come to me which I never had before, and for +that, whatever comes, my lifelong gratitude must be yours! What I now +feel could never have come except through fire and tears, as you +yourself say, and I know so well that the fire is at my feet, and the +tears--I wept them all last night, when I too wanted to die. + +"You are coming at eleven to-day, Ian--at eleven. It is now eight. I +will try and send this letter to reach you before you leave your +rooms. If not, I will give it to you when you come--at eleven. Why did +you not say noon--noon--twelve of the clock? The end and the +beginning! Why did you not say noon, Ian? The light is at its zenith +at noon, at twelve; and the world is dark at twelve--at +midnight. Twelve at noon; twelve at night; the light and the +dark--which will it be for us, Ian? Night or noon? I wonder, oh, I +wonder if, when I see you I shall have the strength to say, 'Yes, go, +and come again no more.' Or whether, in spite of everything, I shall +wildly say, 'Let us go away together.' Such is the kind of woman that +I am. And you--dear lover, tell me truly what kind of man are you? + +"Your "JASMINE." + +He read the letter slowly, and he stopped again and again as though to +steady himself. His face became strained and white, and once he poured +brandy and drank it off as though it were water. When he had finished +the letter he went heavily over to the fire and dropped it in. He +watched it burn, until only the flimsy carbon was left. + +"If I had not gone till noon," he said aloud, in a nerveless +voice--"if I had not gone till noon . . . Fellowes--did she--or was it +Byng?" + +He was so occupied with his thoughts that he was not at first +conscious that some one was knocking. + +"Come in," he called out at last. + +The door opened and Rudyard Byng entered. + +"I am going to South Africa, Stafford," he said, heavily. "I hear that +you are going, too; and I have come to see whether we cannot go out +together." + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +KROOL + + +"A message from Mr. Byng to say that he may be a little late, but he +says will you go on without him? He will come as soon as possible." + +The footman, having delivered himself, turned to withdraw, but Barry +Whalen called him back, saying, "Is Mr. Krool in the house?" + +The footman replied in the affirmative. "Did you wish to see him, +sir?" he asked. + +"Not at present. A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a +glance round the group, who eyed him curiously. + +At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily +Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr.' Krool +to be called into consultation?" + +"Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask +the question for nothing." + +"These aren't days when anybody guesses much," remarked Fleming. "And +I'd like to know from Mr. Kruger, who knows a lot of things, and +doesn't gas, whether he means the mines to be safe." + +They all looked inquiringly at Wallstein, who in the storms which +rocked them all kept his nerve and his countenance with a power almost +benign. His large, limpid eye looked little like that belonging to an +eagle of finance, as he had been called. + +"It looked for a while as though they'd be left alone," said +Wallstein, leaning heavily on the table," but I'm not so sure now." He +glanced at Barry Whalen significantly, and the latter surveyed the +group enigmatically. + +"There's something evidently waiting to be said," remarked Wolff, the +silent Partner in more senses than one. "What's the use of waiting?" + +Two or three of those present looked at Ian Stafford, who, standing by +the window, seemed oblivious of them all. Byng had requested him to be +present, with a view to asking his advice concerning some +international aspect of the situation, and especially in regard to +Holland and Germany. The group had welcomed the suggestion eagerly, +for on this side of the question they were not so well equipped as on +others. But when it came to the discussion of inner local policy there +seemed hesitation in speaking freely before him. Wallstein, however, +gave a reassuring nod and said, meaningly: + +"We took up careful strategical positions, but our camp has been +overlooked from a kopje higher than ours." + +"We have been the victims of treachery for years," burst out Fleming, +with anger. "Nearly everything we've done here, nearly everything the +Government has done here, has been known to Kruger--ever since the +Raid." + +"I think it could have been stopped," said the once Sobieski, with an +ugly grimace, and an attempt at an accent which would suit his new +name. "Byng's to blame. We ought to have put down our feet from the +start. We're Byng-ridden." + +"Keep a civil tongue, Israel," snarled Barry Whalen. "You know nothing +about it, and that is the state in which you most shine--in your +natural state of ignorance, like the heathen in his blindness. But +before Byng comes I'd better give you all some information I've got." + +"Isn't it for Byng to hear?" asked Fleming. + +"Very much so; but it's for you all to decide what's to be +done. Perhaps Mr. Stafford can help us in the matter, as he has been +with Byng very lately." Wallstein looked inquiringly towards Stafford. + +The group nodded appreciatively, and Stafford came forward to the +table, but without seating himself. "Certainly you may command me," he +said. "What is the mystery?" + +In short and abrupt sentences Barry Whalen, with an occasional +interjection and explanation from Wallstein, told of the years of +leakage in regard to their plans, of moves circumvented by information +which could only have been got by treacherous means either in South +Africa or in London. + +"We didn't know for sure which it was," said Barry, "but the proof has +come at last. One of Kruger's understrappers from Holland was +successfully tapped, and we've got proof that the trouble was here in +London, here in this house where we sit--Byng's home." + +There was a stark silence, in which more than one nodded +significantly, and looked round furtively to see how the others took +the news. + +"Here is absolute proof. There were two in it here--Adrian Fellowes +and Krool." + +"Adrian Fellowes!" + +It was Ian Stafford's voice, insistent and inquiring. + +"Here is the proof, as I say." Barry Whalen leaned forward and pushed +a paper over on the table, to which were attached two or three smaller +papers and some cablegrams. "Look at them. Take a good look at them +and see how we've been done--done brown. The hand that dipped in the +same dish, as it were, has handed out misfortune to us by the +bucketful. We've been carted in the house of a friend." + +The group, all standing, leaned over, as Barry Whalen showed them the +papers, one by one, then passed them round for examination. + +"It's deadly," said Fleming. "Men have had their throats cut or been +hanged for less. I wouldn't mind a hand in it myself." + +"We warned Byng years ago," interposed Barry, "but it was no use. And +we've paid for it par and premium." + +"What can be done to Krool?" asked Fleming. + +"Nothing particular--here," said Barry Whalen, ominously. + +"Let's have the dog in," urged one of the group. + +"Without Byng's permission?" interjected Wallstein. + +There was a silence. The last time any of them, except Wallstein, had +seen Byng, was on the evening when he had overheard the slanders +concerning Jasmine, and none had pleasant anticipation of this meeting +with him now. They recalled his departure when Barry Whalen had said, +"God, how he hates us." He was not likely to hate them less, when they +proved that Fellowes and Krool had betrayed him and them all. They had +a wholesome fear of him in more senses than one, because, during the +past few years, while Wallstein's health was bad, Byng's position had +become more powerful financially, and he could ruin any one of them, +if he chose. A man like Byng in "going large" might do the Samson +business. Besides, he had grown strangely uncertain in his temper of +late, and, as Barry Whalen had said, "It isn't good to trouble a +wounded bull in the ring." + +They had him on the hip in one way through the exposure of Krool, but +they were all more or less dependent on his financial movements. They +were all enraged at Byng because he had disregarded all warnings +regarding Krool; but what could they do? Instinctively they turned now +to Stafford, whose reputation for brains and diplomacy was so great +and whose friendship with Byng was so close. + +Stafford had come to-day for two reasons: to do what he could to help +Byng--for the last time; and to say to Byng that they could not travel +together to South Africa. To make the long journey with him was beyond +his endurance. He must put the world between Rudyard and himself; he +must efface all companionship. With this last act, begotten of the +blind confidence Rudyard had in him, their intercourse must cease +forever. This would be easy enough in South Africa. Once at the Front, +it was as sure as anything on earth that they would never meet +again. It was torture to meet him, and the day of the inquest, when +Byng had come to his rooms after his interview with Lady Tynemouth and +Mr. Mappin, he had been tried beyond endurance. + +"Shall we have Krool in without Byng's permission? Is it wise?" asked +Wallstein again. He looked at Stafford, and Stafford instantly +replied: + +"It would be well to see Krool, I think. Your action could then be +decided by Krool's attitude and what he says." + +Barry Whalen rang the bell, and the footman came. After a brief +waiting Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed +the door behind him. + +He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure +which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage. + +"Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so +Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel. + +Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and +inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as +Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry +voice. "You've been too long without the sjambok." + +"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The +Law--here!" + +"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski, +with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular. + +"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, +motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't +move, here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders +again, or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing." + +He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a +rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here," +he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion. + +"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for +he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the +whip. Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and +melancholy interest. + +While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched +like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became +venomous and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes. + +The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and +the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool. + +Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear +crept over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir +with fear the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the +sjambok. He had native tendencies and predispositions out of +proportion to the native blood in him--maybe because he had ever been +treated more like a native than a white man by his Boer masters in the +past. + +As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange +was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some +land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these +men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how +much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of +war. + +To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the +dulled noises of London there came to their ears the click of the +wheels of a cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of +the disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in +the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok +flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the +rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the +green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the +scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the +reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the +aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild +herbs. Through the drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild +thunderbolt tear the trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was +the livid lightning that searched in spasms of anger for its prey, +while there swept over the brown, aching veld the flood which filled +the spruits, which made the rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels +through the soil. The luxury of this room, with its shining mahogany +tables, its tapestried walls, its rare fireplace and massive +overmantel brought from Italy, its exquisite stained-glass windows, +was only part of a play they were acting; it was not their real life. + +And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the +whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry +Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme +naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol +of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in +the wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the +long train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, +would never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot +would have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, +it punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the +derringer of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was +the lock to the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the +territories where native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing +tyrant to the commune. It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of +barbarism. It was the sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate +human flesh, it secured order where there was no law, and it did the +work of prison and penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the +wilderness. + +It was race. + +Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the +scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and +Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise +and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of +the veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between +a krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly +transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, +though the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into +by-paths for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence +and the knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed--the sjambok +his scimitar. + +In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He +understood. This was not London; the scene had shifted to +Potchefstroom or Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The +sjambok had, like a wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from +England to spaces where he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for +the glint of an assegai or the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had +done both in his day. + +"We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some +time at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have +you--" + +"Like that--like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and +shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession. + +"What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his +head. "What?" + +"You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the +papers. "We have here the proof at last." + +"You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the +English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, +harshly, handling the sjambok. + +"What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?" + +With great deliberation Wallstein explained. + +"Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly. + +"We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted +and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought. + +An insolent smile crossed Krool's face. + +"You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but +the work is done. It not matter now. It is all done--altogether. Oom +Paul speaks now, and everything is his--from the Cape to the Zambesi, +everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity +showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English +both sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea +with Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and +Christ. The God of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks." + +In spite of the fierce passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed +a side of his nature hitherto hidden--the savage piety of the copper +Boer impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford +almost laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it +seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of +Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great +liberator as partners in triumph. + +In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a +place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at +once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his class, had +acted as a pagan. + +Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the +situation, while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of +the traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian +Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, +serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's +anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety. + +There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the +silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry +Whalen. He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, +as he would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel. + +"Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One +minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If +Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him +go. Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get +out. Is it agreed?" + +"I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth +showed glassily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not +want." + +"The Baas--you have forgotten him," said Wallstein. + +A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, +but he said, morosely: + +"The Baas--I will do what I like." + +There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment +seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with +fury. Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's +ear, and then said: + +"Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool +before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course +to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my +business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, +if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in +his tone. + +"For Byng's sake--his wife--you understand," was all Stafford had said +under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who +whispered to Stafford. + +Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now." + +By his glance and by his word of assent, Wallstein set the cue for the +rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry +Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon +it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding. + +"Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to +Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's +worth in Krool's eyes." + +When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his +fingers played idly with the sjambok. + +"You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, +in a low, even tone. + +"If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt." + +"You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the +Limpopo." + +A flush stole across Krool's face, and when it passed again he was +paler than before. "I have save the Baas," he answered, sullenly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +With a powerful effort, Stafford controlled himself. He dreaded what +was now to be said, but he felt inevitably what it was. + +"How--from me?" + +"If that Fellowes' letter come into his hands first, yours would not +matter. She would not go with you." + +Stafford had far greater difficulty in staying his hand than had Barry +Whalen, for the sjambok seemed the only reply to the dark +suggestion. He realized how, like the ostrich, he had thrust his head +into the sand, imagining that no one knew what was between himself and +Jasmine. Yet here was one who knew, here was one who had, for whatever +purpose, precipitated a crisis with Fellowes to prevent a crisis with +himself. + +Suddenly Stafford thought of an awful possibility. He fastened the +gloomy eyes of the man before him, that he might be able to see any +stir of emotion, and said: "It did not come out as you expected?" + +"Altogether--yes." + +"You wished to part Mr. and Mrs. Byng. That did not happen." + +"The Baas is going to South Africa." + +"And Mr. Fellowes?" + +"He went like I expec'." + +"He died--heart failure, eh?" + +A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into +Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. + +"Who killed him?" + +Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the +sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers. "There was +yourself. He had hurt you--you went to him.... Good! There was the +Baas, he went to him. The dead man had hurt him.... Good!" + +Stafford interrupted him by an exclamation. "What's that you say--the +Baas went to Mr. Fellowes?" + +"As I tell the vrouw, Mrs. Byng, when she say me go from the house +to-day--I say I will go when the Baas send me." + +"The Baas went to Mr. Fellowes--when?" + +"Two hours before you go, and one hour before the vrouw, she go." + +Like some animal looking out of a jungle, so Krool's eyes glowed from +beneath his heavy eyebrows, as he drawled out the words. + +"The Baas went--you saw him?" + +"With my own eyes." + +"How long was he there?" + +"Ten minutes." + +"Mrs. Byng--you saw her go in?" + +"And also come out." + +"And me--you followed me--you saw me, also?" + +"I saw all that come, all that go in to him." + +With a swift mind Stafford saw his advantage--the one chance, the one +card he could play, the one move he could make in checkmate, if, and +when, necessary. "So you saw all that came and went. And you came and +went yourself!" + +His eyes were hard and bright as he held Krool's, and there was a +sinister smile on his lips. + +"You know I come and go--you say me that?" said Krool, with a sudden +look of vague fear and surprise. He had not foreseen this. + +"You accuse yourself. You saw this person and that go out, and you +think to hold them in your dirty clutches; but you had more reason +than any for killing Mr. Fellowes." + +"What?" asked Krool, furtively. + +"You hated him because he was a traitor like yourself. You hated him +because he had hurt the Baas." + +"That is true altogether, but--" + +"You need not explain. If any one killed Mr. Fellowes, why not you? +You came and went from his rooms, too." + +Krool's face was now yellowish pale. "Not me . . . it was not me." + +"You would run a worse chance than any one. Your character would damn +you--a partner with him in crime. What jury in the world but would +convict you on your own evidence? Besides, you knew--" + +He paused to deliver a blow on the barest chance. It was an insidious +challenge which, if it failed, might do more harm to others, might do +great harm, but he plunged. "You knew about the needle." + +Krool was cowed and silent. On a venture Stafford had struck straight +home. + +"You knew that Mr. Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at +Glencader," he added. + +"How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. + +"I saw him steal it--and you?" + +"No. He tell me." + +"What did he mean to do with it?" + +A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. + +"Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man +or a woman want kill." + +There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill +to Stafford's heart. + +"No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, +Krool. You think you've got a hold over me--over Mrs. Byng. You +threaten. Well, I have passed through the fire of the coroner's +inquest. I have nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as +you watched. You came behind me--" + +He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure +behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from +Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more. + +"I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did +not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had +spoken, you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances +were worse than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends +in there, or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are +the vile scum of the earth,"--he determined to take a strong line now, +since he had made a powerful impression on the creature before +him--"and you will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved +your life. Bad as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, +and what he wants to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into +yours, you will think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he +hates you, you will die; if he curses you, you will wither." + +He played upon the superstitious element, the native strain again. It +was deeper in Krool than anything else. + +"Do you think you can defy them?" Stafford went on, jerking a finger +towards the other room. "They are from the veld. They will have you as +sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the +veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak +against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas' +vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?" + +There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul +struggling in the dark, as it were--a struggle as of black spirits in +the grey dawn. + +"I wait the Baas speak," Krool said at last, with a shiver. + +There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room +hurriedly. "Byng has come. He has been told about him," he said in +French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool. + +Stafford rose. "It's all right," he answered in the same language. "I +think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas." + +He turned to Krool. "If you say to the Baas what you have said to me +about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad +time. You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If +you have sense, you will do what I tell you." + +Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His +gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some +strange superstitious element. He was like a creature of a lower order +awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the +door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and +terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent +forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes +almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long +eyelashes touch the grey cheek. + +"There's no fight in him now," he said to Byng in French. "He was +getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember +that, Byng." + +Byng's look was as that of a man who had passed through some chamber +of torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and +even from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth +and scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there +was a look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there--a new look +of deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability +and force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with +the hidden things--the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of +human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge +without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses +and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their +character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective +in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive +organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still +only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to +races such as those of which Krool had come. + +A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had +rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; +these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage +kind, a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer +purpose. In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at +his lips was iron resolution. + +In reply to Stafford he said quietly: "All right, I understand. I know +how to deal with Krool." + +As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at +the end of the table opposite to Krool. + +Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes. + +"I know all, Krool," he said. "You sold me and my country--you tried +to sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I snatched from +the tiger death, not once but twice." + +"It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I +would have die for you, but--" + +"But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I +would twenty lives--my country--you tried to sell me and all who +worked with me." + +"It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal," said the +half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. "But it +matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for +himself. I am half Boer. That is why." + +"You defend it--tell me, you defend it?" + +There was that in the voice, some terrible thing, which drew Krool's +eyes in spite of himself, and he met a look of fire and wrath. + +"I tell why. If it was bad, it was bad. But I tell why, that is +all. If it is not good, it is bad, and hell is for the bad; but I tell +why." + +"You got money from Oom Paul for the man--Fellowes?" It was hard for +him to utter the name. + +Krool nodded. + +"Every year--much?" + +Again Krool nodded. + +"And for yourself--how much?" + +"Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." + +"Only Oom Paul's love!" + +Krool nodded again. + +"But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you +with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving +him. I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life +twice. I gave you good money. I kept you in luxury--you that fed in +the cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong +when you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you +were so wild for meat . . . I took you out of that, and gave you +this." + +He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out +of my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the +same dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim--god of gods, +how slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native +in you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul +did. It's the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you +straight and true, my sweet Krool." + +Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and +slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through +his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before +laying on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept +which never had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul +had flayed him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the +veld-dweller with skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and +endurance. And this was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, +whose wife he had sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into +a traitor. Oom Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a +master whose very tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; +whom, at bottom, he loved in his way as he had never loved anything; +whom he had betrayed, not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; +having argued that it was against England his treachery was directed, +and that was a virtue in his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could +come to Byng through it. He had not seen, he had not understood, he +was still uncivilized; he had only in his veins the morality of the +native, and he had tried to ruin his master's wife for his master's +sake; and when he had finished with Fellowes as a traitor, he was +ready to ruin his confederate--to kill him--perhaps did kill him! + +"It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!" + +The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of +punishment. What else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there +was no other way to punish the traitor, but if there had been another +way he would still have done this. This Krool understood; behind every +command the Baas had ever given him this thing lay--the sjambok, the +natural engine of authority. + +Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped +that letter on my bedroom floor--that letter, you understand? +. . . Speak." + +"I did it, Baas." + +Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly +took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched +man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again. + +"You know what I am going to do with you?" + +"Yes, Baas." + +It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to +Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was +the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do--to obey. + +"You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go." + +"She was not my Baas." + +"You would have done her harm, if you could?" + +"So, Baas." + +With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, +and the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste. + +Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to +resist. + +Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open. + +"You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a +passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?" + +Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no +heart for that enterprise--thirty feet to the pavement below. + +"The sjambok, Baas," he said. + +Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang +out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture. + +In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and +understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank +away to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed +pleasure in the sound of the whip and the moaning. + +It went on and on. + +Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently +his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might +kill the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to +him. + +"You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't, +I will. Listen...." + +It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It +belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law, +where every pioneer was his own cadi. + +With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an +instant and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely +realized him. + +"Open that door," he said, presently, and Barry Whalen opened the door +which led into the big hall. + +"Open all down to the street," Byng said, and Barry Whalen went +forward quickly. + +Like some wild beast Krool crouched and stumbled and moaned as he ran +down the staircase, through the outer hall, while a servant with +scared face saw Byng rain savage blows upon the hated figure. + +On the pavement outside the house, Krool staggered, stumbled, and fell +down; but he slowly gathered himself up, and turned to the doorway, +where Byng stood panting with the sjambok in his hand. + +"Baas!--Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully +away along the street wall. + +A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent +purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and +told him to call that evening and he would hear all about +it. Meanwhile a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of +good faith. + +Presently a half-dozen people began to gather near the door, but the +benevolent policeman moved them on. + +At the top of the staircase Jasmine met her husband. She shivered as +he came up towards her. + +"Will you come to me when you have finished your business?" she said, +and she took the sjambok gently from his hand. + +He scarcely realized her. He was in a dream; but he smiled at her, and +nodded, and passed on to where the others awaited him. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +"THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" + + +Slowly Jasmine returned to her boudoir. Laying the sjambok on the +table among the books in delicate bindings and the bowls of flowers, +she stood and looked at it with confused senses for a long time. At +last a wan smile stole to her lips, but it did not reach her +eyes. They remained absorbed and searching, and were made painfully +sad by the wide, dark lines under them. Her fair skin was fairer than +ever, but it was delicately faded, giving her a look of pensiveness, +while yet there was that in her carriage and at her mouth which +suggested strength and will and new forces at work in her. She carried +her head, weighted by its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern +woman carries a goulah of water. There was something pathetic yet +self-reliant in the whole figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, +however, might at any moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment +of control and self-restraint. + +"He did what I should have liked to do," she said aloud. "We are not +so different, after all. He is primitive at bottom, and so am I. He +gets carried away by his emotions, and so do I." + +She took up the whip, examined it, felt its weight, and drew it with a +swift jerk through the air. + +"I did not even shrink when Krool came stumbling down the stairs, with +this cutting his flesh," she said to herself. "Somehow it all seemed +natural and right. What has come to me? Are all my finer senses dead? +Am I just one of the crude human things who lived a million years ago, +and who lives again as crude as those; with only the outer things +changed? Then I wore the skins of wild animals, and now I do the same, +just the same; with what we call more taste perhaps, because we have +ceased to see the beauty in the natural thing." + +She touched the little band of grey fur at the sleeve of her clinging +velvet gown. "Just a little distance away--that is all." + +Suddenly a light flashed up in her eyes, and her face flushed as +though some one had angered her. She seized the whip again. "Yes, I +could have seen him whipped to death before my eyes--the coward, the +abject coward. He did not speak for me; he did not defend me; he did +not deny. He let Ian think--death was too kind to him. How dared he +hurt me so! . . . Death is so easy a way out, but he would not have +taken it. No, no, no, it was not suicide; some one killed him. He +could never have taken his own life--never. He had not the +courage.... No; he died of poison or was strangled. Who did it? Who +did it? Was it Rudyard? Was it. . . ? Oh, it wears me out--thinking, +thinking, thinking!" + +She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "I am doomed--doomed," +she moaned. "I was doomed from the start. It must always have been so, +whatever I did. I would do it again, whatever I did; I know I would do +it again, being what I was. It was in my veins, in my blood from the +start, from the very first days of my life." + +All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so +many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as +it was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: + +"There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not +all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life +durable...." + +"'There is no help for these things,'" she repeated with a sigh which +seemed to tear her heart in twain. "All gone--all. What is there left +to do? If death could make it better for any one, how easy! But +everything would be known--somehow the world would know, and every one +would suffer more. Not now--no, not now. I must live on, but not +here. I must go away. I must find a place to go where Rudyard will not +come. There is no place so far but it is not far enough. I am +twenty-five, and all is over--all is done for me. I have nothing that +I want to keep, there is nothing that I want to do except to go--to go +and to be alone. Alone, always alone now. It is either that, or be +Jezebel, or--" + +The door opened, and the servant brought a card to her. "His +Excellency, the Moravian ambassador," the footman said. + +"Monsieur Mennaval?" she asked, mechanically, as though scarcely +realizing what he had said. + +"Yes, ma'am, Mr. Mennaval." + +"Please say I am indisposed, and am sorry I cannot receive him +to-day," she said. + +"Very good, ma'am." The footman turned to go, then came back. + +"Shall I tell the maid you want her?" he asked, respectfully. + +"No, why should you?" she asked. + +"I thought you looked a bit queer, ma'am," he responded, hastily. "I +beg your pardon, ma'am." + +She rewarded him with a smile. "Thank you, James, I think I should +like her after all. Ask her to come at once." + +When he had gone she leaned back and shut her eyes. For a moment she +was perfectly motionless, then she sat up again and looked at the card +in her hand. + +"M. Mennaval--M. Mennaval," she said, with a note so cynical that it +betrayed more than her previous emotion, to such a point of despair +her mind had come. + +M. Mennaval had played his part, had done his service, had called out +from her every resource of coquetry and lure; and with wonderful art +she had cajoled him till he had yielded to influence, and Ian had +turned the key in the international lock. M. Mennaval had been used +with great skill to help the man who was now gone from her forever, +whom perhaps she would never see again; and who wanted never to see +her again, never in all time or space. M. Mennaval had played his game +for his own desire, and he had lost; but what had she gained where +M. Mennaval had lost? She had gained that which now Ian despised, +which he would willingly, so far as she was concerned, reject with +contempt.... And yet, and yet, while Ian lived he must still be +grateful to her that, by whatever means, she had helped him to do what +meant so much to England. Yes, he could not wholly dismiss her from +his mind; he must still say, "This she did for me--this thing, in +itself not commendable, she did for me; and I took it for my country." + +Her eyes were open, and her garden had been invaded by those +revolutionaries of life and time, Nemesis, Penalty, Remorse. They +marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They +came with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self +now. Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on +her, blocking her path. + +M. Mennaval--what did she care for him! Yet here he was at her door +asking payment for the merchandise he had sold to her: his judgment, +his reputation as a diplomatist, his freedom, the respect of the +world--for how could the world respect a man at whom it laughed, a man +who had hoped to be given the key to a secret door in a secret garden! + +As Jasmine sat looking at the card, the footman entered again with a +note. + +"His Excellency's compliments," he said, and withdrew. + +She opened the letter hesitatingly, held it in her hand for a moment +without reading it, then, with an impulsive effort, did so. When she +had finished, she gave a cry of anger and struck her tiny clinched +hand upon her knee. + +The note ran: + +"Chere amie, you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all +too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow +a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world +understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of +explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought +you could not be upset so easily--no, it cannot be the war; so I must +try and think what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five +o'clock, I will call again to ask you. Perhaps the migraine will be +better. But, if you will that migraine to be far away, it will fly, +and then I shall be near. Is it not so? You will tell me to-morrow at +five, will you not, belle amie? + +"A toi, " M. M." + +The words scorched her eyes. They angered her, scourged her. One of +life's Revolutionaries was insolently ravaging the secret place where +her pride dwelt. Pride--what pride had she now? Where was the room for +pride or vanity? . . . And all the time she saw the face of a dead man +down by the river--a face now beneath the sod. It flashed before her +eyes at moments when she least could bear it, to agitate her soul. + +M. Mennaval--how dare he write to her so! "Chere amie" and "A +toi"--how strange the words looked now, how repulsive and strange! It +did not seem possible that once before he had written such words to +her. But never before had these epithets or others been accompanied by +such meaning as his other words conveyed. + +"I will not see him to-morrow. I will not see him ever again, if I can +help it," she said bitterly, and trembling with agitation. "I shall go +where I shall not be found. I will go to-night." + +The door opened. Her maid entered. "You wanted me, madame?" asked the +girl, in some excitement and very pale. + +"Yes, what is the matter? Why so agitated?" Jasmine asked. + +The maid's eyes were on the sjambok. She pointed to it. "It was that, +madame. We are all agitated. It was terrible. One had never seen +anything like that before in one's life, madame--never. It was like +the days--yes, of slavery. It was like the galleys of Toulon in the +old days. It was--" + +"There, don't be so eloquent, Lablanche. What do you know of the +galleys of Toulon or the days of slavery?" + +"Madame, I have heard, I have read, I--" + +"Yes, but did you love Krool so?" + +The girl straightened herself with dramatic indignation. "Madame, that +man, that creature, that toad--!" + +"Then why so exercised? Were you so pained at his punishment? Were all +the household so pained?" + +"Every one hated him, madame," said the girl, with energy. + +"Then let me hear no more of this impudent nonsense," Jasmine said, +with decision. + +"Oh, madame, to speak to me like this!" Tears were ready to do needful +service. + +"Do you wish to remain with me, Lablanche?" + +"Ah, madame, but yes--" + +"Then my head aches, and I don't want you to make it worse.... And, +see, Lablanche, there is that grey walking-suit; also the mauve +dressing-gown, made by Loison; take them, if you can make them fit +you; and be good." + +"Madame, how kind--ah, no one is like you, madame--!" + +"Well, we shall see about that quite soon. Put out at once every gown +of mine for me to see, and have trunks ready to pack immediately; but +only three trunks, not more." + +"Madame is going away?" + +"Do as I say, Lablanche. We go to-night. The grey gown and the mauve +dressing-gown that Loison made, you will look well in them. Quick, +now, please." + +In a flutter Lablanche left the room, her eyes gleaming. + +She had had her mind on the grey suit for some time, but the mauve +dressing-gown as well--it was too good to be true. + +She almost ran into Lady Tynemouth's arms as the door opened. With a +swift apology she sped away, after closing the door upon the visitor. + +Jasmine rose and embraced her friend, and Lady Tynemouth subsided into +a chair with a sigh. + +"My dear Jasmine, you look so frail," she said. "A short time ago I +feared you were going to blossom into too ripe fruit, now you look +almost a little pinched. But it quite becomes you, +mignonne--quite. You have dark lines under your eyes, and that +transparency of skin--it is quite too fetching. Are you glad to see +me?" + +"I would have seen no one to-day, no one, except you or Rudyard." + +"Love and duty," said Lady Tynemouth, laughing, yet acutely alive to +the something so terribly wrong, of which she had spoken to Ian +Stafford. + +"Why is it my duty to see you, Alice?" asked Jasmine, with the dry +glint in her tone which had made her conversation so pleasing to men. + +"You clever girl, how you turn the tables on me," her friend replied, +and then, seeing the sjambok on the table, took it up. "What is this +formidable instrument? Are you flagellating the saints?" + +"Not the saints, Alice." + +"You don't mean to say you are going to scourge yourself?" + +Then they both smiled--and both immediately sighed. Lady Tynemouth's +sympathy was deeply roused for Jasmine, and she meant to try and win +her confidence and to help her in her trouble, if she could; but she +was full of something else at this particular moment, and she was not +completely conscious of the agony before her. + +"Have you been using this sjambok on Mennaval?" she asked with an +attempt at lightness. "I saw him leaving as I came in. He looked +rather dejected--or stormy, I don't quite know which." + +"Does it matter which? I didn't see Mennaval today." + +"Then no wonder he looked dejected and stormy. But what is the history +of this instrument of torture?" she asked, holding up the sjambok +again. + +"Krool." + +"Krool! Jasmine, you surely don't mean to say that you--" + +"Not I--it was Rudyard. Krool was insolent--a half-caste, you know." + +"Krool--why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a +policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that +Rudyard--" + +She pushed the sjambok away from her. + +"Yes--terribly." + +"Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." + +"Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. + +"But of course it is not usual--in these parts." + +"Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either. It was a touch +of the Vaal." + +Lady Tynemouth gave a little shudder. "I hope it won't become +fashionable. We are altogether too sensational nowadays. But, +seriously, Jasmine, you are not well. You must do something. You must +have a change." + +"I am going to do something--to have a change." + +"That's good. Where are you going, dear?" + +"South.... And how are you getting on with your hospital-ship?" + +Lady Tynemouth threw up her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set +my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done +it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now +Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding +a wife to come to him." + +"Well, perhaps it's better than a husband forbidding his wife to leave +him." + +"Jasmine, I believe you would joke if you were dying." + +"I am dying." + +There was that in the tone of Jasmine's voice which gave her friend a +start. She eyed her suddenly with a great anxiety. + +"And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell +me what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what +Tynemouth says. Of course you will do as you like." + +"Of course; but still Tynie has never 'issued instructions' before, +and if there was any time I ought to humour him it is now. He's so +intense about the war! But I can't explain everything on paper to him, +so I've written to say I'm going to South Africa to explain, and that +I'll come back by the next boat, if my reasons are not convincing." + +In other circumstances Jasmine would have laughed. "He will find you +convincing," she said, meaningly. + +"I said if he found my reasons convincing." + +"You will be the only reason to him." + +"My dear Jasmine, you are really becoming sentimental. Tynie would +blush to discover himself being silly over me. We get on so well +because we left our emotions behind us when we married." + +"Yours, I know, you left on the Zambesi," said Jasmine, deliberately. + +A dull fire came into Lady Tynemouth's eyes, and for an instant there +was danger of Jasmine losing a friend she much needed; but Lady +Tynemouth had a big heart, and she knew that her friend was in a mood +when anything was possible, or everything impossible. + +So she only smiled, and said, easily: "Dearest Jasmine, that umbrella +episode which made me love Ian Stafford for ever and ever without even +amen came after I was married, and so your pin doesn't prick, not a +weeny bit. No, it isn't Tynie that makes me sad. It's the Climbers who +won't pay." + +"The Climbers? You want money for--" + +"Yes, the hospital-ship; and I thought they'd jump at it; but they've +all been jumping in other directions. I asked the Steuvenfeldts, the +Boulters, the Felix Fowles, the Brutons, the Sheltons, and that fellow +Mackerel, who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it and +twenty others; and Mackerel was the only one who would give me +anything at all large. He gave me ten thousand pounds. But I want +fifty--fifty, my beloved. I'm simply broken-hearted. It would do so +much good, and I could manage the thing so well, and I could get other +splendid people to help me to manage it--there's Effie Lyndhall and +Mary Meacham. The Mackerel wanted to come along, too, but I told him +he could come out and fetch us back--that there mustn't be any scandal +while the war was on. I laugh, my dear, but I could cry my eyes out. I +want something to do--I've always wanted something to do. I've always +been sick of an idle life, but I wouldn't do a hundred things I might +have done. This thing I can do, however, and, if I did it, some of my +debt to the world would be paid. It seems to me that these last +fifteen years in England have been awful. We are all restless; we all +have been going, going--nowhere; we have all been doing, +doing--nothing; we have all been thinking, thinking, thinking--of +ourselves. And I've been a playbody like the rest; I've gone with the +Climbers because they could do things for me; I've wanted more and +more of everything--more gadding, more pleasure, more excitement. It's +been like a brass-band playing all the time, my life this past ten +years. I'm sick of it. It's only some big thing that can take me out +of it. I've got to make some great plunge, or in a few years more I'll +be a middle-aged peeress with nothing left but a double chin, a tongue +for gossip, and a string of pearls. There must be a bouleversement of +things as they are, or good-bye to everything except emptiness. Don't +you see, Jasmine, dearest?" + +"Yes yes, I see." Jasmine got up, went to her desk, opened a drawer, +took out a book, and began to write hastily. "Go on," she said as she +wrote; "I can hear what you are saying." + +"But are you really interested?" + +"Even Tynemouth would find you interesting and convincing. Go on." + +"I haven't anything more to say, except that nothing lies between me +and flagellation and the sack cloth,"--she toyed with the +sjambok--"except the Climbers; and they have failed me. They won't +play--or pay." + +Jasmine rose from the desk and came forward with a paper in her +hand. "No, they have not failed you, Alice," she said, gently. "The +Climbers seldom really disappoint you. The thing is, you must know how +to talk to them, to say the right thing, the flattering, the tactful, +and the nice sentimental thing,--they mostly have middle-class +sentimentality--and then you get what you want. As you do +now. There...." + +She placed in her friend's hand a long, narrow slip of paper. Lady +Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to +her feet, pale and agitated. + +"Jasmine--you--this--sixty thousand pounds!" she cried. "A cheque for +sixty thousand pounds--Jasmine!" + +There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine's eyes, a hectic flush on +her cheek. + +"It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money +will be there." + +Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine's shoulders in her trembling yet strong +fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and +solicitude. + +"But, Jasmine, it isn't possible. Will Rudyard--can you afford it?" + +"That will not be Rudyard's money which you will get. It will be all +my own." + +"But you yourself are not rich. Sixty thousand pounds--why?" + +"It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is +my own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess. And if all is +needed before we have finished, then all shall go." + +Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes +which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into +some world of the soul or imagination. "Jasmine, you are not crazy, +are you?" she asked, excitedly. "You will not repent of this? It is +not a sudden impulse?" + +"Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once. But when it +came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I will not +repent of it. Have no fear. It is final. It is sure. It means that, +like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which +sweeps me on to the rapids." + +"Jasmine, do you mean that you will--that you are coming, too?" + +"Yes, I am going with you. We will do it together. You shall lead, and +I shall help. I have a gift for organization. My grandfather? he--" + +"All the world knows that. If you have anything of his gift, we shall +not fail. We shall feel that we are doing something for our +country--and, oh, so much for ourselves! And we shall be near our +men. Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for +anything if necessary. But Rudyard, will he approve?" She held up the +cheque. + +Jasmine made a passionate gesture. "There are times when we must do +what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the +consequences. I am myself. I am not a slave. If I take my own way in +the pleasures of life, why should I not take it in the duties and the +business of life?" + +Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on +the large, capable hand of her friend. "Isn't work the secret of life? +My grandfather used to say it was. Always, always, he used to say to +me, 'Do something, Jasmine. Find a work to do, and do it. Make the +world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you +do. Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble'--that is +what he said. And I must work or go mad. I tell you I must work, +Alice. We will work together out there where great battles will be +fought." + +A sob caught her in the throat, and Alice Tynemouth wrapped her round +with tender arms. "It will do you good, darling," she said, softly." +It will help you through--through it all, whatever it is." + +For an instant Jasmine felt that she must empty out her heart; tell +the inner tale of her struggle; but the instant of weakness passed as +suddenly as it came, and she only said--repeating Alice Tynemouth's +words: "Yes, through it all, through it all, whatever it is." Then she +added: "I want to do something big. I can, I can. I want to get out of +this into the open world. I want to fight. I want to balance things +somehow--inside myself...." + +All at once she became very quiet. "But we must do business like +business people. This money: there must be a small committee of +business men, who--" + +Alice Tynemouth finished the sentence for her. "Who are not Climbers?" + +"Yes. But the whole organization must be done by ourselves--all the +practical, unfinancial work. The committee will only be like careful +trustees." + +There was a new light in Jasmine's eyes. She felt for the moment that +life did not end in a cul de sac. She knew that now she had found a +way for Rudyard and herself to separate without disgrace, without +humiliation to him. She could see a few steps ahead. When she gave +Lablanche instructions to put out her clothes a little while before, +she did not know what she was going to do; but now she knew. She knew +how she could make it easier for Rudyard when the inevitable hour +came,--and it was here-- which should see the end of their life +together. He need not now sacrifice himself so much for her sake. + +She wanted to be alone, and, as if divining her thought, Lady +Tynemouth embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the +room save the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. + +How silent it was! The world seemed very far away. Peace seemed to +have taken possession of the place, and Jasmine's stillness as she sat +by the fire staring into the embers was a part of it. So lost was she +that she was not conscious of an opening door and of a footstep. She +was roused by a low voice. + +"Jasmine!" + +She did not start. It was as though there had come a call, for which +she had waited long, and she appeared to respond slowly to it, as one +would to a summons to the scaffold. There was no outward agitation +now, there was only a cold stillness which seemed little to belong to +the dainty figure which had ever been more like a decoration than a +living utility in the scheme of things. The crisis had come which she +had dreaded yet invited--that talk which they two must have before +they went their different ways. She had never looked Rudyard in the +eyes direct since the day when Adrian Fellowes died. They had met, but +never quite alone; always with some one present, either the servants +or some other. Now they were face to face. + +On Rudyard's lips was a faint smile, but it lacked the old bonhomie +which was part of his natural equipment; and there were still sharp, +haggard traces of the agitation which had accompanied the expulsion of +Krool. + +For an instant the idea possessed her that she would tell him +everything there was to tell, and face the consequences, no matter +what they might be. It was not in her nature to do things by halves, +and since catastrophe was come, her will was to drink the whole cup to +the dregs. She did not want to spare herself. Behind it all lay +something of that terrible wilfulness which had controlled her life so +far. It was the unlovely soul of a great pride. She did not want to be +forgiven for anything. She did not want to be condoned. There was a +spirit of defiance which refused to accept favours, preferring +punishment to the pity or the pardon which stooped to make it easier +for her. It was a dangerous pride, and in the mood of it she might +throw away everything, with an abandonment and recklessness only known +to such passionate natures. + +The mood came on her all at once as she stood and looked at +Rudyard. She read, or she thought she read in his eyes, in his smile, +the superior spirit condescending to magnanimity, to compassion; and +her whole nature was instantly up in arms. She almost longed on the +instant to strip herself bare, as it were, and let him see her as she +really was, or as, in her despair, she thought she really was. The +mood in which she had talked to Lady Tynemouth was gone, and in its +place a spirit of revolt was at work. A certain sullenness which +Rudyard and no one else had ever seen came into her eyes, and her lips +became white with an ominous determination. She forgot him and all +that he would suffer if she told him the whole truth; and the whole +truth would, in her passion, become far more than the truth: she was +again the egoist, the centre of the universe. What happened to her was +the only thing which mattered in all the world. So it had ever been; +and her beauty and her wit and her youth and the habit of being +spoiled had made it all possible, without those rebuffs and that +confusion which fate provides sooner or later for the egoist. + +"Well," she said, sharply, "say what you wish to say. You have wanted +to say it badly. I am ready." + +He was stunned by what seemed to him the anger and the repugnance in +her tone. + +"You remember you asked me to come, Jasmine, when you took the sjambok +from me." + +He nodded towards the table where it lay, then went forward and picked +it up, his face hardening as he did so. + +Like a pendulum her mood swung back. By accident he had said the one +thing which could have moved her, changed her at the moment. The +savage side of him appealed to her. What he lacked in brilliance and +the lighter gifts of raillery and eloquence and mental give-and-take, +he had balanced by his natural forces--from the power-house, as she +had called it long ago. Pity, solicitude, the forced smile, +magnanimity, she did not want in this black mood. They would have made +her cruelly audacious, and her temper would have known no license; but +now, suddenly, she had a vision of him as he stamped down the +staircase, his coat off, laying the sjambok on the shoulders of the +man who had injured her so, who hated her so, and had done so over all +the years. It appealed to her. + +In her heart of hearts she was sure he had done it directly or +indirectly for her sake; and that was infinitely more to her than that +he should stoop from the heights to pick her up. He was what he was +because Heaven had made him so; and she was what she was because +Heaven had forgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or +understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she +could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain +on Abel. She softened, changed at once. + +"Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and +I ordered him to go. He would not." + +"I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he +was--a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was +pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That +counts for much with the most of us." + +"Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and +take him away. Will there be trouble?" + +A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are +reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to +Kruger, he and--" + +He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence. + +"Yes, he and--and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She +had a sudden intuition. + +He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes--what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and +one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great +deal." + +The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance +had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken +was he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to +him. Afterwards, however, as the Partners all talked together +up-stairs, the enormity of the dead man's crime had fastened on him, +and his brain had been stunned by the terrible thought that directly +or indirectly Jasmine had abetted the crime. Things he had talked over +with her, and with no one else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the +information from South Africa showed. She had at least been +indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes with some freedom or he could not +have known what he did. But directly, knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of +course, she had not done that; but her foolish confidences had abetted +treachery, had wronged him, had helped to destroy his plans, had +injured England. + +He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his +treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last +half-hour. Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment +had taken possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important +and critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of +his wife. + +Upon her now this announcement came with crushing force. Adrian +Fellowes had gained from her--she knew it all too well now--that which +had injured her husband; from which, at any rate, he ought to have +been immune. Her face flushed with a resentment far greater than that +of Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed +her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one +who ruled, had been used like a--she could not form the comparison in +her mind--by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it +was through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in +life by Rudyard. + +"I am sorry," she said, calmly, as soon as she could get her voice. +"I was the means of your employing him." + +"That did not matter," he said, rather nervously. "There was no harm +in that, unless you knew his character before he came to me." + +"You think I did?" + +"I cannot think so. It would have been too ruthless--too wicked." + +She saw his suffering, and it touched her. "Of course I did not know +that he could do such a thing--so shameless. He was a low coward. He +did not deserve decent burial," she added. "He had good fortune to die +as he did." + +"How did he die?" Rudyard asked her, with a face so unlike what it had +always been, so changed by agitation, that it scarcely seemed his. His +eyes were fixed on hers. + +She met them resolutely. Did he ask her in order to see if she had any +suspicion of himself? Had he done it? If he had, there would be some +mitigation of her suffering. Or was it Ian Stafford who had done it? +One or the other--but which? + +"He died without being made to suffer," she said. "Most people who do +wrong have to suffer." + +"But they live on," he said, bitterly. + +"That is no great advantage unless you want to live," she replied. "Do +you know how he died?" she added, after a moment, with sharp scrutiny. + +He shook his head and returned her scrutiny with added poignancy. "It +does not matter. He ceases to do any more harm. He did enough." + +"Yes, quite enough," she said, with a withered look, and going over to +her writing-table, stood looking at him questioningly. He did not +speak again, however. + +Presently she said, very quietly, "I am going away." + +"I do not understand." + +"I am going to work." + +"I understand still less." + +She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to +him. He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had +given to Alice Tynemouth. + +He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked. + +"It is for a hospital-ship." + +"Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have." + +"It is two-thirds of what I have." + +"Why--in God's name, why?" + +"To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase. + +"Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. + +He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last +hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was +deepest in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?" + +"Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that +something was wrong with it all,--the day that Ian Stafford dined +after his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong--cruelly +wrong. We haven't made the best of things together, when everything +was with us to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you +expected." + +"Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply. + +"Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that." + +Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and +sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that +is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside +that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine? +Answer that." + +He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be +recognized. + +His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the +midst of all this--of everything that has nothing to do with love?" +she asked. + +What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her +again it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which +looked on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, +singing to a travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the +song: + +"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers +around her are sighing--" + +The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own +experience or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her +veins like tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with +eyes shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her +tremble and her face go white. + +"No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And +because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never +truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself--that is all that I +can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I +saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok." + +She flung up her hands. "For God's sake, let me be truthful at last. I +don't want to hurt you--I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; +and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together +to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible." + +He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness. + +"No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must +be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I +must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is." + +She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table +again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because +it is the thing I feel I must do." + +"You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice. + +She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, +my very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your +work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no +scandal, because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world +will not misunderstand." + +"There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly. + +"No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged. + +"I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was +going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I +am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist +on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of +them. I will get him down now, I--" + +"Ian Stafford is here--in this house?" she asked, with staring +eyes. What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked +with that laughter which is more painful far than tears. + +"Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us--he knows the +international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend--you +will know how good some day." + +She went white and leaned against the table. + +"No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee." + +"But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can--" + +"Oh--oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting. + +He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair. + +"You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent +over her. "You will be sane some day." + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN + + +Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and +ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of +men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a +giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while +over his grey quiet, generations of men pass. First came savage, +warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races +with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard +and hair--men restless and coarse and brave, and with ancient sins +upon them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the +prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their +race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the +clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were +housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, +adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to +win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer +in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, +having room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had +left only the ashes of past energies. + +Up there, these mountains which, like Marathon, look on the sea. But +lower the gaze from the austere hills, slowly to the plains +below. First the grey of the mountains, turning to brown, then the +bare bronze rock giving way to a tumbled wilderness of boulders, where +lizards lie in the sun, where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then +the bronze merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a +blanket spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and +lonely, rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and +still below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly +rift turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till +lost in the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river +in the waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks +baked and sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to the veld, as some +gloomy giver of good gifts would pay a debt of atonement. + +On certain Dark Days of 1899-1900, if you had watched these turgid +waters flow by, your eyes would have seen tinges of red like blood; +and following the stain of red, gashed lifeless things, which had been +torn from the ranks of sentient beings. + +Whereupon, lifting your eyes from the river, you would have seen the +answer to your question--masses of men mounted and unmounted, who +moved, or halted, or stood like an animal with a thousand legs +controlled by one mind. Or again you would have observed those myriad +masses plunging across the veld, still in cohering masses, which shook +and broke and scattered, regathering again, as though drawn by a +magnet, but leaving stark remnants in their wake. + +Great columns of troops which had crossed the river and pushed on into +a zone of fierce fire, turn and struggle back again across the stream; +other thousands of men, who had not crossed, succour their wounded, +and retreat steadily, bitterly to places of safety, the victims of +blunders from which come the bloody punishment of valour. + +Beyond the grey mountains were British men and women waiting for +succour from forces which poured death in upon them from the +malevolent kopjes, for relief from the ravages of disease and +hunger. They waited in a straggling town of the open plain circled by +threatening hills, where the threat became a blow, and the blow was +multiplied a million times. Gaunt, fighting men sought to appease the +craving of starvation by the boiled carcasses of old horses; in caves +and dug-outs, feeble women, with undying courage, kept alive the +flickering fires of life in their children; and they smiled to cheer +the tireless, emaciated warriors who went out to meet death, or with a +superior yet careful courage stayed to receive or escape it. + +When night came, across the hills and far away in the deep blue, white +shaking streams of light poured upward, telling the besieged forces +over there at Lordkop that rescue would come, that it was moving on to +the mountain. How many times had this light in the sky flashed the +same grave pledge in the mystic code of the heliograph, "We are +gaining ground--we will reach you soon." How many times, however, had +the message also been, "Not yet--but soon." + +Men died in this great camp from wounds and from fever, and others +went mad almost from sheer despair; yet whenever the Master Player +called, they sprang to their places with a new-born belief that he who +had been so successful in so many long-past battles would be right in +the end with his old rightness, though he had been wrong so often on +the Dreitval. + +Others there were who were sick of the world and wished "to be well +out of it"--as they said to themselves. Some had been cruelly injured, +and desire of life was dead in them; others had given injury, and +remorse had slain peace. Others still there were who, having done evil +all their lives, knew that they could not retrace their steps, and yet +shrank from a continuance of the old bad things. + +Some indeed, in the red futile sacrifice, had found what they came to +find; but some still were left whose recklessness did not +avail. Comrades fell beside them, but, unscathed, they went on +fighting. Injured men were carried in hundreds to the hospitals, but +no wounds brought them low. Bullets were sprayed around them, but none +did its work for them. Shells burst near, yet no savage shard +mutilated their bodies. + +Of these was Ian Stafford. + +Three times he had been in the fore-front of the fight where Death +came sweeping down the veld like rain, but It passed him by. Horses +and men fell round his guns, yet he remained uninjured. + +He was patient. If Death would not hasten to meet him, he would +wait. Meanwhile, he would work while he could, but with no thought +beyond the day, no vision of the morrow. + +He was one of the machines of war. He was close to his General, he was +the beloved of his men, still he was the man with no future; though he +studied the campaign with that thoroughness which had marked his last +years in diplomacy. + +He was much among his own wounded, much with others who were comforted +by his solicitude, by the courage of his eye, and the grasp of his +firm, friendly hand. It was at what the soldiers called the Stay +Awhile Hospital that he came in living touch again with the life he +had left behind. + +He knew that Rudyard Byng had come to South Africa; but he knew no +more. He knew that Jasmine had, with Lady Tynemouth, purchased a ship +and turned it into a hospital at a day's notice; but as to whether +these two had really come to South Africa, and harboured at the Cape, +or Durban, he had no knowledge. He never looked at the English +newspapers which arrived at Dreitval River. He was done with that old +world in which he once worked; he was concerned only for this narrow +field where an Empire's fate was being solved. + +Night, the dearest friend of the soldier, had settled on the veld. A +thousand fires were burning, and there were no sounds save the +murmuring voices of myriads of men, and the stamp of hoofs where the +Cavalry and Mounted Infantry horses were picketed. Food and fire, the +priceless comfort of a blanket on the ground, and a saddle or kit for +a pillow gave men compensation for all the hardships and dangers of +the day; and they gave little thought to the morrow. + +The soldier lives in the present. His rifle, his horse, his boots, his +blanket, the commissariat, a dry bit of ground to sleep on--these are +the things which occupy his mind. His heroism is incidental, the +commonplace impulse of the moment. He does things because they are +there to do, not because some great passion, some exaltation, seizes +him. His is the real simple life. So it suddenly seemed to Stafford as +he left his tent, after he had himself inspected every man and every +horse in his battery that lived through the day of death, and made his +way towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. + +"This is the true thing," he said to himself as he gazed at the wide +camp. He turned his face here and there in the starlight, and saw +human life that but now was moving in the crash of great guns, the +shrieking of men terribly wounded, the agony of mutilated horses, the +bursting of shells, the hissing scream of the pom-pom, and the +discordant cries of men fighting an impossible fight. + +"There is no pretense here," he reflected. "It is life reduced down to +the bare elements. There is no room for the superficial thing. It's +all business. It's all stark human nature." + +At that moment his eye caught one of those white messages of the sky +flashing the old bitter promise, "We shall reach you soon." He forgot +himself, and a great spirit welled up in him. + +"Soon!" The light in the sky shot its message over the hills. + +That was it--the present, not the past. Here was work, the one thing +left to do. + +"And it has to be done," he said aloud, as he walked on swiftly, a +spring to his footstep. Presently he mounted and rode away across the +veld. Buried in his thoughts, he was only subconsciously aware of what +he saw until, after near an hour's riding, he pulled rein at the door +of the Stay Awhile Hospital, which was some miles in the rear of the +main force. + +As he entered, a woman in a nurse's garb passed him swiftly. He +scarcely looked at her; he was only conscious that she was in great +haste. Her eyes seemed looking at some inner, hidden thing, and, +though they glanced at him, appeared not to see him or to realize more +than that some one was passing. But suddenly, to both, after they had +passed, there came an arrest of attention. There was a consciousness, +which had nothing to do with the sight of the eyes, that a familiar +presence had gone by. Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back +from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face +to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. + +Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it +stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the +darkness beyond. + +"Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship. + +Of all those he had left behind, this was the one being whom to meet +was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle +of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her +tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his +own. The same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian +Fellowes had injured them both through the same woman, had shaken, if +not shattered, the fabric of their lives. However much they two were +blameworthy, they had been sincere, they had been honourable in their +dishonour, they had been "falsely true." They were derelicts of life, +with the comradeship of despair as a link between them. + +"Al'mah," he said again, gently. Then, with a bitter humour, he added, +"You here--I thought you were a prima donna!" + +The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is +grand opera," she said. "It is the Nibelungen Ring of England." + +"To end in the Twilight of the Gods?" he rejoined with a hopeless kind +of smile. + +They turned to the outer door of the hospital and stepped into the +night. For a moment they stood looking at the great camp far away to +right and left, and to the lone mountains yonder, where the Boer +commandoes held the passes and trained their merciless armament upon +all approaches. Then he said at last: "Why have you come here? You had +your work in England." + +"What is my work?" she asked. + +"To heal the wounded," he answered. + +"I am trying to do that," she replied. + +"You are trying to heal bodies, but it is a bigger, greater thing to +heal the wounded mind." + +"I am trying to do that too. It is harder than the other." + +"Whose minds are you trying to heal?" he questioned, gently. + +"'Physician heal thyself' was the old command, wasn't it? But that is +harder still." + +"Must one always be a saint to do a saintly thing?" he asked. + +"I am not clever," she replied, "and I can't make phrases. But must +one always be a sinner to do a wicked thing? Can't a saint do a wicked +thing, and a sinner do a good thing without being called the one or +the other?" + +"I don't think you need apologize for not being able to make +phrases. I suppose you'd say there is neither absolute saintliness nor +absolute wickedness, but that life is helplessly composite of both, +and that black really may be white. You know the old phrase, 'Killing +no murder.'" + +She seemed to stiffen, and her lips set tightly for a minute; then, as +though by a great effort, she laughed bitterly. + +"Murder isn't always killing," she replied. "Don't you remember the +protest in Macbeth, 'Time was, when the brains were out the man would +die'?" Then, with a little quick gesture towards the camp, she added, +"When you think of to-day, doesn't it seem that the brains are out, +and yet that the man still lives? I'm not a soldier, and this awful +slaughter may be the most wonderful tactics, but it's all beyond my +little mind." + +"Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice," he replied +with kindly irony. "There is almost an epidemic of it. Let us hope we +shall have an antidote soon." + +There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital. Al'mah shut her eyes +for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she +recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though +waiting for some one to come out. + +"What is the matter?" he asked. "Some bad case?" + +"Yes--very bad," she replied. + +"One you've been attending?" + +"Yes." + +"What arm--the artillery?" he asked with sudden interest. + +"Yes, the artillery." + +He turned towards the door of the hospital again. "One of my men? What +battery? Do you know?" + +"Not yours--Schiller's." + +"Schiller's! A Boer?" + +She nodded. "A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back." + +"When was that?" + +"This morning early." + +"The little business at Wortmann's Drift?" + +She nodded. "Yes, there." + +"I don't quite understand. Was he in our lines--a Boer spy?" + +"Yes. But he wore British uniform, he spoke English. He was an +Englishman once." + +Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face +steadily. "I will tell you all," she said scarce above a whisper. "He +came to spy, but he came also to see his wife. She had written to ask +him not to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, +to leave them and join his own people. He came, but not to join his +fellow-countrymen. He came to get money from his wife; and he came to +spy." + +An illuminating thought shot into Stafford's mind. He remembered +something that Byng once told him. + +"His wife is a nurse?" he asked in a low tone. + +"She is a nurse." + +"She knew, then, that he was a spy?" he asked. + +"Yes, she knew. I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial. She +did not expose him. She gave him a chance to escape. But he was shot +as he tried to reach the Boer lines." + +"And was brought back here to his wife--to you! Did he let them"--he +nodded towards the hospital--"know he was your husband?" + +When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not +tremble. "Of course. He would not spare me. He never did. It was +always like that." + +He caught her hand in his. "You have courage enough for a hundred," he +said. + +"I have suffered enough for a hundred," she responded. + +Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards +the door. + +"I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way," she +replied. "It came to me that he might need me." + +"You paid the price of his life once to Kruger--after the Raid, I've +heard," he said. + +"Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible," she +responded with a dark, pained look. + +"His life is in danger--an operation?" he questioned. + +"Yes. There is one chance; but they could not give him an anaesthetic, +and they would not let me stay with him. They forced me away--out +here." She appeared to listen again. "That was his voice--that +crying," she added presently. + +"Wouldn't it be better he should go? If he recovers there would only +be--" + +"Oh yes, to be tried as a spy--a renegade Englishman! But he would +rather live in spite of that, if it was only for an hour." + +"To love life so much as that--a spy!" Stafford reflected. + +"Not so much love of life as fear of--" She stopped short. + +"To fear--silence and peace!" he remarked darkly, with a shrug of his +shoulders. Then he added: "Tell me, if he does not die, and if--if he +is pardoned by any chance, do you mean to live with him again?" + +A bitter laugh broke from her. "How do I know? What does any woman +know what she will do until the situation is before her! She may mean +to do one thing and do the complete opposite. She may mean to hate, +and will end by loving. She may mean to kiss and will end by +killing. She may kiss and kill too all in one moment, and still not be +inconsistent. She would have the logic of a woman. How do I know what +I would do--what I will do!" + +The door of the hospital opened. A surgeon came out, and seeing +Al'mah, moved towards the two. Stafford went forward hurriedly, but +Al'mah stood like one transfixed. There was a whispered word, and then +Stafford came back to her. + +"You will not need to do anything," he said. + +"He is gone--like that!" she whispered in an awed voice. "Death, +death--so many die!" She shuddered. + +Stafford passed her arm through his, and drew her towards the door of +the hospital. + +A half-hour later Stafford emerged again from the hospital, his head +bent in thought. He rode slowly back to his battery, unconscious of +the stir of life round him, of the shimmering white messages to the +besieged town beyond the hills. He was thinking of the tragedy of the +woman he had left tearless and composed beside the bedside of the man +who had so vilely used her. He was reflecting how her life, and his +own, and the lives of at least three others, were so tangled together +that what twisted the existence of one disturbed all. In one sense the +woman he had just left in the hospital was nothing to him, and yet now +she seemed to be the only living person to whom he was drawn. + +He remembered the story he had once heard in Vienna of a man and a +woman who both had suffered betrayal, who both had no longer a single +illusion left, who had no love for each other at all, in whom indeed +love was dead--a mangled murdered thing; and yet who went away to +Corfu together, and there at length found a pathway out of despair in +the depths of the sea. Between these two there had never been even the +faint shadow of romance or passion; but in the terrible mystery of +pain and humiliation, they had drawn together to help each other, +through a breach of all social law, in pity of each other. He +apprehended the real meaning of the story when Vienna was alive with +it, but he understood far, far better now. + +A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he +stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it +seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the +desert together, and minister to each other's despair. It was only the +swift thought of a moment, which faded even as it saw the light; but +it had its origin in that last flickering sense of human companionship +which dies in the atmosphere of despair. "Every man must live his dark +hours alone," a broken-down actor once said to Stafford as he tried to +cheer him when the last thing he cared for had been taken from +him--his old, faded, misshapen wife; when no faces sent warm glances +to him across the garish lights. "It is no use," this Roscius had +said, "every man must live his dark hours alone." + +That very evening, after the battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, +Stafford's trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord +that rang in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting +disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the +blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what his trouble +was. + +In reply Jigger had said, "When it 'it 'm 'e curled up like a bit o' +shaving. An' when I done what I could 'e says, 'It's a speshul for one +now, an' it's lonely goin',' 'e says. When I give 'im a drink 'e says, +'It 'd do me more good later, little 'un'; an' 'e never said no more +except, 'One at a time is the order--only one.'" + +Not even his supper had lifted the cloud from Jigger's face, and +Stafford had left the lad trying to compose a letter to the mother of +the dead man, who had been an especial favourite with the trumpeter +from the slums. + +Stafford was roused from his reflections by the grinding, rumbling +sound of a train. He turned his face towards the railway line. + +"A troop-train--more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He +could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the +locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the +last incline to the camp. + +"Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a +premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible +forces were converging upon him. But did it matter? He knew in his +soul that he was now doing the right thing, that he had come out in +the open where all the archers of penalty had a fair target for their +arrows. He wished to be "Free among the dead that are wounded and that +lie in the grave and are out of remembrance;" but he would do no more +to make it so than tens of thousands of other men were doing on these +battle-fields. + +"Who comes there!" he said again, his eyes upon the white, round light +in the distance, and he stood still to try and make out the black, +winding, groaning thing. + +Presently he heard quick footsteps. + +A small, alert figure stopped short, a small, abrupt hand +saluted. "The General Commanding 'as sent for you, sir." + +It was trumpeter Jigger of the Artillery. + +"Are you the General's orderly, then?" asked Stafford quizzically. + +"The orderly's gone w'ere 'e thought 'e'd find you, and I've come +w'ere I know'd you'd be, sir." + +"Where did he think he'd find me?" + +"Wiv the 'osses, sir." + +A look of gratification crossed Stafford's face. He was well known in +the army as one who looked after his horses and his men. "And what +made you think I was at the hospital, Jigger?" + +"Becos you'd been to the 'osses, sir." + +"Did you tell the General's orderly that?" + +"No, your gryce--no, sir," he added quickly, and a flush of +self-reproach came to his face, for he prided himself on being a real +disciplinarian, a disciple of the correct thing. "I thought I'd like +'im to see our 'osses, an' 'ow you done 'em, an' I'd find you as quick +as 'e could, wiv a bit to the good p'r'aps." + +Stafford smiled. "Off you go, then. Find that orderly. Say, Colonel +Stafford's compliments to the General Commanding and he will report +himself at once. See that you get it straight, trumpeter." + +Jigger would rather die than not get it straight, and his salute made +that quite plain. + +"It's made a man of him, anyhow," Stafford said to himself, as he +watched the swiftly disappearing figure. "He's as straight as a nail, +body and mind--poor little devil.... How far away it all seems!" + +A quarter of an hour later he was standing beside the troop-train +which he had seen labouring to its goal. It was carrying the old +regiment of the General Officer Commanding, who had sent Stafford to +its Colonel with an important message. As the two officers stood +together watching the troops detrain and make order out of the chaos +of baggage and equipment, Stafford's attention was drawn to a woman +some little distance away, giving directions about her impedimenta. + +"Who is the lady?" he asked, while in his mind was a sensible stir of +recognition. + +"Ah, there's something like the real thing!" his companion replied. +"She is doing a capital bit of work. She and Lady Tynemouth have got a +hospital-ship down at Durban. She's come to link it up better with the +camp. It's Rudyard Byng's wife. They're both at it out here." + +"Who comes there!" Stafford had exclaimed a moment before with a sense +of premonition. + +Jasmine had come. + +He drew back in the shadow as she turned round towards them. + +"To the Stay Awhile--right!" he heard a private say in response to her +directions. + +He saw her face, but not clearly. He had glimpse of a Jasmine not so +daintily pretty as of old, not so much of a dresden-china shepherdess; +but with the face of a woman who, watching the world with +understanding eyes, and living with an understanding heart, had taken +on something of the mysterious depths of the Life behind life. It was +only a glimpse he had, but it was enough. It was more than enough. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked his fellow-officer. + +"He's been up there with Tain's Brigade for a fortnight. He was in +Kimberley, but got out before the investment, went to Cape Town, and +came round here--to be near his wife, I suppose." + +"He is soldiering, then?" + +"He was a Colonel in the Rand Rifles once. He's with the South African +Horse now in command of the regiment attached to Tain. Tain's out of +your beat--away on the right flank there." + +Presently Stafford saw Jasmine look in their direction; then, on +seeing Stafford's companion, came forward hastily. The Colonel left +Stafford and went to meet her. + +A moment afterwards, she turned and looked at Stafford. Her face was +now deadly pale, but it showed no agitation. She was in the light of +an electric lamp, and he was in the shadow. For one second only she +gazed at him, then she turned and moved away to the cape-cart awaiting +her. The Colonel saw her in, then returned to Stafford. + +"Why didn't you come and be introduced?" the Colonel asked. "I told +her who you were." + +"Hospital-ships are not in my line," Stafford answered +casually. "Women and war don't go together." + +"She's a nurse, she's not a woman," was the paradoxical reply. + +"She knows Byng is here?" + +"I suppose so. It looks like a clever bit of strategy--junction of +forces. There's a lot of women at home would like the chance she +has--at a little less cost." + +"What is the cost?" + +"Well, that ship didn't cost less than a hundred thousand pounds." + +"Is that all?" + +The Colonel looked at Stafford in surprise: but Stafford was not +thinking of the coin. + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +"AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" + + +As the cape-cart conveying Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the +station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the +helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed +as though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for +so long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair +of Argentines, said to her sympathetically: + +"It's all right, ma'am. We'll be there in a jiffy. Don't give way." + +This friendly solicitude had immediate effect. Jasmine sat up, and +thereafter held herself as though she was in her yellow salon yonder +in London. + +"Thank you," she replied serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long, +tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment." + +"A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he +ventured. Then he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel +Rudyard Byng?" + +She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng." + +"Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big +B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship--they +told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a +mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana +Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely--just like the 4.7's flay the +kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long +way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all +right to us." + +"Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression +lifting. + +He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia +onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was +both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal +leash, so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, +shearing and sun-downing--all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit +o' luck and found a mob of warrigals--horses run wild, you know. We +stalked 'em for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got +'em, and coaxed 'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and +with the hard tin shipped for to see the world. So it was as of +old. And by and by we found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, +puttin' in a bit o' time for the Flag." + +Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many +friends in the past--a smile none the less alluring because it had +lost that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, +had been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight +drooping of the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and +natural. + +"It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the +world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where +life is so simple and so large." + +His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he +said to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But +he felt too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give +it--a friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so +simple and so large." + +"Well, that might be so 'long o' some continents," he remarked, "but +it wasn't so where Joey Clynes and me was nourished, so to speak. I +tripped up on a good many mean things from Bendigo to Thargomindah and +back around. The back-blocks has its tricks as well as the towns, as +you would see if you come across a stock-rider with a cheque to be +broke in his hand. I've seen six months' wages go bung in a day with a +stock-rider on the gentle jupe. But again, peradventure, I've seen a +man that had lost ten thousand sheep tramp fifty miles in a blazing +sun with a basket of lambs on his back, savin' them two switherin' +little papillions worth nothin' at all, at the risk of his own +life--just as mates have done here on this salamanderin' veld; same as +Colonel Byng did to-day along o' Wortmann's Drift." + +Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever +since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do +so. She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left +England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so +far as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as +Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo. She had been busy as she +had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful +way. It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the +negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to +render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee +appointed, for form's sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that +the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring +her. This had become almost an obsession with her. Her grandfather had +had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she +had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her +confidence and a key to what she had to do. It was the first real +work; for what she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing +upon the weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an +instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them. The +first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul. + +Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else--than +either Rudyard or Ian Stafford. Towards both of these her mind had +slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about +neither. There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic +experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a +crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and +on. From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life's +elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart. She tried to +smother every thought concerning the past. She did not seek to find +her bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the +emotions she was travelling. + +One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her +in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree--a +sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment. Against whom? Against +all. Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a +thousand times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of +life, leaving behind a memory which could sting murderously. + +Now, when she heard of Rudyard's bravery at Wortmann's Drift, a +curious thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be +truer to say that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her +blood. She had heard many tales of valour in this war, and more than +one hero of the Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but +as a child's heart might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful +story, so she felt a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding +eyes took on a brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale +of Wortmann's Drift. + +"Tell me about it," she said, yet turned her head away from her eager +historian. + +Corporal Shorter's words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he +had ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of +that. He was full of a man's pride in a man's deed. + +"Well, it was like this," he recited. "Gunter's horse bolted--Dick +Gunter's in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng--his lot. Old +Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd +been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at +last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see +him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again. And while we +was lookin' and tossin' pennies like as to his chances out there, a +grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin' every +string. We knowed her all right, that grey mare--a regular +Mrs. Mephisto, w'ich belongs to Colonel Byng. Do the Boojers fire at +him? Don't they! We could see the spots of dust where the bullets +struck, spittin', spittin', spittin', and Lord knows how many hunderd +more there was that didn't hit the ground. An' the grey mare gets +there. As cool as a granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old +Gunter; down goes the grey mare--Colonel Byng had taught her that +trick, like the Roosian Cossack hosses. Then up on her rolls old +Gunter, an' up goes Colonel Byng, and the grey mare switchin' her +bobtail, as if she was havin' a bit of mealies in the middle o' the +day. But when they was both on, then the band begun to play. Men was +fightin' of course, but it looked as if the whole smash stopped to see +what the end would be. It was a real pretty race, an' the grey mare +takin' it as free as if she was carryin' a little bit of a pipkin like +me instead of twenty-six stone. She's a flower, that grey mare! Once +she stumbled, an' we knowed it wasn't an ant-bear's hole she'd found +in the veld, and that she'd been hurt. But they know, them hosses, +that they must do as their Baases do; and they fight right on. She +come home with the two all right. She switched round a corner and over +a nose of land where that crossfire couldn't hit the lot; an' there +was the three of 'em at 'ome for a cup o' tea. Why, ma'am, that done +the army as much good to-day, that little go-to-the-devil, you +mud-suckers! as though we'd got Schuster's Hill. 'Twas what we +needed--an' we got it. It took our eyes off the nasty little fact that +half of a regiment was down, an' the other half with their job not +done as it was ordered. It made the S.A.'s and the Lynchesters and the +Gessex lot laugh. Old Gunter's all right. He's in the Stay Awhile +now. You'll be sure to see him. And Colonel Byng's all right, too, +except a little bit o' splinter--" + +"A bit of splinter--" Her voice was almost peremptory. + +"A chip off his wrist like, but he wasn't thinkin' of that when he got +back. He was thinkin' of the grey mare; and she was hit in three +places, but not to mention. One bullet cut through her ear and through +Colonel Byng's hat as he stooped over her neck; but the luck was with +them. They was born to do a longer trek together. A little bit of the +same thing in both of 'em, so to speak. The grey mare has a temper +like a hunderd wildcats, and Colonel Byng can let himself go too, as +you perhaps know, ma'am. We've seen him let loose sometimes when there +was shirkers about, but he's all right inside his vest. And he's a +good feeder. His men get their tucker all right. He knows when to shut +his eyes. He's got a way to make his bunch--and they're the +hardest-bit bunch in the army--do anything he wants 'em to. He's as +hard himself as ever is, but he's all right underneath the +epidermotis." + +All at once there flashed before Jasmine's eyes the picture of Rudyard +driving Krool out of the house in Park Lane with a sjambok. She heard +again the thud of the rhinoceros-whip on the cringing back of the +Boer; she heard the moan of the victim as he stumbled across the +threshold into the street; and again she felt that sense of +suffocation, that excitement which the child feels on the brink of a +wonderful romance, the once-upon-a-time moment. + +They were nearing the hospital. The driver silently pointed to it. He +saw that he had made an impression, and he was content with it. He +smiled to himself. + +"Is Colonel Byng in the camp?" she asked. + +"He's over--'way over, miles and miles, on the left wing with Kearey's +brigade now. But old Gunter's here, and you're sure to see Colonel +Byng soon--well, I should think." + +She had no wish to see Colonel Byng soon. Three days would suffice to +do what she wished here, and then she would return to Durban to her +work there--to Alice Tynemouth, whose friendship and wonderful +tactfulness had helped her in indefinable ways, as a more obvious +sympathy never could have done. She would have resented one word which +would have suggested that a tragedy was slowly crushing out her life. + +Never a woman in the world was more alone. She worked and smiled with +eyes growing sadder, yet with a force hardening in her which gave her +face a character it never had before. Work had come at the right +moment to save her from the wild consequences of a nature maddened by +a series of misfortunes and penalties, for which there had been no +warning and no preparation. + +She was not ready for a renewal of the past. On]y a few minutes before +she had been brought face to face with Ian Stafford, had seen him look +at her out of the shadow there at the station, as though she was an +infinite distance away from him; and she had realized with +overwhelming force how changed her world was. Ian Stafford, who but a +few short months ago had held her in his arms and whispered +unforgettable things, now looked at her as one looks at the image of a +forgotten thing. She recalled his last words to her that awful day +when Rudyard had read the fatal letter, and the world had fallen: + +"Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he had +said. "But there is Rudyard. You must help him through. He heard +scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't +believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie. Good-bye." + +That had been the end--the black, bitter end. Since then Ian had never +spoken a word to her, nor she to him; but he had stood there in the +shadow at the station like a ghost, reproachful, unresponsive, +indifferent. She recalled now the day when, after three years' +parting, she had left him cool, indifferent, and self-contained in the +doorway of the sweet-shop in Regent Street; how she had entered her +carriage, had clinched her hands, and cried with wilful passion: "He +shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall! He +shall!" + +Here was indifference again, but of another land. Hers was not a +woman's vanity, in fury at being despised. Vanity, maybe, was still +there, but so slight that it made no contrast to the proud turmoil of +a nature which had been humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its +mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they +had been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had +been an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or +impelling habits. + +And over all there hung the shadow of a man's death, with its black +suspicion. When Ian Stafford looked at her from the shadow of the +railway-station, the question had flashed into his mind, Did she kill +him? Around Adrian Fellowes' death there hung a cloud of mystery which +threw a sinister shadow on the path of three people. In the middle of +the night, Jasmine started from her sleep with the mystery of the +man's death torturing her, and with the shuddering question, Which? on +her fevered lips. Was it her husband--was it Ian Stafford? As he +galloped over the veld, or sat with his pipe beside the camp-fire, +Rudyard Byng was also drawn into the frigid gloom of the ugly thought, +and his mind asked the question, Did she kill him? It was as though +each who had suffered from the man in life was destined to be menaced +by his shade, till it should be exorcised by that person who had taken +the useless life, saying, "It was I; I did it!" + +As Jasmine entered the hospital, it seemed to her excited imagination +as though she was entering a House of Judgment: as though here in a +court of everlasting equity she would meet those who had played their +vital parts in her life. + +What if Rudyard was here! What if in these few days while she was to +be here he was to cross her path! What would she say? What would she +do? What could be said or done? Bitterness and resentment and dark +suspicion were in her mind--and in his. Her pride was less wilful and +tempestuous than on the day when she drove him from her; when he said +things which flayed her soul, and left her body as though it had been +beaten with rods. Her bitterness, her resentment had its origin in the +fact that he did not understand--and yet in his crude big way he had +really understood better than Ian Stafford. She felt that Rudyard +despised her now a thousand times more than ever he had hinted at in +that last stifling scene in Park Lane; and her spirit rebelled against +it. She would rather that he had believed everything against her, and +had made an open scandal, because then she could have paid any debt +due to him by the penalty most cruel a woman can bear. But pity, +concession, the condescension of a superior morality, were impossible +to her proud mind. + +As for Ian Stafford, he had left her stripped bare of one single +garment of self-respect. His very kindness, his chivalry in defending +her; his inflexible determination that all should be over between them +forever, that she should be prevailed upon to be to Rudyard more than +she had ever been--it all drove her into a deeper isolation. This +isolation would have been her destruction but that something bigger +than herself, a passion to do things, lifted to idealism a mind which +in the past had grown materialistic, which, in gaining wit and mental +skill, had missed the meaning of things, the elemental sense. + +Corporal Shorter's tale of Rudyard's heroism had stirred her; but she +could not have said quite what her feeling was with regard to it. She +only knew vaguely that she was glad of it in a more personal than +impersonal way. When she shook hands with the cheerful non-com. at the +door of the hospital, she gave him a piece of gold which he was loth +to accept till she said: "But take it as a souvenir of Colonel Byng's +little ride with 'Old Gunter.'" + +With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll +not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and +God-bless-you!" + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER + + +It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of +destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no +moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so +near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their +nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide +men to a new Messiah. + +In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for +her. All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and +she saw herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality +that once she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was +answered by a choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she +started up from her couch with poignant apprehension; but presently +she realized that it was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward +not far from the room where she lay. + +It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been +excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide +the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it +soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists +presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she +was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on +her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon +herself, it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. + +Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires +dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of +the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust +and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling +that around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other +scenes, or wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last +fight, and if so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in +the home of the cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around +their fires were like a family, where men grow to serve each other as +brother serves brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving +each other's honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each +other. + +As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance +which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, +she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs +upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to +take up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound +was like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself +on her mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the +grim lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would +draw the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the +game was won. + +The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost +upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where +their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they +reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop +passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of +life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their +helpless comrades in this place of healing. + +As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure +dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each +other--"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me, +Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!" + +But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman +somewhere waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others +still had only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a +woman looks at them; and where women are few and most of them are +angels, --the battle-field has no shelter for any other--such looks +have deep significance. + +The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone +past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one +of them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came +towards the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's +window, slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted +its neck, and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a +moment Jasmine stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew +why, by this little incident of the night, and then suddenly the +starlight seemed to draw round the patient animal standing at +attention, as it were. + +Then she saw it was a grey horse. + +Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old +Gunter," ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was +Rudyard Byng. + +That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had +passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the +night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she +stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she +would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could-- + +She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe +closely about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter +her room--she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not +on the chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against +a table. She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not +there. Her brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried +to button the night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned +it to throw back her head and gather her golden hair away from her +shoulders and breast. All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her +own room.... Where was her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why +should she be at such a disadvantage! She reached for the table again +and found a match-box. She would strike a light, and find her +dressing-gown. Then she abruptly remembered that she had no +dressing-gown with her; that she had travelled with one single +bag--little more than a hand-bag--and it contained only the emergency +equipment of a nurse. She had brought no dressing-gown; only the light +outer rain-proof coat which should serve a double purpose. She had +forgotten for a moment that she was not in her own house, that she was +an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She felt her way to the wall, +found the rain-proof coat, and, with trembling fingers, put it on. As +she did so a wave of weakness passed over her, and she swayed as +though she would fall; but she put a hand on herself and fought her +growing agitation. + +She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard +footsteps in the hall outside--footsteps she knew, footsteps which for +years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the +quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of +determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's +voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and +afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his +hand upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move +forward as though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no +lock. With strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the +door, expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she +could hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were +throbbing. + +The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could +bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the +sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes--the hold-all of +the odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, +officers waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of +the hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One +light was burning--a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind +her quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of +relief. Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened +her eyes. A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door. + +It was her husband. + +Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her +bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom +turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had +frightened her had followed his entrance here. + +She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her +night-dress showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind +the table, as though to hide her bare ankles. + +He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered +himself. "Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer +place." + +All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and +still. She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she +could not have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a +haunting sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but +against everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of +the last few months seemed suddenly undone--to go for nothing. Just as +a drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for +a period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for +drink, and plunges into a debauch,--the last maddening degradation +before his final triumph,--so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and +self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged +from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, +and her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven +into the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the +unknown--into a strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation. + +Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny +and inquiry in his eyes which she saw--and saw nothing else +there. There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in +their last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, +"What did it mean--that letter from Adrian Fellowes?" + +It was all there in his eyes now--that hateful inquiry, the piercing +scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into +her eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too. + +"Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked. + +She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the +look in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked +the same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man +stood between them, as he had never stood in life--of infinitely more +importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between +Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any +sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of +real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a +disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him! +It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway +over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted +now. + +"Why have you come here--to this room?" she asked coldly. + +As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which +angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; +but the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her +steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and +forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in +London. There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, +the panic excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day +when Adrian Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none +of the barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the +sjambok. Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed +older, his thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep +fissure between the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, +had freed him from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had +wholly gone from his cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious +life about him. He was merely the business-like soldier with work to +do. His khaki fitted him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique +without defect. He carried in his hand a short whip of +rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed his hands upon his hips and looked +at Jasmine meditatively, before he answered her question, she recalled +the scene with Krool. Her eyes were fascinated by the whip in his +hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as though she was to be the +victim of his wrath, and that the whip would presently fall upon her +shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld. But his eyes drew hers +to his own presently, and even while he spoke to her now, the illusion +of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his voice to be +intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her shoulders. + +"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," +he answered her. + +"Old Gunter," she said mechanically. + +"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?" + +"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly. + +"Well, I came to see Gunter." + +"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream. + +"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--" + +"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with +a querulous ring to her voice. + +"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp +were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come." + +"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say. + +"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is +obvious that I should visit you." + +"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That +must come." + +"I don't know anything that must come in this world, " he replied. "We +don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we +cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to +the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing +you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing +from our friends. There's enough of that from our foes." + +"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly. + +"I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us +meet on this neutral ground." + +"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely. + +"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be +fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more +sarcasm than he intended. + +Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into +battle. Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives +together came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms +too against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to +this was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium +of all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one +five months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, +craving for amusement and excitement and--she was going to say +romance, but there was no romance in those sordid hours of +pleasure-making, when she plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand--ah, +if only Rudyard had not gone to South Africa then! That five months +held no romance. She had never known but one romance, and it was over +and done. The floods had washed it away. + +"You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It +came to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the +night as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now." + +Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above +her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or +whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us +worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between +us. I never want to see you any more." + +In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night-dress, +and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the +linen. Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him +were too vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, +however, by a cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a man's +death thrust itself between them. This war might have never been, had +it not been for the treachery of the man who had been false to +everything and every being that had come his way. Indirectly this vast +struggle in which thousands of lives were being lost had come through +his wife's disloyalty, however unintentional, or in whatever +degree. Whenever he thought of it, his pulses beat faster with +indignation, and a deep resentment possessed him. + +It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him, +but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his +country. The map was dead--so much. He had paid a price--too small. + +And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the +same shadow--the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she +said, "There is a black sea between us." + +What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she +could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The +passion of the body was dead in her--atrophied. She was as one through +whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of +desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the +months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a +paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red +corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from +which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the +amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to +restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an +invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was +no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; +where the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing +of the flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, +of houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal +life, of domestic being--of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of +no mental protest which could be put into words: she was only +conscious of emotions which now shook her with their power, now left +her starkly cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering +as intense as that of Procrustes on his bed of iron. + +This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared +breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an +indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by +herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she +felt he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of +that. + +That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though +he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret +of life--a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, +contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was +the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She +was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being +exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it +was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of +anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the +rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit +of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling. + +"Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have +you no consideration? It is past midnight." + +His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said +with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always +now. What else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch +at his wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work +begins--not an eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here +sometimes. This one may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a +one-hour day--or less." + +Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear +wife--Jasmine--" he exclaimed. + +Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a +moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact +that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him +the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world +seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy +stronger than Time. + +She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable--that +old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her +past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she +scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was +bewildered, distraught. + +"No, no--coward!" she cried. + +He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned +white. Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened +to the floor and passed through it into the night. + +An instant later he was on his horse. + +A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, +and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out. + +She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her +awe-struck ears. + +With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on +the floor, her face turned towards the stars. + +"Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned. + +At least here was no longer the cry of doom. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING + + +At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on +her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward +a figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar +motion. Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing +her. Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched +the nurse's arm. + +"Al'mah--it is Al'mah?" she said. + +Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she +recovered herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost +dazedly. + +After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place +for it to happen," she added. + +Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched +the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of +paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a +look of aversion? + +"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in +explanation. + +Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, +with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to +her, she smiled winningly. + +"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined. + +"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then +to gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on +strings." + +After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now +she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her +face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work +for in England." + +"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added +suddenly, "I could not sing any longer." + +"Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked. + +"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the +voice." + +They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah +caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said. + +She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld +everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the +navy and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack. + +"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. +"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a +little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach, +Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I +sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's +tricks. How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal +sergeant, over sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs +belonging to the time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and +that there's no such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of +mirage of the mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do +crazy things, and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do +awful things. But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, +as they did with the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories +here from men before they died, of women that were false, and injuries +done, many, many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real +at all, but just phantasy." + +"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused. + +Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it +does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere +snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here; +and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too +sometimes." + +"Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden +remembrance. + +"Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here." + +"So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said +to me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing +it is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke +of you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite +honest, too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who +you are?" + +Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes +I'm the world's foundling." + +Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical +features became drawn. + +"I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most +to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my +identity altogether. Do you ever feel that?" + +"No; I often wish I could." + +Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she +asked. "You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in +London. Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it +something you wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help +here?" + +Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and +wondered what this woman had to say which could be of any import to +herself; yet she felt there was something drawing nearer which would +make her shrink. + +"No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and +remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to +the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to +one family, or to one's self. That's all." + +Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do +not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have +had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet +it pursued me till yesterday--till yesterday evening. Now it's gone; +that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was." + +She pointed to the door of another room. + +There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her +movements. Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the +look in the woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine +stepped inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a +moment nothing was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two +chairs. + +"That was the first man I ever loved--my husband," Al'mah said +quietly, pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him +from me--you and others." + +Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she +drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of +disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and +indefinable horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through +her brain. It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely +calm, she said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?" + +Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You +took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and +painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at +Glencader. Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter +from you. I had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, +when there was no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little +Jigger's sister, when he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I +killed him. Then--I killed him." + +Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not +shrink. She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as +though to read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was +really true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest +horror of memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. + +"You--are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know +what you have said?" + +Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am +insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is +the place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness--the madness of war +and other madnesses." + +"You had loved him, yet you killed him!" + +"You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of +course--I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a +little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air--its flight was only a +little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed +Adrian, as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but +I did it. Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that +day he died? I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw +your face that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms +and found him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca +killed Scarpia? You remember how she felt? I felt so--just like +that. I never hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it." + +"How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which +comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy. + +"You remember the needle--Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had +it. He showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too +weak. The needle was in his pocket-book--to kill me with some day +perhaps. He certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went +to see him. He was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I +said, he had showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the +needle. He talked of his journey abroad. He lied--nothing but lies, +about himself, about everything. When he had said enough,-- lying was +easier to him than anything else--I told him the truth. Then he went +wild. He caught hold of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize +the needlepoint when it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to +him only the prick of a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all +over. He died quite peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him +on the sofa. He looked sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would +never lie any more to women, to you or to me or any other. It is a +good thing to stop a plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was +handsome, and his music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its +kind, and it was part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two +wicked men hurt me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; +and I went from bad to worse. At least he"--she pointed to the other +room--"he had some courage at the very last. He fought, he braved +death. The other--you remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and +Ian Stafford went down, and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian +would not go. Then it was I began to hate him. That was the +beginning. What happened had to be. I was to kill him; and I did. It +avenged me, and it avenged your husband. I was glad of that, for +Rudyard Byng had done so much for me: not alone that he saved me at +the opera, you remember, but other good things. I did his work for him +with Adrian." + +"Have you no fear--of me?" Jasmine asked. + +"Fear of--you ? Why?" + +"I might hate you--I might tell." + +Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish +things. You would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to +me. Some one had to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or +yourself. It fell to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it +would not matter if you did. Nothing would happen--nothing at +all. Think it out, and you will see why." + +Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice. + +"Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?" + +"Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the +war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!" + +Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had +overpowered her; but now it was all gone. + +"We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"--once +Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would +pay, and would pay here--here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a +woman who, like herself, had suffered. + +"Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took +both of Almah's hands in her own. + +Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all +at once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any +human being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine +pity which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had +been generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; +but it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning +compassion for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or +estate." + +But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went +from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her +far behind him,--since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had +sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her +heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the +Invisible--that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her +wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and +had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her +inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even +then been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life. + +That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the +last few hours--why, she knew not--her heart had found a new +sense. She felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something +that made her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading +power, a brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away +into the mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to +see, however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether +the woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity +of her soul made no choice and sought no difference. + +As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over +Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a +light which made them aglow with understanding. + +"I always thought you selfish--almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said +presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real +suffering--only the surface, only disappointment at not having your +own happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I +did what I did?" + +"I understand." + +"I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison +and on the scaffold--if they knew--" + +Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes +with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that +to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you +must put it behind you." . . . Suddenly she pointed to the other room +where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. + +"In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood +looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man +lay. "I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was +all so many centuries ago, when I was young and glad." + +Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away. + +A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the +wards. At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the +booming of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies +were at work. + +The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an +impassioned gesture. + +"Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, +that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow--a general assault--if +Byng pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His +combination's working all right--thanks to Byng's lot." + +As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation. + +"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But +her voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear. + +She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he +could not know. + +But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his +fighting at daybreak, as he had said. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +"ALAMACHTIG!" + + +When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window +at the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his +heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and +defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it +with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of +peace in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black +curtain between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could +be set a soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not +even said a God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so +near, so dear, so cherished: + +"For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- +And, now they have looked and seen us, +Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near, +With the thick of the world between us!" + +How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each +other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting +shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each +other, should come to a day when they would be less to each other than +strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot +bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's +assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have +gone, after hope is dead. + +There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as +these vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would +never, feel that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was +closed to him; not even when his whole nature was up in arms against +the injury she had done him. + +But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his +troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of +feeling. After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be +treated so? Was he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal +concession? Why should he be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? +He did not know why. But at the bottom of everything lay a +something--a yearning--which would not be overwhelmed. In spite of +wrong and injury, it would live on and on; and neither Time nor crime, +nor anything mortal could obliterate it from his heart's oracles. + +The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the +sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled +his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His +head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the +stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not +felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so +stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas +beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the +salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the +prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; +but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the +others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets +into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a +man away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where +lies repose. + +The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he +galloped gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once +again, his mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, +as he left Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was +over and done. + +How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over--unless, +unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should +settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands +of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a +primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was +no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was +a lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the +product of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in +a blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the +friend of his race and the lover of one woman. + +Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far +off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if +they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill, +turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the +Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his +mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries +of artillery and three thousand infantry--Leary's brigade, which had +not been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift. + +But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his +hard-bitten South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no +doubt. War was part chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck +of the devil. He had ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; +he had always possessed ballast even when the London life had +enervated, had depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a +commonplace: it belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong. + +Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which +was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of +the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry +did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and +the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be +open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his +gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours +before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master +Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far. + +The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in +command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, +and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the +blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was +on the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, +either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep +basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld +people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they +were not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were +prepared to go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to +get up early in the morning if they want to catch us." + +This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's +command had already reached the position from which they could do +their work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no +sign of life from the Boer trenches in the dusk--naught of what +chanced at Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would +certainly have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not +allow the Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be +threatened or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, +there would be fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for +half a continent. + +"Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry VVhalen drew up by him. + +"Not a sound from them--not a sign." + +"Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?" + +"Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of +Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take +the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of +trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be +all right." + +"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry. + +"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje, +and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast." + +Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As +it struck, he noted the time. + +His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall +have the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before +they know it." + +Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They +clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each +other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither +disaster nor death could destroy. + +"My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said. + +"You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I +go down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the +day I married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I +said then I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened +out--and I'll not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if +things should happen that way." + +"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he +recovered himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?" + +"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the +salute. "That is all," he added brusquely. + +They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given +softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen, +moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer +trenches. + +Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey +glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly, +till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and +kind. Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the +sun shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active +being, and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first +delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above +the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes +flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the +meerkat sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon +the stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and +beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was +new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and +this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all +things living begin the world afresh. + +But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the +sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the +aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter +than attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house +or fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any +mysterious thing may happen--a world of five thousand years ago--the +air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would +seem of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast +colonies of green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might +belong. Something frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his +flight through the grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful +adventure; a bird hears the sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves +or the swaying shrubs, and in disdain of such slight performance +flings out a song which makes the air drunken with sweetness. + +A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with +flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known +no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is +still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest +beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common. + +Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the +lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them +upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is +it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there +to the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not-- + +Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is +shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the +veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and +beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of +light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle +of vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering +bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with +strange, half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok +and the rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, +vaguely trying to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of +their world; useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of +Boers and British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in +alarm; for they knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered +the madness of battle, and they realized it at its native first value. + +There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind +Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had +brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this +flank of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at +work on the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people +from the places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks. + +Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer +trenches. These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose +blood was in a tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at +hand-to-hand range, men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in +the days when the only fighting was man to man, or one man to many +men. Here every "Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell +back because he was forced back by men who were men of the veld like +himself; and the Briton pressed forward because he would not be +denied; because he was sick of reverses; of going forward and falling +back; of taking a position with staggering loss and then abandoning +it; of gaining a victory and then not following it up; of having the +foe in the hollow of the hand and hesitating to close it with a +death-grip; of promising relief to besieged men, and marking time when +you had gained a foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on. + +Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked +below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a +fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew +should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty +and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men +the status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters +under Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led +nowhere forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done +a big thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like +Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to +be the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from +almost perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory. + +From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! +But here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his +heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the +bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his +fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only +bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and +muscle, though the will was iron. + +Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by +step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward, +taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot; +never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat +above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and +might be caught by a lightning shot. + +Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the +hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a +soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men +of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would +presently throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up +where hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable +position. At last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in +proportion as the rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men +reached the top, mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit +because of the comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before +them. As they were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely +as ever men fought in the days of Rustum. + +In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen +and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger +number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his +life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry +Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he +had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also +passed through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely +conscious of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall +him; but, in the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his +men were waving their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before +him, ragged and grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and +race-hatred in their eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he +wounded, but the wounded voortrekker--a giant of near seven feet +clubbed his rifle, and drove at him. Rudyard shot at close quarters +again, but his pistol missed fire. + +Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that +the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes +involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, +but, as he did so, he heard a cry--the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he +knew so well. + +"Baas! Baas!" it called. + +Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him +to the ground. + +"Baas! Baas!" + +The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness. + +Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do +anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in +the instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of +"Baas! Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of +the Boer who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As +Rudyard fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" +again, and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own +pistol brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he +realized who it was had cried out, "Baas!" + +The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, +with sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street. + +It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's +body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas--Baas!" + +Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own +fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed +that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger +than death. + +Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his +unconscious friend with a great anxiety. + +"No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's +breast. "The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the +blow. Alamachtig, it is good! The Baas--it is right with the Baas." + +Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as +Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head. + +Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and +machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and +the infantry--Humphrey's and Blagdon's men--were hurrying up the slope +which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position +the enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, +because they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high +as their own. + +"A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still +unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor +this time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at +DeLancy Scovel's." + +Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he +looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind +being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the +hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard +would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the +thing for him. + +Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful +would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's +hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken +ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a +Westminster sawbones. + +Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng +had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once +he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance +before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the +Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been +known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called +Little Jingo. + +His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard, +but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek. + +"He wants brandy," Jigger said. + +"Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply. + +"I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask. + +"Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it +too!" + +"A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently. + +As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What +do you stay here as--deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the +other." + +"Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See--the Baas." + +Rudyard's eyes were open. + +"Prisoner--who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly. + +"Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him. + +"He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen. + +"I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +"THE ALPINE FELLOW" + + +To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who +emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay +in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit, +were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree, +transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the +skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of +conflict. + +The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before +him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of +death on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in +his young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and +desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of +those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated. + +Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant +rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches +and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has +little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his +comrades and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he +has to do so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has +none of the composure of those who have solace in thinking that what +they leave behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and +there some simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off +the meaning of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in +their hands for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment. + +So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom +Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard +Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the +Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet +grim frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden +and masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of +Britain's manhood. + +"From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as +fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he +heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he +shoves the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, +sticks his chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and +treks across the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave +him and all his that went before him the key to civilization, and how +to be happy though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, +the I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the +best. He was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and +out of a fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to +say, 'I've got the hang of this, and it's different from what I +thought; but that doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in +style. It's the has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, +he fished out the little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, +to let it tell his fellow-countrymen how he looked at it--that he was +just a pawn in the great game. The game had to be played, and won, and +the winner had to sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the +sacrifices. Well, I'd like a tombstone the same as that fella from New +Zealand, if I could win it as fair, and see as far." + +Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the +ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An +Alexander, with not one world conquered." + +"I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could +put such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't +want to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to +stay, but he went against his will, and--and I wish that the +grub-hunters, and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in +England could get hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a +different thing in Thamesfontein and the little green islands." + +"You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier," +said Stafford with a friendly nod. + +"I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that +was hard enough." + +Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough--a handful of guns and +fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put +in an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'" + +"Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning +the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big +shindy. It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away +like a fat old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in +his bones now. I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, +more that's worth having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he +wants what 'd make his wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it." + +"Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded +Stafford evenly. + +Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when +we took Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had +so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng." + +Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm +for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at +the Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the +smell of disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a +snigger little place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of +peaches and oranges, and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of +nice flowers in the garden, and a stoep made for candidates for +Stellenbosch--as comfortable as the room of a Rand director." + +"Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards +Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn, +the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or +cloud of green in the veld. + +"No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply. + +Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look +of sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to +Durban, then?" + +"No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed +at the hospital." + +Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked +heavily. "Is she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken. + +"She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend +would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the +same, and took her some veld-roses." + +"You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low. + +"Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered, +"but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can +smile still, but it's a new one-- a war-smile, I expect. Everything +gets a turn of its own at the Front." + +"She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, +with his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would +have died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, +looking into the bloom of the garden. + +"Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he +should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend +had told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the +name of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's +wife, there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and +Jasmine were not the same as of yore. + +"Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse +Byng." + +"Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed +back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box +to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had +widened since then. + +Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah +was nursing Jasmine's husband--surely life was merely farce and +tragedy. + +At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose +to go, but turned back to Stafford again. + +"She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell +what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty +frail. We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No +need to say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and +responsibility, and in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more +ill than the chill makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my +stupid way." + +Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful +friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes. + +"Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry +Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and +a fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips +very easily. + +Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a +friend," he said aloud--"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not +betray a "--the waving of wings above him caught his eye--"he could +not betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the +servitor of carrion death, as it flew down the wind. + +He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in +the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; +and it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his +past, towards his future. + +What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New +Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had +purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was +immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated +himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe +was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this +obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price +which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol +or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying +to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not +do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge +that Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To +pay the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the +equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy +all hope for the future. + +It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear +honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open +to him--to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take +the stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself +and soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those +who hoped for him the now unattainable things. + +In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had +invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in +the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by. + +The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had +opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the +railway station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul +hitherto hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new +world--not like the one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or +tumultuous, but it had the lure of that peace, not sterile or +somnolent, which summons the burdened life, or the soul with a +vocation, to the hood of a monk--a busy self-forgetfulness. + +Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave +world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his +eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came +to him. + +Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she +once wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and +she can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I +expect. Everything gets a turn of its own at the Front." + +Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To +go to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out +for it either in pity--or in love? + +In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was +dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, +that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, +which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be +dislodged. It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the +gloom. Even betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It +continues. No longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for +appeal, or for adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies +in the temple, and the portals ate closed forever. + +For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was +behind the curtain still. + +He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house +in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man +who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering +would carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or +the other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done +that, there could be no reunion. + +He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had +cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead +from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's +Farm. + +No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she +was dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen +suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take +in camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard +by her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital. + +His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn +for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be +convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said. + +He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any +change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her +know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or +secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course. + +As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a +Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same +engagement, "Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the +English of it. + +Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for +Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah? + +As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just +arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The +address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth. + +He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had +come to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over +so many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been +blinded by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters +he had written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that +this reply would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the +future restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon +the wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world. + +After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own +darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and +opened the envelope. + +It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking +him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her +trouble: + +".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to +me quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old +Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make +that light in his face! I never saw it there--did you? It is just +giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving +up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and +profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on...., Ian, I'm +not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's +too much of the Climbers in us all--not social climbing, I mean, but +wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big +material world. When I look at Tynie--he's lying there so +peaceful--you might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set +free into a world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of +light that never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the +sight of his eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that +belongs to Allah,--I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so +friendly, so gentler than the name by which we call the First One in +our language and our religion--and that world is inside +ourselves.... Tynie is always thinking of other people now, wondering +what they are doing and how they are doing it. He was talking about +you a little while ago, and so admiringly. It brought the tears to my +eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, that our friendship has always been so +much on the surface, so 'void of offence'--is that the phrase? I can +look at it without wincing; and I am glad. It never was a thing of +importance to you, for I am not important, and there was no weight of +life in it or in me. But even the butterfly has its uses, and maybe I +was meant to play a little part in your big life. I like to think it +was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a little more interest from the +drone of the locust or the glow of a butterfly's wings. I'm not sure +that the locust's droning and the bright flutter of the butterfly's +wings are not the way Nature has of fastening the soul to the meaning +of it all. I wonder if you ever heard the lines--foolish they read, +but they are not: + +"'All summer long there was one little butterfly, +Flying ahead of me, +Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow, +Flying ahead of me. +One little butterfly, one little butterfly, +What can his message be?-- +All summer long, there was one little butterfly +Flying ahead of me.' + +"It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of +things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us +on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher +hills. + +"Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment; +perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to +do, and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used +always to think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I +first knew you on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, +would have carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you +have lost that ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever +told me. The thing behind the words in your letter tells me plainer +than words. The last time I saw you in London--do you remember when it +was? It was the day that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with +the sjambok. Well, that last time, when I met you in the hall as we +were both leaving a house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you +remember the day I went to see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the +truth then more. I often wondered how I could ever help you in the old +days. That was an ambition of mine. But I had no brains--no brains +like Jasmine's and many another woman; and I was never able to do +anything. But now I feel as I never felt anything before in my life. I +feel that my time and my chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, +like Miriam,--or was it Deborah?-- and that I must wind the horn of +warning as you walk on the edge of the precipice. + +"Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to +Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's +hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful +child must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp +corner that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to +do. Even Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, +as he never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do +anything if you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man +before the war she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the +pieces, and put them all together again. He says that after we win, +reconstruction in South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given +to a man, because, if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial +show'--that's Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it +here, or why shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in +England? You found the key to England's isolation, to her foreign +problem,--I'm quoting Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep +hands off in this fight; well, why shouldn't you find another key, +that to the future of this Empire? You got European peace for England, +and now the problem is how to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie +says this, not me. His command of English is better than mine, but +neither of us would make a good private secretary, if we had to write +letters with words of over two syllables. I've told you what Tynie +says, but he doesn't know at all what I know; he doesn't see the +danger I see, doesn't realize the mad thing in your brain, the sad +thing weighing down your heart--and hers. + +"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your +letter has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it +must not, shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in +this war. Is not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go +yet, and that you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan +now would be a crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken +memory--even mine, Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all +want you, to be the big man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It +is too small. If one must be a slave, then let it be to something +greater than one's self, higher--toweringly unattainably +higher. Believe me, neither the girl you love nor any woman on earth +is entitled to hold in slavery the energies and the mind and hopes of +a man who can do big things--or any man at all. + +"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them +down. At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it +through--blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them +still; but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you +not live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, +and He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own +making. + +"You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things +home to me--and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and +maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too +that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to +teach us our lesson--us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am +going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night--oh, how strange +that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me +say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were, +he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to +him a fortnight ago--Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at +these words: + +"'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: +Wait ye the warning? +Our low life was the level's and the night's; +He's for the morning.' + +"Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine +fellow!' . . ." + +A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage, +solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said: + +"It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it, +not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so +good.... We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't +had a tenth of her share of Ian Stafford...." + +Then there followed a postscript which ran: + +"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or +that. Well, here is the ship--mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home +for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope." + +Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the +joy of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were +silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its +fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt +that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; +and he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes. + +"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian +Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said. + +Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as +his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair +retreated before a woman's insight. + +"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +AT BRINKWORT'S FARM + + +"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown +more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at +Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the +mask of his outward self-control. + +"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly. + +"When--where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's. + +"At Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"But what are you--a prisoner--doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?" + +"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." + +"They let you come without a guard ?" + +"No--not. They are outside"--Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of +the house--"with the biltong and the dop." + +"You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." + +"What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at +Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: +Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute +certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with +the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when +the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool +believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas. + +It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the +House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a +reconstructed life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe. + +The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of +him. The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare +frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with +the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki +hat which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and +vengeful. + +Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the +Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it +all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the +best, lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would +break her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament +which alone could make life tolerable to her or to others who might +live with her under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he +swiftly devised means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He +was certain harm was meant--there was a look of semi-insanity in +Krool's eyes. Krool must be put out of the way before he could speak +with the Baas.... But how? + +With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid +of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept +there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would +move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently +move on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, +to which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of +his neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old +friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason +why. + +"You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently. + +"Yes." + +"To sjambok you again?" + +Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's +Kopje. I kill Piet Graaf to do it." + +There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a +wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety. + +He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he +dreaded the inconsistency which such men show--forgiving and +forgetting when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of +punishment remain. + +He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said +presently with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet +Graaf--have you told the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? +The sjambok is the Baas' cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills +to cure. Do you think that the Baas would want his life through the +killing of Piet Graaf by his friend Krool, the slim one from the +slime?" + +As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its +branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of +Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage +possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on +Wotan in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could +not. His body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of +hatred, then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and +again opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. + +At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban +was off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant. + +"Ah, you speak of traitor--you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The +sjambok--fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes--a t'ousand! Krool--Krool +is a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool +do? He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek--against the Philistine. He +help the chosen against the children of Hell. + +What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in +the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves +would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the +voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps +and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things +good for him to hear." + +Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through +the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his +eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him +and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in +the broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over +the boulders of a rapid. + +"Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland +from the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The +Baas an' I, we understand--on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the +Baas, and I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people +of the Baas' country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he +will it. So it was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas +strike, he strike; if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set +down. All else go. Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, +Cronje, Botha, they all go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On +the Limpopo it is written. All must go, if the Baas speak--one, two, +three, a t'ousand. Else the bond is water, and the spirits come in the +night, and take you to the million years of torment. It is nothing to +die--pain! But only the Baas is kill me. It is written so. Only the +Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor all the verdomde Rooineks out +there"--he pointed to the vast camp out on the veld--"nor the Baas' +vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas' vrouw! She cannot hurt +me.. ." He spat on the ground. "Who is the traitor? Is it Krool? Did +Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas' slave; it is only the +friend of the Baas that steal from him--only him is traitor. I kill +Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to save the Baas! I saw +you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go tell the Baas +all. If he kill me--it is the Baas. It is written." + +He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion +glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle. + +Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly +to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent +this abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he +would have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the +Baas' vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that +the end was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice +Tynemouth's letter a new spirit had been working in him. He must do +nothing rash. There was enough stain on his hands now without the +added stain of blood. But he must act; he must prevent Krool from +telling the Baas. Yonder at the hospital was Jasmine, and she and her +man must come together here in this peaceful covert before Rudyard +went forward with the army. It must be so. + +Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep +and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first, +did not understand. + +Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at +once march him back to the prisoners' camp." + +Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a +pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would +not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a +soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no +resistance. + +But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry--"Baas!" + +In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty +neckcloth provided a gag. + +The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic of +superior force, and he walked out quietly between the +sentries. Stafford's move was regular from a military point of +view. He was justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant +prisoner. He could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged. + +As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had +disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during +the incident. + +A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much +in common--the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned +against. + +"I heard his last words about you and--her," she said in a low voice. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. + +"In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." + +"Thank God!" + +Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to +him, or why you have come," she said, "but--" + +"I have come to congratulate him on his recovery." + +"I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them +before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes." + +"What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his +heart give a bound and his brain throb. + +"Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were--concerned." + +"I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily. + +He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare +friendliness. There came over him again the feeling he had at the +hospital when they talked together last, that whatever might come of +all the tragedy and sorrow around them they two must face +irretrievable loss. + +She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she +said, "Yes, I will take it while I can." + +Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for +something--some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, +then they steadied to his firmly. + +"You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death--I saw that at +the inquest." + +"Yes, I knew." + +"It was a poisoned needle." + +"I know. I found the needle." + +"Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it." + +Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation +broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was +buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices--voices of old +thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering +on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed +to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him. + +"He had hurt me more than any other--than my husband or her. I did +it. I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, +I wanted something for all I had lost, and he was . . ." + +Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am +not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself +for it--only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to +pay, in my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands +that carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This +one man died because ..." + +He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying +now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The +gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So +long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting +for Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there +would always have been a black shadow between--the shadow that hangs +over the scaffold. + +"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. + +"They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On +the day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." + +There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here +before he joins his regiment." + +"I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was +better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she +was coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, +I sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what +a woman like me does." + +"What did you say to her?" + +"I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She +will think he is dying." + +"If she resents the subterfuge?" + +"Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting--who can tell! +Now is the time--now. I want to see it. It must be." + +He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes +had a strange childishly frightened look. + +"You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. + +A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her +eyes were suffused. + +"The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a +voice which told how deep was the well of misery in her being. + +"It is as old as Allah," he replied. + +"Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is +coming." + +An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and +Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left. + +As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her +fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she +heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the +house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's +Farm. Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the +neckcloth was still binding his mouth. + +As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like +flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to +the frock-coat and the huge top-boots. + +The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way. + +"What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing +Krool. + +"A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the +guard. "He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a +lump o' lead in 'is baskit 'e does." + +"'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it +hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"--he +jerked his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's +voices talking earnestly. + +"Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on +that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, +this half-caste Boojer is." + +The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the +next push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's +done a lot o' bitin' in 'is time--let 'im bite the dust now, I +sez. I'm fair sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square +fighters. Why, 'e'd fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke +would." + +"There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was +jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this +time--goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes +and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're +goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over +the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the +howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening +their bouquets to-morrow--" + +"Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second. + +"I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear +let 'im 'ear--that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the +off side of a vicarage." + +He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade +followed up with a sharp challenge. + +"I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's--not about wot +the next move is, and w'en it is." + +The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard +Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night-- w'en you was sleepin' at +your post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit +at it. You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the +hills--that's shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' +thing in the air wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' +to 'it. That's shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being +shook--that's mausers and others. You'll see regiments marching out o' +step, an' every man on his own, which is not how we started this war, +not much. And where there's a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, +and you get behind it like a man. And w'en there's nothing to get +behind, you get in front, and take your chances, and you get +there--right there, over the trenches, over the bloomin' Amalakites, +over the hills and far away, where they want the relief they're goin' +to get, or I'm a pansy blossom." + +"Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the +Second. He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front +of him with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics +of the fight to come. + +"We'll all be in it--even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah +with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done +a bit o' nursin'--there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell +in bis 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me +where I squeak that kind o' thing do." + +Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep +sounded smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house. + +He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the +distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a +pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the +lightness of a boy, and galloped away. + +He had not seen Al'mah as he passed. + +In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh +broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw +Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where +Jasmine was. + +"Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the +stain of the blossoms from her fingers. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +SPRINGS OF HEALING + + +Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm, +the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it +was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone +should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of +her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all +was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at +Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the +chance to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been +hers. She herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all +to which she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of +it. She was of those who get their happiness first in making others +happy--as she would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; +as even she tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account +with the firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the +protective sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her +life. It had sent her to South Africa--to protect the wretch who had +done his best to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she +did her nurse's work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source +of her revolt at Jasmine's conduct and character. + +But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was, +after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she +really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's +rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, +have become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that +also in part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp +disapproval of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter +at what cost to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which +would make a woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order +that he might be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her +which would make a thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she +herself set above all others ? + +But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think +and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and +they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins. + +She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly +waned. Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, +up and down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile +Hospital. At length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat +down in a great arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid +down the law for his people. + +Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm? + +A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate +Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would +link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on +to the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived +while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he +left. It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for +three hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was +made of the delay. + +When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was +one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and +he, like Stafford, though in another sphere--that of the Secret +Intelligence Department--had travelled far and wide in the +world. Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as +near that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a +woman beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was +because he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be +properly classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the +beautiful. But there was something in her face that haunted him--a +wistful, appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant +readiness of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of +organization. And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown +those who hadn't life-belts," as he said. + +In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said +that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one +family was unusual. + +"Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest +officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's +Farm, in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a +fellow well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the +Stay Awhile with a staff-officer." + +The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any +officers' mess. + +"I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll +muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you, +Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of +impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have +traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at +Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think +so." + +"If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major, +"the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time +for teaching the rudiments of human intercourse." + +Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly +self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't +met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that--" + +The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what +Nancy woutd tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook--and then Rigby +would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw +his wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't +tell what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's +pegnoir, for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby." + +With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side +pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the +hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's +own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a +match. + +"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin +precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table. + +A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the +technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any +number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions, +is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports. + +"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the +tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the +relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did +not exist. + +When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly +over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was +the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock. + +It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she +must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to +him? + +If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he +was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into +the night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her +voice faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the +last time before he rode away again forever, on that white horse +called Death? A shudder passed through her. + +"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those +were the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford +dined with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the +life they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and +yet--" + +Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the +thought of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun +strands of hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its +great coiled abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust +the simple linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the +soft simplicity of her dark-blue gown. + +She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the +messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been +gone three hours or more. + +Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without +hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired +reconciliation and peace. + +She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to +Brinkwort's Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have +orders. She hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and +explained. His sympathy translated itself into instant +action. Fortunately there was a cart at the door. In a moment she was +ready, and the cart sped away into the night across the veld. + +She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver +nor the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar +voice saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it +brown. First Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be +over the hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of +the hold-me-backs." + +She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her +husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told +her of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter." + +She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low +tone. + +"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you +should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one +else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and +'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's +well as ends well, and you're together at the finish." + +She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt +her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that +pain now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she +found Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man +she had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head +drooped. "At the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! +The world stood still for her. + +"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's +voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly +it came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the +siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not +said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was +closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She +seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream. + +She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only +answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was +distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her +anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to +which he belonged. + +What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if +Rudyard was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him +understand that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the +flood"--before that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her +life except the old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the +power which swept her into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, +deaf to her voice and to any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her +vision the figure of Ian Stafford, but she put that from her with a +trembling determination. That was done forever. She was as sure of it +as she was sure of anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, +would never forgive her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred +her. Ian had saved her from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation +and fury, and had then repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him +with a magnanimity and a chivalry which had humiliated her. He had +protected her from the shame of an open tragedy, and then had shut the +door in her face. Rudyard, with the same evidence as Ian held,--the +same letter as proof--he, whatever he believed or thought, he had +forgiven her. Only a few nights ago, that night before the fight at +Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his arms to her and called her his +wife. In Rudyard was some great good thing, something which could not +die, which must live on. She sat up straight in the seat of the cart, +her hands clinched. + +No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered +not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove +herself; his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must +not be cut off at the moment when so much had been done; when there +was so much to do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little +burst of eloquence," as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he +thought her; but a woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the +poppy-fields of pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue +in her to avoid the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, +and to have learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have +been wholly destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might +be turned to good account. + +She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright +lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of +her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a +hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng." + +He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights +seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came +the sharp voice of a soldier saying: + +"Halt! Who goes there?" + +"A friend," was the Corporal's reply. + +"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned. + +A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the +lights of the house were flaring out upon her. + +She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal +Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that +at the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity. + +All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she +knew it was Al'mah. + +"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a +whisper. + +The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it +might almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp. + +"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps. + +Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which +seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by +Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and +the morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The +butterfly had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat. + +She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never +would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since +all was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had +been dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had +been of the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no +harm, but only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the +result of her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go +wrong. She had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension +of the possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery +Jasmine should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in +arrant egotism once more! Suppose--no, she would suppose nothing. She +must believe that all she had done was for the best. + +She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm +fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes, +and all at once realized the cause of that agitation--the fear that +death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever +shut against the answering voices. + +"You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened +the grasp of her hands. + +As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are +suddenly withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so +Jasmine's hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though +she must fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained +her balance, withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah. + +"He is alive--he is alive--he is alive," she kept repeating to herself +like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear +herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me." + +Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense +of something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, +old room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias +Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a +picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome +of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they +were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer +army in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot +his house or ravage his belongings. + +To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at +once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost +mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision, +her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the +corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no +more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint +smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside +another room--not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the +Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something +English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man +standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was +a figure which had no affinity with death. + +As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found +herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes. + +Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really +was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and +sun. The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self +were not yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and +intensity. This had been too daring an experiment with one of her +nature, which had within the last few months become as strangely, +insistently, even fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the +past. In spite of a tremulous effort to govern herself and see the +situation as it really was--an effort of one who desired her good to +bring her and Rudyard together, the ruse itself became magnified to +monstrous proportions, and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that +she had been inveigled; that what should have been her own voluntary +act of expiation and submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, +ever her most secret enemy, took possession of her. + +"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body +trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation +in her voice. + +He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently +held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more +fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the +beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly +leaped at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the +primitive thing of which he had had enough. + +"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The +letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she +was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should +not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to +get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not +let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that +midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you +would not really wish it to end." + +Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women, +as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the +anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being +alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament +had flooded it for the moment. + +He would have gone to her--that was what he had said. In spite of her +conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he +would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or +how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was! + +How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face +grown hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also +at his temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in +the centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her +making for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his +eyes. It had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable +reproach. Could she face that look now and through the years to come? +It were easier to live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking +the cup that would not empty, on and on, than to live with that look +in his eyes. + +She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a +sjambok lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and +in the minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the +street under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide. + +Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of +all. Idiosyncrasy may not be cauterized, temperament must assert +itself, or the personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the +end of it all? She had placed herself so completely in his power by +her wilful waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have +been ruler over him; now she must be his slave! + +"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a +cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now? +Don't you want to?" + +"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A +twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!" + +Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had +in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for +that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But +why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there +was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with +herself--and with him. She was in chaos again. + +"You treat me like a child, you condescend--" + +"Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden +storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the +will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared. + +"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You +haven't got over your illness yet." + +He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of +it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far +greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two +people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was +this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with +Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind--a talk which, in its +brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a +promise to one of the best friends that man--or woman--ever had, as he +thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford +understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived +by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of +her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble +she had caused. So he said to himself. + +As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him. + +"Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You +have not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at +Al'mah and the doctor!" + +She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed +him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the +chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act +was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she +felt his pulse with the gravity of a doctor. + +Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed +there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the +whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the +table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it +to his lips. + +"Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You +shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming." + +As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour +of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before. + +There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even +wounds and illness had not faced--only humour, only a hovering joy, +only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of +the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not +fantastically to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other +room where were the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was +no offending magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, +but a human something which took no account of the years that the +locust had eaten, the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of +them. There was only the look she had seen the day he first visited +her in her own home, when he had played with words she had used in the +way she adored, and would adore till she died; when he had said, in +reply to her remark that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make +any difference to his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly +it was all as if that day had come back, although his then giant +physical strength had gone; although he had been mangled in the +power-house of which they had spoken that day. Come to think of it, +she too had been working in the "power-house" and had been mangled +also; for she was but a thread of what she was then, but a wisp of +golden straw to the sheaf of the then young golden wheat. + +All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful +bright look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her +old self like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, +sank back again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by +a gentle wind. + +Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the +thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling +as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and +buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly. + +With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew +her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders. + +"Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace." + +They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not +make her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both +knew her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; +and each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means! + +All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little +spasmodic grasp. + +"I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be +absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, +bravely. + +"Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not +change. She noted that. + +"I know. It was--" + +She paused. What right had she to tell! + +"Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me." + +She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely +waiting and watching. + +Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek +his. They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, +they dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as +she said: + +"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master +me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my +wrists." + +She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used +them concerning herself the night before the tragedy. + +"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I +was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You +took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest." + +"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so +beautiful." + +She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a +dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had +been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or +did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and +words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any +real thing in me. I never emerged --never was myself." + +"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It +takes all that ever was and makes it new." + +She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to +have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, +all that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond +endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she +caught the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, +and what he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, +for this one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a +rest-place on the road. + +He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and +held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great +sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre +of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of +spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart. + +"It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to +have her chance, and she has got it." + +Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She +knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the +night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's +surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went +back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent +Garden. The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some +phrases of the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no +resonance or vibration. It trailed away into a whisper. + +"I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it +that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to +herself.... Again reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an +obsession. "No, I am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a +long time, "If a price must be paid, I will pay it." + +Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near +by. At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of +sentries off duty--the two who had talked to her earlier in the +evening, after Ian Stafford had left. + +"This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o' +space in a night out here." + +"I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath," +rejoined the other. + +"I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously. + +"I got kids--somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a +flourish of pride and self-assertion. + +"Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First. + +"You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," +declared his friend in a voice of fatality. + +"You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I +like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in +the morning 'ere." + +"Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son," +challenged the Second. + +"I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet +reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you +when we're in Lordkop." + +"I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was +the railing reply. + +"She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then +they struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, +and said good-night in the vernacular. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +UNDER THE GUN + + +They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who +had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it +seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a +waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far +away in front--that front which must be taken--there hung over the +ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured +the air--crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of +animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, +on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which +quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, +and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, +showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead. + +"Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, +fell into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with +a sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in +the millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The +lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a +verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin +this day." + +Alamachtig! + +At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air +was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the +ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that +human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike +were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no +apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly, +coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a +comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds +his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too--puddles +of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from +the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense +concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony +of those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and +voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men +around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained +with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were +not the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and +making bets as to where the attack would begin to-day. + +Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had +been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever +done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking +was indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his +battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result +to the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders +accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the +new position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against +this fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe +at advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and +the clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an +enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall +back into a smother--as though, in falling, blankets were drawn +roughly over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air +around him. And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets +flapping in the air were the machine guns of the foe following his +battery into a zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that +smothered him were wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the +direst agonies of body and mind. + +The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power, +sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks +flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the +struggle of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, +plunging here and there in flight and futile motion. As +unconsciousness enwrapped him the vision of these distraught denizens +of the veld was before his eyes. Somehow, in a lightning +transformation, he became one with them and was mingled with them. + +Time passed. + +When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was +before him--the negative left on the film of his sight by his last +conscious glance at the world. + +He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The +springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the +army to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the +hill lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious +of this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone +forward. There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a +kind of valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a +world in which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many +years--or centuries--was it since he had been in that harvest of +death? There was no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was +that his soul had made so far a journey. + +In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had +gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of +the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that +confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of +the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it +waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own +blood, in the swath which the battle had cut. + +His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the +mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him +on the shoulder, had summoned him. + +When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to +live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and +Rudyard had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken +roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It +had seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and +that the way was open to peace, if not to happiness. + +When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I +will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time +and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way +of the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death. + +To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and +absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when +he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by +the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not +for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had +reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink +it. Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it." + +He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a +vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the +everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he +smiled too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant +that the army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would +soon be the Relief for which England prayed. + +There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His +battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its +work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great +day's work. + +He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable +day. He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery +had suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not +hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the +battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant +withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and +renewed activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and +his slain men and fellow-officers. + +But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant +to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It +was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was +small, distant, and subordinate. + +If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the +battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from +that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid, +and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed +for darkness. + +He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind +the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping +down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he +gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the +spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his +parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness +swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed +his temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had +ever known. + +"Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed +eyes. "Jasmine--water," he pleaded, and sank away again intothat dream +from which he had but just wakened. + +It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head +was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead. + +But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held +the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips. + +Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their +way from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to +this corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the +enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they +first fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of +fire. No heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, +nurse, or surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here +were two races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give +and take for the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was +closed. + +The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no +right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the +battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and +in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and +had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where +wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of +war. When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow +her to remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her +way to where the wounded and dead lay. + +A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured +gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of +Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come +whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the +man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like +herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose +hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that +as a brother loves so he loved her. + +Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the +lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are +commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser +nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the +abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached +Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The +surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care +for a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a +courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With +both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light +his cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it +was with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it! + +"Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over +him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me +pipe, glory be!" + +With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun, +left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that +nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was +made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the +young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, +some with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the +gunner, who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood +at attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his +credit for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she +threw over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained +jackets lying near-- jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had +tried hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down. + +There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was +spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were +dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. + +Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was +ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that +the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until +she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to +tell--all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that +look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and +peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came +to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going: +his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from +the lever that lifted things. + +She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards +the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the +loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting +till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the +sun. Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, as +though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced between +his lips a little more water. + +"God make it easy!" she said. + +A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through +the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing +them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all +her own problems--like Stafford--like Stafford? Stooping, she +reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed +her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need +her on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who +could help him now. Who else was there beside herself--and Jigger? + +Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been +with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like +Jigger to be absent when Stafford needed him. + +She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him +coming--to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she +saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner, +stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and +head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though +there was a goal which must be reached. + +An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat +at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was +the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so +flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who +had fallen. Now he also was in dire need. + +She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an +angular artion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log, +ungainly and rigid. + +"They got me! I'm hit--twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that +stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an +abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he +added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found +him. His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure +seemed to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if +not resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out +querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis. + +"They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I +wasn't fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, +accent, and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips +moved once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor," he said +mechanically, and said no more. + +As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last +words. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly. + +They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and +died. She shuddered. + +"So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the +lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay. + +Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took +no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being +killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of +Ian Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea. + +He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her +vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept +ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi +Terrace--first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had +sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes +had died--"More was lost at Mohacksfield." + +The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim +of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie +unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face +of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the +armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or +struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over +the hills. + +In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept +Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been +justified. He would have died had it not been for the water and brandy +she had forced between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath +the gun. In the end they would come and gather the dead and +wounded. When the battle was over they would come, or, maybe, before +it was over. + +But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of +artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar +of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her +senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew +thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a +dream. She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than +all the noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her +very body seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers +hurting her brain. + +At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs. + +So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and +bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded! + +The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder +almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was +ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to +know that friends were with him at the last, and also what had +happened at Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday. + +She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one +man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and +swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so. + +The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare +frock-coat, huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's +Farm. The last time she had seen that malevolent face was when its +owner was marched away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +It was Krool. + +An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, +for it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it. + +When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces +with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The +superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; +then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of +savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with +sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was +upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he +saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry. + +With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A +sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained +horses sprang forward. + +"The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder. + +Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins, +but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for +him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach +Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after +his escape--if he was caught--he would do something to gall the pride +of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to +issue forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy +loss while the battle was at its height--he would ride it over the +hills into the Boers' camp. + +There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with +his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a +wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the +staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses, +and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow +the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire +upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it +rose again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It +swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, +Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that +dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and +understood that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer +lines. + +At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had +also fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British +gun was not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, +and their fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was +doing the thing with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval +as the gun came nearer and nearer. + +Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of +one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses +were behaving so gallantly,-- horses of one of their own batteries +daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force--that there was +scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden +turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving +behind it a little cloud of dust. + +Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man +who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry +Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way, +and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still +unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much +the same as those of Barry Whalen. + +With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's +vigil. The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by +the Red Cross wagons. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +"PHEIDIPPIDES" + + +At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and +fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and +friend, the end came to the man who had lain under the gun. + +"Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the +humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner +who brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it. + +It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth, +he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle, +to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died +for England before they knew that victory was hers. + +"Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much +upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his +hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had +to go before they knew." + +"I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look +in his face. + +His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and +Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah +took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, +noiseless steps, left the room. + +What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. + +Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time. + +"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written +self-control. + +"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It +will help him." + +He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of +pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another +room. + +There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips. + +She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white +and still upon the coverlet. + +At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would +reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from +the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half +raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A +light transfigured his face. + +"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly +down. + +"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +"THE ROAD IS CLEAR" + + +The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and +glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an +emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from +Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the +petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its +improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain, +where she guarded the jewels of her honour. + +The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and +drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills +from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup +of trembling, the wine of loss. + +As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of +brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets +of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to +bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left +the Day Path and took the Night Road. + +Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with +bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the +resurrection and the life"--the volleys of honour, the proud salut of +the brave to the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few +who turn away from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging +behind--all had been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the +veld with a golden radiance which soothed like prayer. + +By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a +woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed +to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the +attitude of the figure. + +A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away +from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes. + +"What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see +that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was +properly in its place. + +"'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how +I'll git along now." + +There was great hopelessness in the tone. + +"He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, +Jigger. He thought of all that." + +"'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of +protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money, +when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for +'im--that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im." + +"You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago +that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard--good for all the +time." + +The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that-- did 'e?" he +asked, and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, +ain't 'e?" His look questioned her eagerly. + +For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took +on a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from +strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered +steadily: + +"Yes, he is happy now." + +"How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed +in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is +it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep +sometimes--singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time +I ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" + +"Yes, it is like that--just like that," she answered, taking his hand, +and holding it with a motherly tenderness. + +"Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added. + +She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly. + +"This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all +have to go back to work." + +"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it +something of her old whimsical self. + +"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of +intellectual effort." It's a cut above 'em both--that's my fancy." + +"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do +when you get back to England?" she inquired. + +"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a +scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?" + +"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked. + +"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly. + +"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, +"and we'll have to find a way of being busy together." + +"His gryce'd like that," he responded. + +She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds +became silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a +long time. + +"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a +whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to +shut out something that pained her sight. + +"I wish you'd sing somethin'--same as you did that night at Glencader, +about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from +the bed. + +She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and +turned again to the light in the evening sky. + +"P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself. + +On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to +sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go +down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence +between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which +the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the +disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared +to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence +would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to +look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should +force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had +talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been +nothing. + +Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time +the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the +grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs +of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, +that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should +be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its +own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same +light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which +exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things +any more. + +There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the +valley. With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the +land where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land +where he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped +to make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it +from disaster. + +But there had come another victory--the victory of Home. The +coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one +hour. + +Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman +beside him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him +with an understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a +colour came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days +than he could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a +sadness which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen +those eyes he had thought them the most honest he had ever +known. Looking at them now, with confidence restored, he thought again +as he did that night at the opera the year of the Raid. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose +and a great gentleness in his tone. + +Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination +gathered at her lips. + +Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself. + +"But I cannot--I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then +you may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour +went from her lips. "I must be honest now--at last, about +everything. I want to tell you--" + +He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely +in the eyes. + +"Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of +finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in +one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips. + +"A fresh start for a long race--the road is clear," he said firmly. + +Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that +in his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she +was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast. + +A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed +and echoed away among the hills. + +He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his +eyes. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again. + +Her fingers tightened on his. + +THE END + + + +GLOSSARY + +AASVOGEL Vulture. + +ALFALFA Lucerne. + +BILTONG Strips of dried meat. + +DlSSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon. + +DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil. + +DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally +applied to Dutchmen in South Africa. + +DORP Settlement or town. + +KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa. + +KOPJE A rounded hillock. + +KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains. + +KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle. + +KRANZES Rocky precipices. + +MEERKAT A species of ichneumon. + +ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the +Boers. + +SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills). + +SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. + +SPRUIT A small stream. + +STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house. + +TAAL South African Dutch. + +TREK To move from place to place with belongings. + +VELD An open grassy plain. + +VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes. + +VERDOMDE Damned. + +VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African +Republics. + +VOORTREKKER Pioneer. + +VROUW Wife. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker + diff --git a/old/jhous10.zip b/old/jhous10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..91454c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/jhous10.zip diff --git a/old/jhous11.txt b/old/jhous11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9372315 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/jhous11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,17189 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Ebook The Judgment House, by Gilbert Parker +#1 in our series by Gilbert Parker + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers***** + + +Title: The Judgment House + +Author: Gilbert Parker + +Release Date: Feb, 2003 [EBook #3746] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 15, 2001] +[This file was last updated on June 13, 2002] + +Edition: 11 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + + + + + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INSIDE OF THE CUP, V1, BY CHURCHILL *** + + + + +This etext was produced by Juli Rew (juliana@ucar.edu). + + + + + +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE + +by Gilbert Parker + + + + +NOTE + +Except where references to characters well-known to all the world +occur in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public +or private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a +historical novel. It is in conception and portraiture a work of the +imagination. + + +"Strangers come to the outer wall-- +(Why do the sleepers stir?) +Strangers enter the Judgment House-- +(Why do the sleepers sigh?) +Slow they rise in their judgment seats, +Sieve and measure the naked souls, +Then with a blessing return to sleep. +(Quiet the Judgment House.) +Lone and sick are the vagrant souls-- +(When shall the world come home?)" + + +"Let them fight it out, friend! things have gone too far, +God must judge the couple: leave them as they are-- +Whichever one's the guiltless, to his glory, +And whichever one the guilt's with, to my story! + + +"Once more. Will the wronger, at this last of all, +Dare to say, 'I did wrong,' rising in his fall? +No? Let go, then! Both the fighters to their places! +While I count three, step you back as many paces!" + + +"And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at +Cumae, hanging in a jar; and when the boys asked her, 'What +would you, Sibyl?' she answered, 'I would die.'" + + +"So is Pheidippides happy for ever,--the noble strong man +Who would race like a God, bear the face of a God, whom a +God loved so well: +He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was suffered to tell +Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he began +So to end gloriously--once to shout, thereafter to be mute: +'Athens is saved!' Pheidippides dies in the shout for his meed." + + +"Oh, never star +Was lost here, but it rose afar." + + + + + +THE JUDGMENT HOUSE + + + +BOOK I + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE JASMINE FLOWER + + +The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air +was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the +gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in +the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by +this sweet storm of song. They yielded themselves utterly to the power +of the triumphant debutante who was making "Manassa" the musical feast +of the year, renewing to Covent Garden a reputation which recent lack +of enterprise had somewhat forfeited. + +Yet, apparently, not all the vast audience were hypnotized by the +unknown and unheralded singer, whose stage name was Al'mah. At the +moment of the opera's supreme appeal the eyes of three people at least +were not in the thraldom of the singer. Seated at the end of the first +row of the stalls was a fair, slim, graciously attired man of about +thirty, who, turning in his seat so that nearly the whole house was in +his circle of vision, stroked his golden moustache, and ran his eyes +over the thousands of faces with a smile of pride and satisfaction +which in a less handsome man would have been almost a leer. His name +was Adrian Fellowes. + +Either the opera and the singer had no charms for Adrian Fellowes, or +else he had heard both so often that, without doing violence to his +musical sense, he could afford to study the effect of this wonderful +effort upon the mob of London, mastered by the radiant being on the +stage. Very sleek, handsome, and material he looked; of happy colour, +and, apparently, with a mind and soul in which no conflicts ever +raged--to the advantage of his attractive exterior. Only at the summit +of the applause did he turn to the stage again. Then it was with the +gloating look of the gambler who swings from the roulette-table with +the winnings of a great coup, cynical joy in his eyes that he has +beaten the Bank, conquered the dark spirit which has tricked him so +often. Now the cold-blue eyes caught, for a second, the dark-brown +eyes of the Celtic singer, which laughed at him gaily, victoriously, +eagerly, and then again drank in the light and the joy of the myriad +faces before her. + +In a box opposite the royal box were two people, a man and a very +young woman, who also in the crise of the opera were not looking at +the stage. The eyes of the man, sitting well back--purposely, so that +he might see her without marked observation--were fixed upon the +rose-tinted, delicate features of the girl in a joyous blue silk gown, +which was so perfect a contrast to the golden hair and wonderful +colour of her face. Her eyes were fixed upon her lap, the lids half +closed, as though in reverie, yet with that perspicuous and reflective +look which showed her conscious of all that was passing round +her--even the effect of her own pose. Her name was Jasmine Grenfel. + +She was not oblivious of the music. Her heart beat faster because of +it; and a temperament adjustable to every mood and turn of human +feeling was answering to the poignancy of the opera; yet her youth, +child-likeness, and natural spontaneity were controlled by an elate +consciousness. She was responsive to the passionate harmony; but she +was also acutely sensitive to the bold yet deferential appeal to her +emotions of the dark, distinguished, bearded man at her side, with the +brown eyes and the Grecian profile, whose years spent in the Foreign +Office and at embassies on the Continent had given him a tact and an +insinuating address peculiarly alluring to her sex. She was well aware +of Ian Stafford's ambitions, and had come to the point where she +delighted in them, and had thought of sharing in them, "for weal or +for woe"; but she would probably have resented the suggestion that his +comparative poverty was weighed against her natural inclinations and +his real and honest passion. For she had her ambitions, too; and when +she had scanned the royal box that night, she had felt that something +only little less than a diadem would really satisfy her. + +Then it was that she had turned meditatively towards another occupant +of her box, who sat beside her pretty stepmother--a big, bronzed, +clean-shaven, strong-faced man of about the same age as Ian Stafford +of the Foreign Office, who had brought him that night at her +request. Ian had called him, "my South African nabob," in tribute to +the millions he had made with Cecil Rhodes and others at Kimberley and +on the Rand. At first sight of the forceful and rather ungainly form +she had inwardly contrasted it with the figure of Ian Stafford and +that other spring-time figure of a man at the end of the first row in +the stalls, towards which the prima donna had flashed one trusting, +happy glance, and with which she herself had been familiar since her +childhood. The contrast had not been wholly to the advantage of the +nabob; though, to be sure, he was simply arrayed--as if, indeed, he +were not worth a thousand a year. Certainly he had about him a sense +of power, but his occasional laugh was too vigorous for one whose own +great sense of humour was conveyed by an infectious, rippling murmur +delightful to hear. + +Rudyard Byng was worth three millions of pounds, and that she +interested him was evident by the sudden arrest of his look and his +movements when introduced to her. Ian Stafford had noted this look; +but he had seen many another man look at Jasmine Grenfel with just as +much natural and unbidden interest, and he shrugged the shoulders of +his mind; for the millions alone would not influence her, that was +sure. Had she not a comfortable fortune of her own? Besides, Byng was +not the kind of man to capture Jasmine's fastidious sense and +nature. So much had happened between Jasmine and himself, so deep an +understanding had grown up between them, that it only remained to +bring her to the last court of inquiry and get reply to a vital +question--already put in a thousand ways and answered to his perfect +satisfaction. Indeed, there was between Jasmine and himself the +equivalent of a betrothal. He had asked her to marry him, and she had +not said no; but she had bargained for time to "prepare"; that she +should have another year in which to be gay in a gay world and, in her +own words, "walk the primrose path of pleasure untrammelled and alone, +save for my dear friend Mrs. Grundy." + +Since that moment he had been quite sure that all was well. And now +the year was nearly up, and she had not changed; had, indeed, grown +more confiding and delicately dependent in manner towards him, though +seeing him but seldom alone. + +As Ian Stafford looked at her now, he kept saying to himself, "So +exquisite and so clever, what will she not be at thirty! So well +poised, and yet so sweetly child-like dear dresden-china Jasmine." + +That was what she looked like--a lovely thing of the time of Boucher +in dresden china. + +At last, as though conscious of what was going on in his mind, she +slowly turned her drooping eyes towards him, and, over her shoulder, +as he quickly leaned forward, she said in a low voice which the others +could not hear: + +"I am too young, and not clever enough to understand all the music +means--is that what you are thinking?" + +He shook his head in negation, and his dark-brown eyes commanded hers, +but still deferentially, as he said: "You know of what I was +thinking. You will be forever young, but yours was always--will always +be--the wisdom of the wise. I'd like to have been as clever at +twenty-two." + +"How trying that you should know my age so exactly--it darkens the +future," she rejoined with a soft little laugh; then, suddenly, a +cloud passed over her face. It weighed down her eyelids, and she gazed +before her into space with a strange, perplexed, and timorous +anxiety. What did she see? Nothing that was light and joyous, for her +small sensuous lips drew closer, and the fan she held in her lap +slipped from her fingers to the floor. + +This aroused her, and Stafford, as he returned the fan to her, said +into a face again alive to the present: "You look as though you were +trying to summon the sable spirits of a sombre future." + +Her fine pink-white shoulders lifted a little and, once more quite +self-possessed, she rejoined, lightly, "I have a chameleon mind; it +chimes with every mood and circumstance." + +Suddenly her eyes rested on Rudyard Byng, and something in the rough +power of the head arrested her attention, and the thought flashed +through her mind: "How wonderful to have got so much at thirty-three! +Three millions at thirty-three--and millions beget millions!" + +. . . Power--millions meant power; millions made ready the stage for +the display and use of every gift, gave the opportunity for the full +occupation of all personal qualities, made a setting for the jewel of +life and beauty, which reflected, intensified every ray of +merit. Power--that was it. Her own grandfather had had power. He had +made his fortune, a great one too, by patents which exploited the +vanity of mankind, and, as though to prove his cynical contempt for +his fellow-creatures, had then invented a quick-firing gun which +nearly every nation in the world adopted. First, he had got power by a +fortune which represented the shallowness and gullibility of human +nature, then had exploited the serious gift which had always been his, +the native genius which had devised the gun when he was yet a boy. He +had died at last with the smile on his lips which had followed his +remark, quoted in every great newspaper of two continents, that: "The +world wants to be fooled, so I fooled it; it wants to be stunned, so I +stunned it. My fooling will last as long as my gun; and both have paid +me well. But they all love being fooled best." + +Old Draygon Grenfel's fortune had been divided among his three sons +and herself, for she had been her grandfather's favourite, and she was +the only grandchild to whom he had left more than a small reminder of +his existence. As a child her intelligence was so keen, her perception +so acute, she realized him so well, that he had said she was the only +one of his blood who had anything of himself in character or +personality, and he predicted--too often in her presence--that she +"would give the world a start or two when she had the chance." His +intellectual contempt for his eldest son, her father, was reproduced +in her with no prompting on his part; and, without her own mother from +the age of three, Jasmine had grown up self-willed and imperious, yet +with too much intelligence to carry her will and power too +far. Infinite adaptability had been the result of a desire to please +and charm; behind which lay an unlimited determination to get her own +way and bend other wills to hers. + +The two wills she had not yet bent as she pleased were those of her +stepmother and of Ian Stafford--one, because she was jealous and +obstinate, and the other because he had an adequate self-respect and +an ambition of his own to have his way in a world which would not give +save at the point of the sword. Come of as good family as there was in +England, and the grandson of a duke, he still was eager for power, +determined to get on, ingenious in searching for that opportunity +which even the most distinguished talent must have, if it is to soar +high above the capable average. That chance, the predestined alluring +opening had not yet come; but his eyes were wide open, and he was +ready for the spring--nerved the more to do so by the thought that +Jasmine would appreciate his success above all others, even from the +standpoint of intellectual appreciation, all emotions excluded. How +did it come that Jasmine was so worldly wise, and yet so marvellously +the insouciant child? + +He followed her slow, reflective glance at Byng, and the impression of +force and natural power of the millionaire struck him now, as it had +often done. As though summoned by them both, Byng turned his face and, +catching Jasmine's eyes, smiled and leaned forward. + +"I haven't got over that great outburst of singing yet," he said, with +a little jerk of the head towards the stage, where, for the moment, +minor characters were in possession, preparing the path for the last +rush of song by which Al'mah, the new prima donna, would bring her +first night to a complete triumph. + +With face turned full towards her, something of the power of his head +seemed to evaporate swiftly. It was honest, alert, and almost brutally +simple--the face of a pioneer. The forehead was broad and strong, and +the chin was square and determined; but the full, dark-blue eyes had +in them shadows of rashness and recklessness, the mouth was somewhat +self-indulgent and indolent; though the hands clasping both knees were +combined of strength, activity, and also a little of grace. + +"I never had much chance to hear great singers before I went to South +Africa," he added, reflectively, "and this swallows me like a storm on +the high veld--all lightning and thunder and flood. I've missed a lot +in my time." + +With a look which made his pulses gallop, Jasmine leaned over and +whispered--for the prima donna was beginning to sing again: + +"There's nothing you have missed in your race that you cannot ride +back and collect. It is those who haven't run a race who cannot ride +back. You have won; and it is all waiting for you." + +Again her eyes beamed upon him, and a new sensation came to him--the +kind of thing he felt once when he was sixteen, and the vicar's +daughter had suddenly held him up for quite a week, while all his +natural occupations were neglected, and the spirit of sport was +humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time--who was +there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not +carouse, when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; +when men got so dead beat, with no homes anywhere--only shake-downs +and the Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be +his slave, to keep his home; but that was a business which had +revolted him, and he had never repeated the experiment. Then, there +had been an adventuress, a wandering, foreign princess who had fooled +him and half a dozen of his friends to the top of their bent; but a +thousand times he had preferred other sorts of pleasures--cards, +horses, and the bright outlook which came with the clinking glass +after the strenuous day. + +Jasmine seemed to divine it all as she looked at him--his primitive, +almost Edenic sincerity; his natural indolence and native force: a +nature that would not stir until greatly roused, but then, with an +unyielding persistence and concentrated force, would range on to its +goal, making up for a slow-moving intellect by sheer will, vision and +a gallant heart. + +Al'mah was singing again, and Byng leaned forward eagerly. There was a +rustle in the audience, a movement to a listening position, then a +tense waiting and attention. + +As Jasmine composed herself she said in a low voice to Ian Stafford, +whose well-proportioned character, personality, and refinement of +culture were in such marked contrast to the personality of the other: +"They live hard lives in those new lands. He has wasted much of +himself." + +"Three millions at thirty-three means spending a deal of one thing to +get another," Ian answered a little grimly. + +"Hush! Oh, Ian, listen!" she added in a whisper. + +Once more Al'mah rose to mastery over the audience. The bold and +generous orchestration, the exceptional chorus, the fine and brilliant +tenor, had made a broad path for her last and supreme effort. The +audience had long since given up their critical sense, they were ready +to be carried into captivity again, and the surrender was instant and +complete. Now, not an eye was turned away from the singer. Even the +Corinthian gallant at the end of the first row of stalls gave himself +up to feasting on her and her success, and the characters in the opera +were as electrified as the audience. + +For a whole seven minutes this voice seemed to be the only thing in +the world, transposing all thoughts, emotions, all elements of life +into terms of melody. Then, at last, with a crash of sweetness, the +voice broke over them all in crystals of sound and floated away into a +world of bright dreams. + +An instant's silence which followed was broken by a tempest of +applause. Again, again, and again it was renewed. The subordinate +singers were quickly disposed of before the curtain, then Al'mah +received her memorable tribute. How many times she came and went she +never knew; but at last the curtain, rising, showed her well up the +stage beside a table where two huge candles flared. The storm of +applause breaking forth once more, the grateful singer raised her arms +and spread them out impulsively in gratitude and dramatic abandon. + +As she did so, the loose, flowing sleeve of her robe caught the flame +of a candle, and in an instant she was in a cloud of fire. The wild +applause turned suddenly to notes of terror as, with a sharp cry, she +stumbled forward to the middle of the stage. + +For one stark moment no one stirred, then suddenly a man with an +opera-cloak on his arm was seen to spring across a space of many feet +between a box on the level of the stage and the stage itself. He +crashed into the footlights, but recovered himself and ran forward. In +an instant he had enveloped the agonized figure of the singer and had +crushed out the flames with swift, strong movements. + +Then lifting the now unconscious artist in his great arms, he strode +off with her behind the scenes. + +"Well done, Byng! Well done, Ruddy Byng!" cried a strong voice from +the audience; and a cheer went up. + +In a moment Byng returned and came down the stage. "She is not +seriously hurt," he said simply to the audience. "We were just in +time." + +Presently, as he entered the Grenfel box again, deafening applause +broke forth. + +"We were just in time," said Ian Stafford, with an admiring, teasing +laugh, as he gripped Byng's arm. + +"'We'--well, it was a royal business," said Jasmine, standing close to +him and looking up into his eyes with that ingratiating softness which +had deluded many another man; "but do you realize that it was my cloak +you took?" she added, whimsically. + +"Well, I'm glad it was," Byng answered, boyishly. "You'll have to wear +my overcoat home." + +"I certainly will," she answered. "Come--the giant's robe." + +People were crowding upon their box. + +"Let's get out of this," Byng said, as he took his coat from the hook +on the wall. + +As they left the box the girl's white-haired, prematurely aged father +whispered in the pretty stepmother's ear: "Jasmine'll marry that +nabob--you'll see." + +The stepmother shrugged a shoulder. "Jasmine is in love with Ian +Stafford," she said, decisively. + +"But she'll marry Rudyard Byng," was the stubborn reply. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE UNDERGROUND WORLD + + +"What's that you say--Jameson--what?" + +Rudyard Byng paused with the lighted match at the end of his cigar, +and stared at a man who was reading from a tape-machine, which gave +the club the world's news from minute to minute. + +"Dr. Jameson's riding on Johannesburg with eight hundred men. He +started from Pitsani two days ago. And Cronje with his burghers are +out after him." + +The flaming match burned Byng's fingers. He threw it into the +fireplace, and stood transfixed for a moment, his face hot with +feeling, then he burst out: + +"But--God! they're not ready at Johannesburg. The burghers'll catch +him at Doornkop or somewhere, and--" He paused, overcome. His eyes +suffused. His hands went out in a gesture of despair. + +"Jameson's jumped too soon," he muttered. "He's lost the game for +them." + +The other eyed him quizzically. "Perhaps he'll get in yet. He surely +planned the thing with due regard for every chance. Johannesburg--" + +"Johannesburg isn't ready, Stafford. I know. That Jameson and the Rand +should coincide was the only chance. And they'll not coincide now. It +might have been--it was to have been--a revolution at Johannesburg, +with Dr. Jim to step in at the right minute. It's only a filibustering +business now, and Oom Paul will catch the filibuster, as sure as +guns. 'Gad, it makes me sick!" + +"Europe will like it--much," remarked Ian Stafford, cynically, +offering Byng a lighted match. + +Byng grumbled out an oath, then fixed his clear, strong look on +Stafford. "It's almost enough to make Germany and France forget 1870 +and fall into each other's arms," he answered. "But that's your +business, you Foreign Office people's business. It's the fellows out +there, friends of mine, so many of them, I'm thinking of. It's the +British kids that can't be taught in their mother-tongue, and the men +who pay all the taxes and can't become citizens. It's the justice you +can only buy; it's the foot of Kruger on the necks of the subjects of +his suzerain; it's eating dirt as Englishmen have never had to eat it +anywhere in the range of the Seven Seas. And when they catch Dr. Jim, +it'll be ten times worse. Yes, it'll be at Doornkop, unless-- But, no, +they'll track him, trap him, get him now. Johannesburg wasn't +ready. Only yesterday I had a cable that--" he stopped short +. . . "but they weren't ready. They hadn't guns enough, or something; +and Englishmen aren't good conspirators, not by a damned sight! Now +it'll be the old Majuba game all over again. You'll see." + +"It certainly will set things back. Your last state will be worse than +your first," remarked Stafford. + +Rudyard Byng drained off a glass of brandy and water at a gulp almost, +as Stafford watched him with inward adverse comment, for he never +touched wine or spirits save at meal-time, and the between-meal +swizzle revolted his Eesthetic sense. Byng put down the glass very +slowly, gazing straight before him for a moment without speaking. Then +he looked round. There was no one very near, though curious faces were +turned in his direction, as the grim news of the Raid was passed from +mouth to mouth. He came up close to Stafford and touched his chest +with a firm forefinger. + +"Every egg in the basket is broken, Stafford. I'm sure of +that. Dr. Jim'll never get in now; and there'll be no oeufs a la coque +for breakfast. But there's an omelette to be got out of the mess, if +the chef doesn't turn up his nose too high. After all, what has +brought things to this pass? Why, mean, low tyranny and +injustice. Why, just a narrow, jealous race-hatred which makes helots +of British men. Simple farmers, the sentimental newspapers call +them--simple Machiavellis in veldschoen!" * + +Stafford nodded assent. "But England is a very conventional chef," he +replied. "She likes the eggs for her omelette broken in the orthodox +way." + +"She's not so particular where the eggs come from, is she?" + +Stafford smiled as he answered: "There'll be a good many people in +England who won't sleep to-night some because they want Jameson to get +in; some because they don't; but most because they're thinking of the +millions of British money locked up in the Rand, with Kruger standing +over it with a sjambak, which he'll use. Last night at the opera we +had a fine example of presence of mind, when a lady burst into flames +on the stage. That spirited South African prima donna, the Transvaal, +is in flames. I wonder if she really will be saved, and who will save +her, and--" + +A light, like the sun, broke over the gloomy and rather haggard face +of Rudyard Byng, and humour shot up into his eyes. He gave a low, +generous laugh, as he said with a twinkle: "And whether he does it at +some expense to himself--with his own overcoat, or with some one +else's cloak. Is that what you want to say?" + +All at once the personal element, so powerful in most of us--even in +moments when interests are in existence so great that they should +obliterate all others--came to the surface. For a moment it almost +made Byng forget the crisis which had come to a land where he had done +all that was worth doing, so far in his life; which had burned itself +into his very soul; which drew him, sleeping or waking, into its arms +of memory and longing. + +He had read only one paper that morning, and it--the latest attempt at +sensational journalism--had so made him blush at the flattering +references to himself in relation to the incident at the opera, that +he had opened no other. He had left his chambers to avoid the +telegrams and notes of congratulation which were arriving in great +numbers. He had gone for his morning ride in Battersea Park instead of +the Row to escape observation; had afterwards spent two hours at the +house he was building in Park Lane; had then come to the club, where +he had encountered Ian Stafford and had heard the news which +overwhelmed him. + +"Well, an opera cloak did the work better than an overcoat would have +done," Stafford answered, laughing. "It was a flash of real genius to +think of it. You did think it all out in the second, didn't you?" + +Stafford looked at him curiously, for he wondered if the choice of a +soft cloak which could more easily be wrapped round the burning woman +than an overcoat was accidental, or whether it was the product of a +mind of unusual decision. + +Byng puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed again quietly as he +replied: + +"Well, I've had a good deal of lion and rhinoceros shooting in my +time, and I've had to make up my mind pretty quick now and then; so I +suppose it gets to be a habit. You don't stop to think when the +trouble's on you; you think as you go. If I'd stopped to think, I'd +have funked the whole thing, I suppose--jumping from that box onto the +stage, and grabbing a lady in my arms, all in the open, as it +were. But that wouldn't have been the natural man. The natural man +that's in most of us, even when we're not very clever, does things +right. It's when the conventional man comes in and says, Let us +consider, that we go wrong. By Jingo, Al'mah was as near having her +beauty spoiled as any woman ever was; but she's only got a few nasty +burns on the arm and has singed her hair a little." + +"You've seen her to-day, then?" + +Stafford looked at him with some curiosity, for the event was one +likely to rouse a man's interest in a woman. Al'mah was unmarried, so +far as the world knew, and a man of Byng's kind, if not generally +inflammable, was very likely to be swept off his feet by some unusual +woman in some unusual circumstance. Stafford had never seen Rudyard +Byng talk to any woman but Jasmine for more than five minutes at a +time, though hundreds of eager and avaricious eyes had singled him out +for attention; and, as it seemed absurd that any one should build a +palace in Park Lane to live in by himself, the glances sent in his +direction from many quarters had not been without hopefulness. And +there need not have been, and there was not, any loss of dignity on +the part of match-making mothers in angling for him, for his family +was quite good enough; his origin was not obscure, and his upbringing +was adequate. His external ruggedness was partly natural; but it was +also got from the bitter rough life he had lived for so many years in +South Africa before he had fallen on his feet at Kimberley and +Johannesburg. + +As for "strange women," during the time that had passed since his +retum to England there had never been any sign of loose living. So, to +Stafford's mind, Byng was the more likely to be swept away on a sudden +flood that would bear him out to the sea of matrimony. He had put his +question out of curiosity, and he had not to wait for a reply. It came +frankly and instantly: + +"Why, I was at Al'mah's house in Bruton Street at eight o'clock this +morning--with the milkman and the newsboy; and you wouldn't believe +it, but I saw her, too. She'd been up since six o'clock, she +said. Couldn't sleep for excitement and pain, but looking like a pansy +blossom all the same, rigged out as pretty as could be in her boudoir, +and a nurse doing the needful. It's an odd dark kind of beauty she +has, with those full lips and the heavy eyebrows. Well, it was a bull +in a china-shop, as you might judge--and thank you kindly, Mr. Byng, +with such a jolly laugh, and ever and ever and ever so grateful and so +wonderfully--thoughtful, I think, was the word, as though one had +planned it all. And wouldn't I stay to breakfast? And not a bit stagey +or actressy, and rather what you call an uncut diamond--a gem in her +way, but not fine beur, not exactly. A touch of the karoo, or the +prairie, or the salt-bush plains in her, but a good chap altogether; +and I'm glad I was in it last night with her. I laughed a lot at +breakfast--why yes, I stayed to breakfast. Laugh before breakfast and +cry before supper, that's the proverb, isn't it? And I'm crying, all +right, and there's weeping down on the Rand too." + +As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to +him, so patently true and honest in every particular. It was rather +contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged +fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to +the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al'mah's +personality. It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who +would be comparing Jasmine's quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, +and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius +of the singer. It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a +personality more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him +perfectly at ease mentally and physically. + +Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was +so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant +woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and +attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in +marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world. To him she +had naturally shown only the one side of her nature--she adapted +herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at +an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well. + +Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be--she had been so from a +child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had +made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving +surveillance had been withdrawn so soon. For years she had been the +spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married +again; and then it had been too late to control her. The wonder was +that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so +determined, so capable. Was it because she had unusual brain and +insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to +see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had +kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely +from criticism? In the day when girls were not in the present sense +emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman +of thirty. Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very +amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize +women. + +Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was +concerned. He had not heard her father's remark of the night before, +"Jasmine will marry that nabob--you'll see." + +He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a +note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room +fire. He could not help but see--he knew the envelope, and no other +handwriting was like Jasmine's, that long, graceful, sliding +hand. Byng turned it over before opening it. + +"Hello," he said, "I'm caught. It's a woman's hand. I wonder how she +knew I was here." + +Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself: "If +Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she'd find out. I wonder--I +wonder." + +He watched Byng, over whose face passed a pleased smile. + +"Why," Byng said, almost eagerly, "it's from Miss Grenfel--wants me to +go and tell her about Jameson and the Raid." + +He paused for an instant, and his face clouded again. "The first thing +I must do is to send cables to Johannesburg. Perhaps there are some +waiting for me at my rooms. I'll go and see. I don't know why I didn't +get news sooner. I generally get word before the Government. There's +something wrong somewhere. Somebody has had me." + +"If I were you I'd go to our friend first. When I'm told to go at +once, I go. She wouldn't like cablegrams and other things coming +between you and her command--even when Dr. Jim's riding out of +Matabeleland on the Rand for to free the slaves." + +Stafford's words were playful, but there was, almost unknown to +himself, a strange little note of discontent and irony behind. + +Byng laughed. "But I'll be able to tell her more, perhaps, if I go to +my rooms first." + +"You are going to see her, then?" + +"Certainly. There's nothing to do till we get news of Jameson at bay +in a conga or balled up at a kopje." Thrusting the delicately perfumed +letter in his pocket, he nodded, and was gone. + +"I was going to see her myself," thought Stafford, "but that settles +it. It will be easier to go where duty calls instead, since Byng takes +my place. Why, she told me to come to-day at this very hour," he +added, suddenly, and paused in his walk towards the door. + +"But I want no triangular tea-parties," he continued to +reflect.... "Well, there'll be work to do at the Foreign Office, +that's sure. France, Austria, Russia can spit out their venom now and +look to their mobilization. And won't Kaiser William throw up his cap +if Dr. Jim gets caught! What a mess it will be! Well--well--well!" + +He sighed, and went on his way brooding darkly; for he knew that this +was the beginning of a great trial for England and all British people. + + + +CHAPTER III + +A DAUGHTER OF TYRE + + +"Monsieur voleur!" + +Jasmine looked at him again, as she had done the night before at the +opera, standing quite confidentially close to him, her hand resting in +his big palm like a pad of rose-leaves; while a delicate perfume +greeted his senses. Byng beamed down on her, mystified and eager, yet +by no means impatient, since the situation was one wholly agreeable to +him, and he had been called robber in his time with greater violence +and with a different voice. Now he merely shook his head in humorous +protest, and gave her an indulgent look of inquiry. Somehow he felt +quite at home with her; while yet he was abashed by so much delicacy +and beauty and bloom. + +"Why, what else are you but a robber?" she added, withdrawing her hand +rather quickly from the too frank friendliness of his grasp. "You ran +off with my opera-cloak last night, and a very pretty and expensive +one it was." + +"Expensive isn't the word," he rejoined; "it was unpurchasable." + +She preened herself a little at the phrase. "I returned your overcoat +this morning--before breakfast; and I didn't even receive a note of +thanks for it. I might properly have kept it till my opera cloak came +back." + +"It's never coming back," he answered; "and as for my overcoat, I +didn't know it had been returned. I was out all the morning." + +"In the Row?" she asked, with an undertone of meaning. + +"Well, not exactly. I was out looking for your cloak." + +"Without breakfast?" she urged with a whimsical glance. + +"Well, I got breakfast while I was looking." + +"And while you were indulging material tastes, the cloak hid +itself--or went out and hanged itself?" + +He settled himself comfortably in the huge chair which seemed made +especially for him. With a rare sense for details she had had this +very chair brought from the library beyond, where her stepmother, in +full view, was writing letters. He laughed at her words--a deep, round +chuckle it was. + +"It didn't exactly hang itself; it lay over the back of a Chesterfield +where I could see it and breakfast too." + +"A Chesterfield in a breakfast-room! That's more like the furniture of +a boudoir." + +"Well, it was a boudoir." He blushed a little in spite of himself. + +"Ah!... Al'mah's? Well, she owed you a breakfast, at least, didn't +she?" + +"Not so good a breakfast as I got." + +"That is putting rather a low price on her life," she rejoined; and a +little smile of triumph gathered at her pink lips; lips a little like +those Nelson loved not wisely yet not too well, if love is worth while +at all. + +"T didn't see where you were leading me," he gasped, helplessly. "I +give up. I can't talk in your way." + +"What is my way?" she pleaded with a little wave of laughter in her +eyes. + +"Why, no frontal attacks--only flank movements, and getting round the +kopjes, with an ambush in a drift here and there." + +"That sounds like Paul Kruger or General Joubert," she cried in mock +dismay. "Isn't that what they are doing with Dr. Jameson, perhaps?" + +His face clouded. Storm gathered slowly in his eyes, a grimness +suddenly settled in his strong jaw. "Yes," he answered, presently, +"that's what they will be doing; and if I'm not mistaken they'll catch +Jameson just as you caught me just now. They'll catch him at Doornkop +or thereabouts, if I know myself--and Oom Paul." + +Her face flushed prettily with excitement. "I want to hear all about +this empire-making, or losing, affair; but there are other things to +be settled first. There's my opera-cloak and the breakfast in the +prima donna's boudoir, and--" + +"But, how did you know it was Al'mah?" he asked blankly. + +"Why, where else would my cloak be?" she inquired with a little +laugh. "Not at the costumier's or the cleaner's so soon. But, all this +horrid flippancy aside, do you really think I should have talked like +this, or been so exigent about the cloak, if I hadn't known +everything; if I hadn't been to see Al'mah, and spent an hour with her +and knew that she was recovering from that dreadful shock very +quickly? But could you think me so inhuman and unwomanly as not to +have asked about her?" + +"I wouldn't be in a position to investigate much when you were +talking--not critically," he replied, boldly. "I would only be +thinking that everything you said was all right. It wouldn't occur to +me to--" + +She half closed her eyes, looking at him with languishing humour. "Now +you must please remember that I am quite young, and may have my head +turned, and--" + +"It wouldn't alter my mind about you if you turned your head," he +broke in, gallantly, with a desperate attempt to take advantage of an +opportunity, and try his hand at a game entirely new to him. + +There was an instant's pause, in which she looked at him with what was +half-assumed, half-natural shyness. His attempt to play with words was +so full of nature, and had behind it such apparent admiration, that +the unspoiled part of her was suddenly made self-conscious, however +agreeably so. Then she said to him: "I won't say you were brave last +night--that doesn't touch the situation. It wasn't bravery, of course; +it was splendid presence of mind which could only come to a man with +great decision of character. I don't think the newspapers put it at +all in the right way. It wasn't like saving a child from the top of a +burning building, was it?" + +"There was nothing in it at all where I was concerned," he +replied. "I've been living a life for fifteen years where you had to +move quick--by instinct, as it were. There's no virtue in it. I was +just a little quicker than a thousand other men present, and I was +nearer to the stage." + +"Not nearer than my father or Mr. Stafford." + +"They had a bigger shock than I had, I suppose. They got struck numb +for a second. I'm a coarser kind. I have seen lots of sickening +things; and I suppose they don't stun me. We get callous, I fancy, we +veld-rangers and adventurers." + +"You seem sensitive enough to fine emotions," she said, almost shyly." +You were completely absorbed, carried away, by Al'mah's singing last +night. There wasn't a throb of music that escaped you, I should +think." + +"Well, that's primary instinct. Music is for the most savage +natures. The boor that couldn't appreciate the Taj Mahal, or the +sculpture of Michael Angelo, might be swept off his feet by the music +of a master, though he couldn't understand its story. Besides, I've +carried a banjo and a cornet to the ends of the earth with me. I saved +my life with the cornet once. A lion got inside my zareba in +Rhodesia. I hadn't my gun within reach, but I'd been playing the +cornet, and just as he was crouching I blew a blast from it--one of +those jarring discords of Wagner in the "Gotterdammerung"--and he +turned tail and got away into the bush with a howl. Hearing gets to be +the most acute of all the senses with the pioneer. If you've ever +been really dying of thirst, and have reached water again, its sounds +become wonderful to you ever after that--the trickle of a creek, the +wash of a wave on the shore, the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a +fall, the swish of a rainstorm. It's the same with birds and +trees. And trees all make different sounds--that's the shape of the +leaves. It's all music, too." + +Her breath came quickly with pleasure at the imagination and +observation of his words. "So it wasn't strange that you should be +ravished by Al'mah's singing last night was it?" She looked at him +keenly. "Isn't it curious that such a marvellous gift should be given +to a woman who in other respects--" she paused. + +"Yes, I know what you mean. She's so untrained in lots of ways. That's +what I was saying to Stafford a little while ago. They live in a world +of their own, the stage people. There's always a kind of +irresponsibility. The habit of letting themselves go in their art, I +suppose, makes them, in real life, throw things down so hard when they +don't like them. Living at high pressure is an art like music. It +alters the whole equilibrium, I suppose. A woman like Al'mah would +commit suicide, or kill a man, without realizing the true significance +of it all." + +"Were you thinking that when you breakfasted with her?" + +"Yes, when she was laughing and jesting--and when she kissed me +good-bye." + +"When--she--kissed you--good-bye?" + +Jasmine drew back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the +other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had +been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it +had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been +allowed to read books of verse--Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, +Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others--unchallenged and unguided. The +understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been +at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to her by slow but +subtle means--an apprehension from instinct, not from knowledge. There +had never been a shock to her mind. + +The knowledge of things had grown imperceptibly, and most of life's +ugly meanings were known--at a great distance, to be sure, but still +known. Yet there came a sudden half-angry feeling when she heard +Rudyard Byng say, so loosely, that Al'Mah had kissed him. Was it +possible, then, that a man, that any man, thought she might hear such +things without resentment; that any man thought her to know so much of +life that it did not matter what was said? Did her outward appearance, +then, bear such false evidence? + +He did not understand quite, yet he saw that she misunderstood, and he +handled the situation with a tact which seemed hardly to belong to a +man of his training and calibre. + +"She thought no more of kissing me," he continued, presently, in a +calm voice--"a man she had seen only once before, and was not likely +to see again, than would a child of five. It meant nothing more to her +than kissing Fanato on the stage. It was pure impulse. She forgot it +as soon as it was done. It was her way of showing gratitude. Somewhat +unconventional, wasn't it? But then, she is a little Irish, a little +Spanish, and the rest Saxon; and she is all artist and bohemian." + +Jasmine's face cleared, and her equilibrium was instantly +restored. She was glad she had misunderstood. Yet Al'mah had not +kissed her when she left, while expressing gratitude, too. There was a +difference. She turned the subject, saying: "Of course, she insists on +sending me a new cloak, and keeping the other as a memento. It was +rather badly singed, wasn't it?" + +"It did its work well, and it deserves an honoured home. Do you know +that even as I flung the cloak round her, in the excitement of the +moment I 'sensed,' as my young nephew says, the perfume you use." + +He lifted his hand, conscious that his fingers still carried some of +that delicate perfume which her fingers left there as they lay in his +palm when she greeted him on his entrance. "It was like an incense +from the cloak, as it blanketed the flames. Strange, wasn't it, that +the undersense should be conscious of that little thing, while the +over-sense was adding a sensational postscript to the opera?" + +She smiled in a pleased way. "Do you like the perfume? I really use +very little of it." + +"It's like no other. It starts a kind of cloud of ideas floating. I +don't know how to describe it. I imagine myself--" + +She interrupted, laughing merrily. "My brother says it always makes +him angry, and Ian Stafford calls it 'The Wild Tincture of +Time'--frivolously and sillily says that it comes from a bank whereon +the 'wild thyme' grows! But now, I want to ask you many questions. We +have been mentally dancing, while down beyond the Limpopo--" + +His demeanour instantly changed, and she noted the look cf power and +purpose coming into the rather boyish and good-natured, the rash and +yet determined, face. It was not quite handsome. The features were not +regular, the forehead was perhaps a little too low, and the hair grew +very thick, and would have been a vast mane if it had not been kept +fairly close by his valet. This valet was Krool, a half-caste-- +Hottentot and Boer--whom he had rescued from Lobengula in the +Matabele war, and who had in his day been ship-steward, barber, +cook, guide, and native recruiter. Krool had attached himself to Byng, +and he would not be shaken off even when his master came home to +England. + +Looking at her visitor with a new sense of observation alive in her, +Jasmine saw the inherent native drowsiness of the nature, the love of +sleep and good living, the healthy primary desires, the striving, +adventurous, yet, in one sense, unambitious soul. The very cleft in +the chin, like the alluring dimple of a child's cheek, enlarged and +hardened, was suggestive of animal beauty, with its parallel +suggestion of indolence. Yet, somehow, too ample as he was both in +fact and by suggestion to the imagination there was an apparent +underlying force, a capacity to do huge things when once roused. He +had been roused in his short day. The life into which he had been +thrown with men of vaster ambition and much more selfish ends than his +own, had stirred him to prodigies of activity in those strenuous, +wonderful, electric days when gold and diamonds changed the +hard-bitten, wearied prospector, who had doggedly delved till he had +forced open the hand of the Spirit of the Earth and caught the +treasure that flowed forth, into a millionaire, into a conqueror, with +the world at his feet. He had been of those who, for many a night and +many a year, eating food scarce fit for Kaffirs, had, in poverty and +grim endeavour, seen the sun rise and fall over the Magaliesberg +range, hope alive in the morning and dead at night. He had faced the +devilish storms which swept the high veld with lightning and the +thunderstone, striking men dead as they fled for shelter to the +boulders of some barren, mocking kopje; and he had had the occasional +wild nights of carousal, when the miseries and robberies of life and +time and the ceaseless weariness and hope deferred, were forgotten. + +It was all there in his face--the pioneer endeavour, the reckless +effort, the gambler's anxiety, the self-indulgence, the crude +passions, with a far-off, vague idealism, the selfish outlook, and yet +great breadth of feeling, with narrowness of individual purpose. The +rough life, the sordid struggle, had left their mark, and this easy, +coaxing, comfortable life of London had not covered it up--not yet. He +still belonged to other--and higher--spheres. + +There was a great contrast between him and Ian Stafford. Ian was +handsome, exquisitely refined, lean and graceful of figure, with a +mind which saw the end of your sentences from the first word, with a +skill of speech like a Damascus blade, with knowledge of a half-dozen +languages. Ian had an allusiveness of conversation which made human +intercourse a perpetual entertainment, and Jasmine's intercourse with +him a delight which lingered after his going until his coming +again. The contrast was prodigious--and perplexing, for Rudyard Byng +had qualities which compelled her interest. She sighed as she +reflected. + +"I suppose you can't get three millions all to yourself with your own +hands without missing a good deal and getting a good deal you could do +without," she said to herself, as he wonderingly interjected the +exclamation: + +"Now, what do you know of the Limpopo? I'll venture there isn't +another woman in England who even knows the name." + +"I always had a thirst for travel, and I've read endless books of +travel and adventure," she replied. "I'd have been an explorer, or a +Cecil Rhodes, if I had been a man." + +"Can you ride?" he asked, looking wonderingly at her tiny hand, her +slight figure, her delicate face with its almost impossible pink and +white. + +"Oh, man of little faith!" she rejoined. "I can't remember when I +didn't ride. First a Shetland pony, and now at last I've reached +Zambesi--such a wicked dear." + +"Zambesi--why Zambesi? One would think you were South African." + +She enjoyed his mystification. Then she grew serious and her eyes +softened. "I had a friend--a girl, older than I. She married. Well, +he's an earl now, the Earl of Tynemouth, but he was the elder son +then, and wild for sport. They went on their honeymoon to shoot in +Africa, and they visited the falls of the Zambesi. She, my friend, was +standing on the edge of the chasm--perhaps you know it--not far from +Livingstone's tree, between the streams. It was October, and the river +was low. She put up her big parasol. A gust of wind suddenly caught +it, and instead of letting the thing fly, she hung on, and was nearly +swept into the chasm. A man with them pulled her back in time--but she +hung on to that red parasol. Only when it was all over did she realize +what had really happened. Well, when she came back to England, as a +kind of thank-offering she gave me her father's best hunter. That was +like her, too; she could always make other people generous. He is a +beautiful Satan, and I rechristened him Zambesi. I wanted the red +parasol, too, but Alice Tynemouth wouldn't give it to me." + +"So she gave it to the man who pulled her back. Why not?" + +"How do you know she did that?" + +"Well, it hangs in an honoured place in Stafford's chambers. I +conjecture right, do I?" + +Her eyes darkened slowly, and a swift-passing shadow covered her +faintly smiling lips; but she only said, "You see he was entitled to +it, wasn't he?" To herself, however, she whispered, "Neither of +them--neither ever told me that." + +At that moment the door opened, and a footman came forward to Rudyard +Byng. "If you please, sir, your servant says, will you see him. There +is news from South Africa." + +Byng rose, but Jasmine intervened. "No, tell him to come here," she +said to the footman. "Mayn't he?" she asked. + +Byng nodded, and remained standing. He seemed suddenly lost to her +presence, and with head dropped forward looked into space, engrossed, +intense. + +Jasmine studied him as an artist would study a picture, and decided +that he had elements of the unusual, and was a distinct +personality. Though rugged, he was not uncouth, and there was nothing +of the nouveau riche about him. He did not wear a ring or scarf-pin, +his watch-chain was simple and inconspicuous enough for a +school-boy--and he was worth three million pounds, with a palace +building in Park Lane and a feudal castle in Wales leased for a period +of years. There was nothing greatly striking in his carriage; indeed, +he did not make enough of his height and bulk; but his eye was strong +and clear, his head was powerful, and his quick smile was very +winning. Yet--yet, he was not the type of man who, to her mind should +have made three millions at thirty-three. It did not seem to her that +he was really representative of the great fortune-builders--she had +her grandfather and others closely in mind. She had seen many captains +of industry and finance in her grandfather's house, men mostly silent, +deliberate and taciturn, and showing in their manner and persons the +accumulated habits of patience, force, ceaseless aggression and +domination. + +Was it only luck which had given Rudyard Byng those three millions? It +could not be just that alone. She remembered her grandfather used to +say that luck was a powerful ingredient in the successful career of +every man, but that the man was on the spot to take the luck, knew +when to take it, and how to use it. "The lucky man is the man that +sits up watching for the windfall while other men are sleeping"--that +was the way he had put it. So Rudyard Byng, if lucky, had also been of +those who had grown haggard with watching, working and waiting; but +not a hair of his head had whitened, and if he looked older than he +was, still he was young enough to marry the youngest debutante in +England and the prettiest and best-born. He certainly had inherent +breeding. His family had a long pedigree, and every man could not be +as distinguished-looking as Ian Stafford--as Ian Stafford, who, +however, had not three millions of pounds; who had not yet made his +name and might never do so. + +She flushed with anger at herself that she should be so disloyal to +Ian, for whom she had pictured a brilliant future--ambassador at Paris +or Berlin, or, if he chose, Foreign Minister in Whitehall--Ian, +gracious, diligent, wonderfully trained, waiting, watching for his +luck and ready to take it; and to carry success, when it came, like a +prince of princelier days. Ian gratified every sense in her, met every +demand of an exacting nature, satisfied her unusually critical +instinct, and was, in effect, her affianced husband. Yet it was so +hard to wait for luck, for place, for power, for the environment where +she could do great things, could fill that radiant place which her +cynical and melodramatic but powerful and sympathetic grandfather had +prefigured for her. She had been the apple of that old man's eye, and +he had filled her brain--purposely--with ambitious ideas. He had done +it when she was very young, because he had not long to stay; and he +had overcoloured the pictures in order that the impression should be +vivid and indelible when he was gone. He had meant to bless, for, to +his mind, to shine, to do big things, to achieve notoriety, to attain +power, "to make the band play when you come," was the true philosophy +of life. And as this philosophy, successful in his case, was +accompanied by habits of life which would bear the closest inspection +by the dean and chapter, it was a difficult one to meet by argument or +admonition. He had taught his grandchild as successfully as he had +built the structure of his success. He had made material things the +basis of life's philosophy and purpose; and if she was not wholly +materialistic, it was because she had drunk deep, for one so young, at +the fountains of art, poetry, sculpture and history. For the last she +had a passion which was represented by books of biography without +number, and all the standard historians were to be found in her +bedroom and her boudoir. Yet, too, when she had opportunity--when Lady +Tynemouth brought them to her--she read the newest and most daring +productions of a school of French novelists and dramatists who saw the +world with eyes morally astigmatic and out of focus. Once she had +remarked to Alice Tynemouth: + +"You say I dress well, yet it isn't I. It's my dressmaker. I choose +the over-coloured thing three times out of five--it used to be more +than that. Instinctively I want to blaze. It is the same in +everything. I need to be kept down, but, alas! I have my own way in +everything. I wish I hadn't, for my own good. Yet I can't brook being +ruled." + +To this Alice had replied: "A really selfish husband--not a difficult +thing to find--would soon keep you down sufficiently. Then you'd +choose the over-coloured thing not more than two times, perhaps one +time, out of five. Your orientalism is only undisciplined self-will. A +little cruelty would give you a better sense of proportion in +colour--and everything else. You have orientalism, but little or no +orientation." + +Here, now, standing before the fire, was that possible husband who, no +doubt, was selfish, and had capacities for cruelty which would give +her greater proportion--and sense of colour. In Byng's palace, with +three millions behind her--she herself had only the tenth of one +million--she could settle down into an exquisitely ordered, beautiful, +perfect life where the world would come as to a court, and-- + +Suddenly she shuddered, for these thoughts were sordid, humiliating, +and degrading. They were unbidden, but still they came. They came from +some dark fountain within herself. She really wanted--her idealistic +self wanted--to be all that she knew she looked, a flower in life and +thought. But, oh, it was hard, hard for her to be what she wished! +Why should it be so hard for her? + +She was roused by a voice. "Cronje!" it said in a deep, slow, ragged +note. + +Byng's half-caste valet, Krool, sombre of face, small, lean, ominous, +was standing in the doorway. + +"Cronje! . . . Well?" rejoined Byng, quietly, yet with a kind of +smother in the tone. + +Krool stretched out a long, skinny, open hand, and slowly closed the +fingers up tight with a gesture suggestive of a trap closing upon a +crushed captive. + +"Where?" Byng asked, huskily. + +"Doornkop," was the reply; and Jasmine, watching closely, fascinated +by Krool's taciturnity, revolted by his immobile face, thought she saw +in his eyes a glint of malicious and furtive joy. A dark premonition +suddenly flashed into her mind that this creature would one day, +somehow, do her harm; that he was her foe, her primal foe, without +present or past cause for which she was responsible; but still a +foe--one of those antipathies foreordained, one of those evil +influences which exist somewhere in the universe against every +individual life. + +"Doornkop--what did I say!" Byng exclaimed to Jasmine. "I knew they'd +put the double-and-twist on him at Doornkop, or some such place; and +they've done it--Kruger and Joubert. Englishmen aren't slim enough to +be conspirators. Dr. Jim was going it blind, trusting to good luck, +gambling with the Almighty. It's bury me deep now. It's Paul Kruger +licking his chops over the savoury mess. 'Oh, isn't it a pretty dish +to set before the king!' What else, Krool?" + +"Nothing, Baas." + +"Nothing more in the cables?" + +"No, Baas." + +"That will do, Krool. Wait. Go to Mr. Whalen. Say I want him to bring +a stenographer and all the Partners--he'll understand--to me at ten +to-night." + +"Yes, Baas." + +Krool bowed slowly. As he raised his head his eyes caught those of +Jasmine. For an instant they regarded each other steadily, then the +man's eyes dropped, and a faint flush passed over his face. The look +had its revelation which neither ever forgot. A quiver of fear passed +through Jasmine, and was followed by a sense of self-protection and a +hardening of her will, as against some possible danger. + +As Krool left the room he said to himself: "The Baas speaks her for +his vrouw. But the Baas will go back quick to the Vaal--p'r'aps." + +Then an evil smile passed over his face, as he thought of the fall of +the Rooinek--of Dr. Jim in Oom Paul's clutches. He opened and shut his +fingers again with a malignant cruelty. + +Standing before the fire, Byng said to Jasmine meditatively, with that +old ironic humour which was always part of him: "'Fee, fo, fi, fum, I +smell the blood of an Englishman.'" + +Her face contracted with pain. "They will take Dr. Jim's life?" she +asked, solemnly. + +"It's hard to tell. It isn't him alone. There's lots of others that we +both know." + +"Yes, yes, of course. It's terrible, terrible," she whispered. + +"It's more terrible than it looks, even now. It's a black day for +England. She doesn't know yet how black it is. I see it, though; I see +it. It's as plain as an open book. Well, there's work to do, and I +must be about it. I'm off to the Colonial Office. No time to +lose. It's a job that has no eight-hours shift." + +Now the real man was alive. He was transformed. The face was set and +quiet. He looked concentrated will and power as he stood with his +hands clasped behind him, his shoulders thrown back, his eyes alight +with fire and determination. To herself Jasmine seemed to be moving in +the centre of great events, having her fingers upon the levers which +work behind the scenes of the world's vast schemes, standing by the +secret machinery of government. + +"How I wish I could help you," she said, softly, coming nearer to him, +a warm light in her liquid blue eyes, her exquisite face flushing with +excitement, her hands clasped in front of her. + +As Byng looked at her, it seemed to him that sweet honesty and +high-heartedness had never had so fine a setting; that never had there +been in the world such an epitome of talent, beauty and sincerity. He +had suddenly capitulated, he who had ridden unscathed so long. If he +had dared he would have taken her in his arms there and then; but he +had known her only for a day. He had been always told that a woman +must be wooed and won, and to woo took time. It was not a task he +understood, but suddenly it came to him that he was prepared to do it; +that he must be patient and watch and serve, and, as he used to do, +perhaps, be elate in the morning and depressed at night, till the day +of triumph came and his luck was made manifest. + +"But you can help me, yes, you can help me as no one else can," he +said almost hoarsely, and his hands moved a little towards her. + +"You must show me how," she said, scarce above a whisper, and she drew +back slightly, for this look in his eyes told its own story. + +"When may I come again?" he asked. + +"I want so much to hear everything about South Africa. Won't you come +to-morrow at six?" she asked. + +"Certainly, to-morrow at six," he answered, eagerly, "and thank you." + +His honest look of admiration enveloped her as her hand was again lost +in his strong, generous palm, and lay there for a moment thrilling +him.... He turned at the door and looked back, and the smile she gave +seemed the most delightful thing he had ever seen. + +"She is a flower, a jasmine-flower," he said, happily, as he made his +way into the street. + +When he had gone she fled to her bedroom. Standing before the mirror, +she looked at herself long, laughing feverishly. Then suddenly she +turned and threw herself upon the bed, bursting into a passion of +tears. Sobs shook her. + +"Oh, Ian," she said, raisig her head at last, "oh, Ian, Ian, I hate +myself!" + +Down in the library her stepmother was saying to her father, "You are +right, Jasmine will marry the nabob." + +"I am sorry for Ian Stafford," was the response. + +"Men get over such things," came the quietly cynical reply. + +"Jasmine takes a lot of getting over," answered Jasmine's father. "She +has got the brains of all the family, the beauty her family never +had--the genius of my father, and the wilfulness, and--" + +He paused, for, after all, he was not talking to the mother of his +child. + +"Yes, all of it, dear child," was the enigmatical reply. + +"I wish--Nelly, I do wish that--" + +"Yes, I know what you wish, Cuthbert, but it's no good. I'm not of any +use to her. She will work out her own destiny alone--as her +grandfather did." + +"God knows I hope not! A man can carry it off, but a woman--" + +Slow and almost stupid as he was, he knew that her inheritance from +her grandfather's nature was a perilous gift. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE PARTNERS MEET + + +England was more stunned than shocked. The dark significance, the evil +consequences destined to flow from the Jameson Raid had not yet +reached the general mind. There was something gallant and romantic in +this wild invasion: a few hundred men, with no commissariat and +insufficient clothing, with enough ammunition and guns for only the +merest flurry of battle, doing this unbelievable gamble with +Fate--challenging a republic of fighting men with well-stocked +arsenals and capable artillery, with ample sources of supply, with +command of railways and communications. It was certainly magnificent; +but it was magnificent folly. + +It did not take England long to decide that point; and not even the +Laureate's paean in the organ of the aristocracy and upper middle +class could evoke any outburst of feeling. There was plenty of +admiration for the pluck and boldness, for the careless indifference +with which the raiders risked their lives; for the romantic side of +the dash from Pitsani to the Rand; but the thing was so palpably +impossible, as it was carried out, that there was not a knowing mind +in the Islands which would not have echoed Rhodes' words, "Jameson has +upset the apple-cart." + +Rudyard Byng did not visit Jasmine the next evening at six +o'clock. His world was all in chaos, and he had not closed his eyes to +sleep since he had left her. At ten o'clock at night, as he had +arranged, "The Partners" and himself met at his chambers, around which +had gathered a crowd of reporters and curious idlers; and from that +time till the grey dawn he and they had sat in conference. He had +spent two hours at the Colonial Office after he left Jasmine, and now +all night he kneaded the dough of a new policy with his companions in +finance and misfortune. + +There was Wallstein, the fairest, ablest, and richest financier of +them all, with a marvellous head for figures and invaluable and +commanding at the council-board, by virtue of his clear brain and his +power to co-ordinate all the elements of the most confusing financial +problems. Others had by luck and persistence made money--the basis of +their fortunes; but Wallstein had showed them how to save those +fortunes and make them grow; had enabled them to compete successfully +with the games of other great financiers in the world's +stock-markets. Wallstein was short and stout, with a big blue eye and +an unwrinkled forehead; prematurely aged from lack of exercise and the +exciting air of the high veld; from planning and scheming while others +slept; from an inherent physical weakness due to the fact that he was +one of twin sons, to his brother being given great physical strength, +to himself a powerful brain for finance and a frail if ample +body. Wallstein knew little and cared less about politics; yet he saw +the use of politics in finance, and he did not stick his head into the +sand as some of his colleagues did when political activities hampered +their operations. In Johannesburg he had kept aloof from the struggle +with Oom Paul, not from lack of will, but because he had no stomach +for daily intrigue and guerrilla warfare and subterranean workings; +and he was convinced that only a great and bloody struggle would end +the contest for progress and equal rights for all white men on the +Rand. His inquiries had been bent towards so disposing the financial +operations, so bulwarking the mining industry by sagacious designs, +that, when the worst came, they all would be able to weather the +storm. He had done his work better than his colleagues knew, or indeed +even himself knew. + +Probably only Fleming the Scotsman--another of the Partners--with a +somewhat dour exterior, an indomitable will, and a caution which +compelled him to make good every step of the way before him, and so +cultivate a long sight financially and politically, understood how +extraordinary Wallstein's work had been--only Fleming, and Rudyard +Byng, who knew better than any and all. + +There was also De Lancy Scovel, who had become a biggish figure in the +Rand world because he had been a kind of financial valet to Wallstein +and Byng, and, it was said, had been a real unofficial valet to +Rhodes, being an authority on cooking, and on brewing a punch, and a +master of commissariat in the long marches which Rhodes made in the +days when he trekked into Rhodesia. It was indeed said that he had +made his first ten thousand pounds out of two trips which Rhodes made +en route to Lobengula, and had added to this amount on the principle +of compound multiplication when the Matabele war came; for here again +he had a collateral interest in the commissariat. + +Rhodes, with a supreme carelessness in regard to money, with an +indifference to details which left his mind free for the working of a +few main ideas, had no idea how many cheques he gave on the spur of +the moment to De Lancy Scovel in this month or in that, in this year +or in that, for this thing or for that--cheques written very often on +the backs of envelopes, on the white margin of a newspaper, on the +fly-leaf of a book or a blank telegraph form. The Master Man was so +stirred by half-contemptuous humour at the sycophancy and snobbery of +his vain slave, who could make a salad out of anything edible, that, +caring little what men were, so long as they did his work for him, he +once wrote a cheque for two thousand pounds on the starched cuff of +his henchman's "biled shirt" at a dinner prepared for his birthday. + +So it was that, with the marrow-bones thrown to him, De Lancy Scovel +came to a point where he could follow Wallstein's and Rhodes' lead +financially, being privy to their plans, through eavesdropping on the +conferences of his chiefs. It came as a surprise to his superiors that +one day's chance discovery showed De Lancy Scovel to be worth fifty +thousand pounds; and from that time on they used him for many a +purpose in which it was expedient their own hands should not +appear. They felt confident that a man who could so carefully and +secretly build up his own fortune had a gift which could be used to +advantage. A man who could be so subterranean in his own affairs would +no doubt be equally secluded in their business. Selfishness would make +him silent. And so it was that "the dude" of the camp and the kraal, +the factotum, who in his time had brushed Rhodes' clothes when he +brushed his own, after the Kaffir servant had messed them about, came +to be a millionaire and one of the Partners. For him South Africa had +no charms. He was happy in London, or at his country-seat in +Leicestershire, where he followed the hounds with a temerity which was +at base vanity; where he gave the county the best food to be got +outside St. Petersburg or Paris; where his so-called bachelor +establishment was cared for by a coarse, gray-haired housekeeper who, +the initiated said, was De Lancy's South African wife, with a rooted +objection to being a lady or "moving in social circles"; whose +pleasure lay in managing this big household under De Lancy's +guidance. There were those who said they had seen her brush a speck of +dust from De Lancy's coat-collar, as she emerged from her morning +interview with him; and others who said they had seen her hidden in +the shrubbery listening to the rather flaccid conversation of her +splendid poodle of a master. + +There were others who had climbed to success in their own way, some by +happy accident, some by a force which disregarded anything in their +way, and some by sheer honest rough merit, through which the soul of +the true pioneer shone. + +There was also Barry Whalen, who had been educated as a doctor, and, +with a rare Irish sense of adaptability and amazing Celtic cleverness, +had also become a mining engineer, in the days when the Transvaal was +emerging from its pioneer obscurity into the golden light of mining +prosperity. Abrupt, obstinately honest, and sincere; always protesting +against this and against that, always the critic of authority, whether +the authority was friend or foe; always smothering his own views in +the moment when the test of loyalty came; always with a voice like a +young bull and a heart which would have suited a Goliath, there was no +one but trusted Barry, none that had not hurried to him in a +difficulty; not because he was so wise, but because he was so true. He +would never have made money, in spite of the fact that his prescience, +his mining sense, his diagnosis of the case of a mine, as Byng called +it, had been a great source of wealth to others, had it not been for +Wallstein and Byng. + +Wallstein had in him a curious gentleness and human sympathy, little +in keeping with the view held of him by that section of the British +press which would willingly have seen England at the mercy of Paul +Kruger--for England's good, for her soul's welfare as it were, for her +needed chastisement. He was spoken of as a cruel, tyrannical, greedy +German Jew, whose soul was in his own pocket and his hand in the +pockets of the world. In truth he was none of these things, save that +he was of German birth, and of as good and honest German origin as +George of Hanover and his descendants, if not so distinguished. +Wallstein's eye was an eye of kindness, save in the vision of business; +then it saw without emotion to the advantage of the country where he +had made his money, and to the perpetual advantage of England, to whom +he gave an honourable and philanthropic citizenship. His charities were +not of the spectacular kind; but many a poor and worthy, and often +unworthy, unfortunate was sheltered through bad days and heavy weather +of life by the immediate personal care of "the Jew Mining Magnate, +who didn't care a damn what happened to England so long as his own +nest was well lined!" + +It was Wallstein who took heed of the fact that, as he became rich, +Barry Whalen remained poor; and it was he who took note that Barry had +a daughter who might any day be left penniless with frail health and +no protector; and taking heed and note, it was he made all the +Partners unite in taking some financial risks and responsibilities for +Barry, when two new mines were opened--to Barry's large profit. It was +characteristic of Barry, however, that, if they had not disguised +their action by financial devices, and by making him a Partner, +because he was needed professionally and intellectually and for other +business reasons, nicely phrased to please his Celtic vanity, he would +have rejected the means to the fortune which came to him. It was a far +smaller fortune than any of the others had; but it was sufficient for +him and for his child. So it was that Barry became one of the +Partners, and said things that every one else would hesitate to say, +but were glad to hear said. + +Others of the group were of varying degrees of ability and interest +and importance. One or two were poltroons in body and mind, with only +a real instinct for money-making and a capacity for constructive +individualism. Of them the most conspicuous was Clifford Melville, +whose name was originally Joseph Sobieski, with habitat Poland, whose +small part in this veracious tale belongs elsewhere. + +Each had his place, and all were influenced by the great schemes of +Rhodes and their reflection in the purposes and actions of +Wallstein. Wallstein was inspired by the dreams and daring purposes of +Empire which had driven Rhodes from Table Mountain to the kraal of +Lobengula and far beyond; until, at last, the flag he had learned to +love had been triumphantly trailed from the Cape to Cairo. + +Now in the great crisis, Wallstein, of them all, was the most +self-possessed, save Rudyard Byng. Some of the others were +paralyzed. They could only whine out execrations on the man who had +dared something; who, if he had succeeded, would have been hailed as +the great leader of a Revolution, not the scorned and humiliated +captain of a filibustering expedition. A triumphant rebellion or raid +is always a revolution in the archives of a nation. These men were of +a class who run for cover before a battle begins, and can never be +kept in the fighting-line except with the bayonet in the small of +their backs. Others were irritable and strenuous, bitter in their +denunciations of the Johannesburg conspirators, who had bungled their +side of the business and who had certainly shown no rashness. At any +rate, whatever the merits of their case, no one in England accused the +Johannesburgers of foolhardy courage or impassioned daring. They were +so busy in trying to induce Jameson to go back that they had no time +to go forward themselves. It was not that they lost their heads, their +hearts were the disappearing factors. + +At this gloomy meeting in his house, Byng did not join either of the +two sections who represented the more extreme views and the +unpolitical minds. There was a small section, of which he was one, who +were not cleverer financially than their friends, but who had +political sense and intuition; and these, to their credit, were more +concerned, at this dark moment, for the political and national +consequences of the Raid, than for the certain set-back to the mining +and financial enterprises of the Rand. A few of the richest of them +were the most hopeless politically--ever ready to sacrifice principle +for an extra dividend of a quarter per cent.; and, in their inmost +souls, ready to bow the knee to Oom Paul and his unwholesome, +undemocratic, and corrupt government, if only the dividends moved on +and up. + +Byng was not a great genius, and he had never given his natural +political talent its full chance; but his soul was bigger than his +pocket. He had a passionate love for the land--for England--which had +given him birth; and he had a decent pride in her honour and good +name. So it was that he had almost savagely challenged some of the +sordid deliberations of this stern conference. In a full-blooded and +manly appeal he begged them "to get on higher ground." If he could but +have heard it, it would have cheered the heart of the broken and +discredited pioneer of Empire at Capetown, who had received his +death-warrant, to take effect within five years, in the little cottage +at Muizenberg by the sea; as great a soul in posse as ever came from +the womb of the English mother; who said as he sat and watched the +tide flow in and out, and his own tide of life ebbed, "Life is a three +days' trip to the sea-shore: one day in going, one day in settling +down, and one day in packing up again." + +Byng had one or two colleagues who, under his inspiration, also took +the larger view, and who looked ahead to the consequences yet to flow +from the fiasco at Doornkop, which became a tragedy. What would happen +to the conspirators of Johannesburg? What would happen to Jameson and +Willoughby and Bobby White and Raleigh Grey? Who was to go to South +Africa to help in holding things together, and to prevent the worst +happening, if possible? At this point they had arrived when they saw-- + + + + . . . The dull dank morn stare in, + Like a dim drowned face with oozy eyes. + + +A more miserable morning seldom had broken, even in England. + +"I will go. I must go," remarked Byng at last, though there was a +strange sinking of the heart as he said it. Even yet the perfume of +Jasmine's cloak stole to his senses to intoxicate them. But it was his +duty to offer to go; and he felt that he could do good by going, and +that he was needed at Johannesburg. He, more than all of them, had +been in open conflict with Oom Paul in the the past, had fought him +the most vigorously, and yet for him the old veldschoen Boer had some +regard and much respect, in so far as he could respect a Rooinek at +all. + +"I will go," Byng repeated, and looked round the table at haggard +faces, at ashen faces, at the faces of men who had smoked to quiet +their nerves, or drunk hard all night to keep up their courage. How +many times they had done the same in olden days, when the millions +were not yet arrived, and their only luxury was companionship and +champagne--or something less expensive. + +As Byng spoke, Krool entered the room with a great coffee-pot and a +dozen small white bowls. He heard Byng's words, and for a moment his +dark eyes glowed with a look of evil satisfaction. But his immobile +face showed nothing, and he moved like a spirit among them his lean +hand putting a bowl before each person, like a servitor of Death +passing the hemlock-brew. + +At his entrance there was instant silence, for, secret as their +conference must be, this half-caste, this Hottentot-Boer, must hear +nothing and know nothing. Not one of them but resented his being +Byng's servant. Not one but felt him a danger at any time, and +particularly now. Once Barry Whalen, the most outwardly brusque and +apparently frank of them all, had urged Byng to give Krool up, but +without avail; and now Barry eyed the half-caste with a resentful +determination. He knew that Krool had heard Byng's words, for he was +sitting opposite the double doors, and had seen the malicious eyes +light up. Instantly, however, that light vanished. They all might have +been wooden men, and Krool but a wooden servitor, so mechanical and +concentrated were his actions. He seemed to look at nobody; but some +of them shrank a little as he leaned over and poured the brown, +steaming liquid and the hot milk into the bowls. Only once did the +factotum look at anybody directly, and that was at Byng just as he was +about to leave the room. Then Barry Whalen saw him glance searchingly +at his master's face in a mirror, and again that baleful light leaped +up in his eyes. + +When he had left the room, Barry Whalen said, impulsively: "Byng, it's +all damn foolery your keeping that fellow about you. It's dangerous, +'specially now." + +"Coffee's good, isn't it? Think there's poison in it?" Byug asked with +a contemptuous little laugh. "Sugar--what?" He pushed the great bowl +of sugar over the polished table towards Barry. + +"Oh, he makes you comfortable enough, but--" + +"But he makes you uncomfortable, Barry? Well, we're bound to get on +one another's nerves one way or another in this world when the east +wind blows; and if it isn't the east wind, it's some other wind. We're +living on a planet which has to take the swipes of the universe, +because it has permitted that corrupt, quarrelsome, and pernicious +beast, man, to populate the hemispheres. Krool is staying on with me, +Barry." + +"We're in heavy seas, and we don't want any wreckers on the shore," +was the moody and nervously indignant reply. + +"Well, Krool's in the heavy seas, all right, too--with me." + +Barry Whalen persisted. "We're in for complications, Byng. England has +to take a hand in the game now with a vengeance. We don't want any +spies. He's more Boer than native." + +"There'll be nothing Krool can get worth spying for. If we keep our +mouths shut to the outside world, we'll not need fear any spies. I'm +not afraid of Krool. We'll not be sold by him. Though some one inside +will sell us perhaps--as the Johannesburg game was sold by some one +inside." + +There was a painful silence, and more than one man looked at his +fellows furtively. + +"We will do nothing that will not bear the light of day, and then we +need not fear any spying," continued Byng. + +"If we have secret meetings and intentions which we don't make public, +it is only what governments themselves have; and we keep them quiet to +prevent any one taking advantage of us; but our actions are +justfiable. I'm going to do nothing I'm ashamed of; and when it's +necessary, or when and if it seems right to do so, I'll put all my +cards on the table. But when I do, I'll see that it's a full hand--if +I can." + +There was a silence for a moment after he had ended, then some one +said: + +"You think it's best that you should go? You want to go to +Johannesburg?" + +"I didn't say anything about wanting to go. I said I'd go because one +of us--or two of us--ought to go. There's plenty to do here; but if I +can be any more use out there, why, Wallstein can stay here, and--" + +He got no further, for Wallstein, to whom he had just referred, and +who had been sitting strangely impassive, with his eyes approvingly +fixed on Byng, half rose from his chair and fell forward, his thick, +white hands sprawling on the mahogany table, his fat, pale face +striking the polished wood with a thud. In an instant they were all on +their feet and at his side. + +Barry Whalen lifted up his head and drew him back into the chair, then +three of them lifted him upon a sofa. Barry's hand felt the breast of +the prostrate figure, and Byng's fingers sought his wrist. For a +moment there was a dreadful silence, and then Byng and Whalen looked +at each other and nodded. + +"Brandy!" said Byng, peremptorily. + +"He's not dead?" whispered some one. + +"Brandy--quick," urged Byng, and, lifting up the head a little, he +presently caught the glass from Whalen's hand and poured some brandy +slowly between the bluish lips. "Some one ring for Krool," he added. + +A moment later Krool entered. "The doctor--my doctor and his own--and +a couple of nurses," Byng said, sharply, and Krool nodded and +vanished. "Perhaps it's only a slight heart-attack, but it's best to +be on the safe side." + +"Anyhow, it shows that Wallstein needs to let up for a while," +whispered Fleming. + +"It means that some one must do Wallstein's work here," said Barry +Whalen. "It means that Byng stays in London," he added, as Krool +entered the room again with a rug to cover Wallstein. + +Barry saw Krool's eyes droop before his words, and he was sure that +the servant had reasons for wishing his master to go to South +Africa. The others present, however, only saw a silent, magically +adept figure stooping over the sick man, adjusting the body to greater +ease, arranging skilfully the cushion under the head, loosening and +removing the collar and the boots, and taking possession of the room, +as though he himself were the doctor; while Byng looked on with +satisfaction. + +"Useful person, eh?" he said, meaningly, in an undertone to Barry +Whalen. + +"I don't think he's at home in England," rejoined Barry, as meaningly +and very stubbornly: "He won't like your not going to South Africa." + +"Am I not going to South Africa?" Byng asked, mechanically, and +looking reflectively at Krool. + +"Wallstein's a sick man, Byng. You can't leave London. You're the only +real politician among us. Some one else must go to Johannesburg." + +"You--Barry?" + +"You know I can't, Byng--there's my girl. Besides, I don't carry +enough weight, anyhow, and you know that too." + +Byng remembered Whalen's girl--stricken down with consumption a few +months before. He caught Whalen's arm in a grip of friendship. "All +right, dear old man," he said, kindly. "Fleming shall go, and I'll +stay. Yes, I'll stay here, and do Wallstein's work." + +He was still mechanically watching Krool attend to the sick man, and +he was suddenly conscious of an arrest of all motion in the +half-caste's lithe frame. Then Krool turned, and their eyes met. Had +he drawn Krool's eyes to his--the master-mind influencing the +subservient intelligence? + +"Krool wants to go to South Africa," he said to himself with a +strange, new sensation which he did not understand, though it was not +quite a doubt. He reassured himself. "Well, it's natural he +should. It's his home.... But Fleming must go to Johannesburg. I'm +needed most here." + +There was gratitude in his heart that Fate had decreed it so. He was +conscious of the perfume from Jasmine's cloak searching his senses, +even in this hour when these things that mattered--the things of +Fate--were so enormously awry. + + + +CHAPTER V + +A WOMAN TELLS HER STORY + + +"Soon he will speak you. Wait here, madame." + +Krool passed almost stealthily out. + +Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat +incongruous furnishing--leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins +from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape +Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical +subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the +walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little +roulette-table. It was a strange medley, in keeping, perhaps, with the +incongruously furnished mind of the master of it all; it was +expressive of tastes and habits not yet settled and consistent. + +Al'mah's eyes had taken it all in rather wistfully, while she had +waited for Krool's return from his master; but the wistfulness was due +to personal trouble, for her eyes were clouded and her motions +languid. But when she saw the banjo, the cornet, and the +roulette-table, a deep little laugh rose to her full red lips. + +"How like a subaltern, or a colonial civil servant!" she said to +herself. + +She reflected a moment, then pursued the thought further: "But there +must be bigness in him, as well as presence of mind and depth of +heart--yes, I'm sure his nature is deep." + +She remembered the quick, protecting hands which had wrapped her round +with Jasmine Grenfel's cloak, and the great arms in which she had +rested, the danger over. + +"There can't be much wrong with a nature like his, though Adrian hates +him so. But, of course, Adrian would. Besides, Adrian will never get +over the drop in the mining-stock which ruined him--Rudyard Byng's +mine.... It's natural for Adrian to hate him, I suppose," she added +with a heavy sigh. + +Mentally she took to comparing this room with Adrian Fellowes' +sitting-room overlooking the Thames Embankment, where everything was +in perfect taste and order, where all was modulated, harmonious, +soigne and artistic. Yet, somehow, the handsome chambers which hung +over the muddy river with its wonderful lights and shades, its mists +and radiance, its ghostly softness and greyness, lacked in something +that roused imagination, that stirred her senses here--the vital being +in her. + +It was power, force, experience, adventure. They were all here. She +knew the signs: the varied interests, the primary emotions, music, +art, hunting, prospecting, fighting, gambling. They were mixed with +the solid achievement of talent and force in the business of +life. Here was a model of a new mining-drill, with a picture of the +stamps working in the Work-and-Wonder mine, together with a model of +the Kaffir compound at Kimberley, with the busy, teeming life behind +the wire boundaries. + +Thus near was Byng to the ways of a child, she thought, thus near to +the everlasting intelligence and the busy soul of a constructive and +creative Deity--if there was a Deity. Despite the frequent laughter on +her tongue and in her eyes, she doubted bitterly at times that there +was a Deity. For how should happen the awful tragedies which +encompassed men and peoples, if there was a Deity. No benign Deity +could allow His own created humanity to be crushed in bleeding masses, +like the grapes trampled in the vats of a vineyard. Whole cities +swallowed up by earthquake; islands swept of their people by a tidal +wave; a vast ship pierced by an iceberg and going down with its +thousand souls; provinces spread with the vile elements of a plague +which carpeted the land with dead; mines flooded by water or +devastated by fire; the little new-born babe left without the rightful +breast to feed it; the mother and her large family suddenly deprived +of the breadwinner; old men who had lived like saints, giving their +all to their own and to the world, driven to the degradation of the +poorhouse in the end--ah, if one did not smile, one would die of +weeping, she thought. + +Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of +sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an +open hand for the poor and miserable,--now that she could afford +it--and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her +humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man. It was +sometimes too pronounced, however, Adrian Fellowes had said; and +Adrian was an acute observer, who took great pride in her. Was it not +to Adrian she had looked first for approval the night of her triumph +at Covent Garden--why, that was only a few days ago, and it seemed a +hundred days, so much had happened since. It was Adrian's handsome +face which had told her then of the completeness of her triumph. + +The half-caste valet entered again. "Here come, madame," he said with +something very near a smile; for he liked this woman, and his dark, +sensual soul would have approved of his master liking her. + +"Soon the Baas, madame," he said as he placed a chair for her, and +with the gliding footstep of a native left the room. + +"Sunny creature!" she remarked aloud, with a little laugh, and looked +round. Instantly her face lighted with interest. Here was nothing of +that admired disorder, that medley of incongruous things which marked +the room she had just left; but perfect order, precision, and balance +of arrangement, the most peaceful equipoise. There was a great carved +oak-table near to sun-lit windows, and on it were little regiments of +things, carefully arranged--baskets with papers in elastic bands; +classified and inscribed reference-books, scales, clips, pencils; and +in one clear space, with a bunch of violets before it, the photograph +of a woman in a splendid silver frame--a woman of seventy or so, +obviously Rudyard Byng's mother. + +Al'mah's eyes softened. Here was insight into a nature of which the +world knew so little. She looked further. Everywhere were signs of +disciplined hours and careful hands--cabinets with initialed drawers, +shelves filled with books. There is no more impressive and revealing +moment with man or woman than when you stand in a room empty of their +actual presence, but having, in every inch of it, the pervasive +influences of the absent personality. A strange, almost solemn +quietness stole over Al'mah's senses. She had been admitted to the +inner court, not of the man's house, but of his life. Her eyes +travelled on with the gratified reflection that she had been admitted +here. Above the books were rows of sketches--rows of sketches! + +Suddenly, as her eyes rested on them, she turned pale and got to her +feet. They were all sketches of the veld, high and low; of natives; of +bits of Dutch architecture; of the stoep with its Boer farmer and his +vrouw; of a kopje with a dozen horses or a herd of cattle grazing; of +a spruit, or a Kaffir's kraal; of oxen leaning against the disselboom +of a cape-wagon; of a herd of steinboks, or a little colony of +meerkats in the karoo. + +Her hand went to her heart with a gesture of pain, and a little cry of +misery escaped her lips. + +Now there was a quick footstep, and Byng entered with a cordial smile +and an outstretched hand. + +"Well, this is a friendly way to begin the New Year," he said, +cheerily, taking her hand. "You certainly are none the worse for our +little unrehearsed drama the other night. I see by the papers that you +have been repeating your triumph. Please sit down. Do you mind my +having a little toast while we talk? I always have my petit dejeuner +here; and I'm late this morning." + +"You look very tired," she said as she sat down. + +Krool here entered with a tray, placing it on a small table by the big +desk. He was about to pour out the tea, but Byng waved him away. + +"Send this note at once by hand," he said, handing him an envelope. It +was addressed to Jasmine Grenfel. + +"Yes, I'm tired--rather," he added to his guest with a sudden +weariness of manner. "I've had no sleep for three nights--working all +the time, every hour; and in this air of London, which doesn't feed +you, one needs plenty of sleep. You can't play with yourself here as +you can on the high veld, where an hour or two of sleep a day will +do. On-saddle and off-saddle, in-span and outspan, plenty to eat and a +little sleep; and the air does the rest. It has been a worrying time." + +"The Jameson Raid--and all the rest?" + +"Particularly all the rest. I feel easier in my mind about Dr. Jim and +the others. England will demand--so I understand," he added with a +careful look at her, as though he had said too much--"the right to try +Jameson and his filibusters from Matabeleland here in England; but +it's different with the Jo'burgers. They will be arrested--" + +"They have been arrested," she intervened. + +"Oh, is it announced?" he asked without surprise. + +"It was placarded an hour ago," she replied, heavily. + +"Well, I fancied it would be," he remarked. "They'll have a close +squeak. The sympathy of the world is with Kruger--so far." + +"That is what I have come about," she said, with an involuntary and +shrinking glance at the sketches on the walls. + +"What you have come about?" he said, putting down his cup of tea and +looking at her intently." How are you concerned? Where do you come +in?" + +"There is a man--he has been arrested with the others; with Farrar, +Phillips, Hammond, and the rest--" + +"Oh, that's bad! A relative, or--" + +"Not a relative, exactly," she replied in a tone of irony. Rising, she +went over to the wall and touched one of the water-colour sketches. + +"How did you come by these?" she asked. + +"Blantyre's sketches? Well, it's all I ever got for all Blantyre owed +me, and they're not bad. They're lifted out of the life. That's why I +bought them. Also because I liked to think I got something out of +Blantyre; and that he would wish I hadn't. He could paint a bit-- +don't you think so?" + +"He could paint a bit--always," she replied. + +A silence followed. Her back was turned to him, her face was towards +the pictures. + +Presently he spoke, with a little deferential anxiety in the +tone. "Are you interested in Blantyre?" he asked, cautiously. Getting +up, he came over to her. + +"He has been arrested--as I said--with the others." + +"No, you did not say so. So they let Blantyre into the game, did +they?" he asked almost musingly; then, as if recalling what she had +said, he added: "Do you mind telling me exactly what is your interest +in Blantyre?" + +She looked at him straight in the eyes. For a face naturally so full +of humour, hers was strangely dark with stormy feeling now. + +"Yes, I will tell you as much as I can--enough for you to understand," +she answered. + +He drew up a chair to the fire, and she sat down. He nodded at her +encouragingly. Presently she spoke. + +"Well, at twenty-one I was studying hard, and he was painting--" + +"Blantyre?" + +She inclined her head. "He was full of dreams--beautiful, I thought +them; and he was ambitious. Also he could talk quite marvellously." + +"Yes, Blantyre could talk--once," Byng intervened, gently. + +"We were married secretly." + +Byng made a gesture of amazement, and his face became shocked and +grave. "Married! Married! You were married to Blantyre?" + +"At a registry office in Chelsea. One month, only one month it was, +and then he went away to Madeira to paint--'a big commission,' he +said; and he would send for me as soon as he could get money in +hand--certainly in a couple of months. He had taken most of my +half-year's income--I had been left four hundred a year by my mother." + +Byng muttered a malediction under his breath and leaned towards her +sympathetically. + +With an effort she continued. "From Madeira he wrote to tell me he was +going on to South Africa, and would not be home for a year. From South +Africa he wrote saying he was not coming back; that I could divorce +him if I liked. The proof, he said, would be easy; or I needn't +divorce him unless I liked, since no one knew we were married." + +For an instant there was absolute silence, and she sat with her +fingers pressed tight to her eyes. At last she went on, her face +turned away from the great kindly blue eyes bent upon her, from the +face flushed with honourable human sympathy. + +"I went into the country, where I stayed for nearly three years, +till--till I could bear it no longer; and then I began to study and +sing again." + +"What were you doing in the country?" he asked in a low voice. + +"There was my baby," she replied, her hands clasping and unclasping in +pain. "There was my little Nydia." + +"A child--she is living?" he asked gently. + +"No, she died two years ago," was the answer in a voice which tried to +be firm. + +"Does Blantyre know?" + +"He knew she was born, nothing more." + +"We were married secretly." + +"And after all he has done, and left undone, you want to try and save +him now?" + +He was thinking that she still loved the man. "That offscouring!" he +said to himself. "Well, women beat all! He treats her like a +Patagonian; leaves her to drift with his child not yet born; rakes the +hutches of the towns and the kraals of the veld for women--always +women, black or white, it didn't matter; and yet, by gad, she wants +him back!" + +She seemed to understand what was passing in his mind. Rising, with a +bitter laugh which he long remembered, she looked at him for a moment +in silence, then she spoke, her voice shaking with scorn: + +"You think it is love for him that prompts me now?" Her eyes blazed, +but there was a contemptuous laugh at her lips, and she nervously +pulled at the tails of her sable muff. "You are wrong--absolutely. I +would rather bury myself in the mud of the Thames than let him touch +me. Oh, I know what his life must have been--the life of him that you +know! With him it would either be the sewer or the sycamore-tree of +Zaccheus; either the little upper chamber among the saints or eating +husks with the swine. I realize him now. He was easily susceptible to +good and evil, to the clean and the unclean; and he might have been +kept in order by some one who would give a life to building up his +character; but his nature was rickety, and he has gone down and not +up." + +"Then why try to save him? Let Oom Paul have him. He'll do no more +harm, if--" + +"Wait a minute," she urged. "You are a great man"--she came close to +him--"and you ought to understand what I mean, without my saying it. I +want to save him for his own sake, not for mine--to give him a +chance. While there's life there's hope. To go as he is, with the mud +up to his lips--ah, can't you see! He is the father of my dead +child. I like to feel that he may make some thing of his life and of +himself yet. That's why I haven't tried to divorce him, and--" + +"If you ever want to do so--" he interrupted, meaningly. + +"Yes, I know. I have always been sure that nothing could be quite so +easy; but I waited, on the chance of something getting hold of him +which would lift him out of himself, give him something to think of so +much greater than himself, some cause, perhaps--" + +"He had you and your unborn child," he intervened. + +"Me--!" She laughed bitterly. "I don't think men would ever be better +because of me. I've never seen that. I've seen them show the worst of +human nature because of me--and it wasn't inspiring. I've not met many +men who weren't on the low levels." + +"He hasn't stood his trial for the Johannesburg conspiracy yet. How do +you propose to help him? He is in real danger of his life." + +She laughed coldly, and looked at him with keen, searching eyes. "You +ask that, you who know that in the armory of life there's one +all-powerful weapon?" + +He nodded his head whimsically. "Money? Well, whatever other weapons +you have, you must have that, I admit. And in the Transvaal--" + +"Then here," she said, handing him an envelope--"here is what may +help." + +He took it hesitatingly. "I warn you," he remarked, "that if money is +to be used at all, it must be a great deal. Kruger will put up the +price to the full capacity of the victim." + +"I suppose this victim has nothing," she ventured, quietly. + +"Nothing but what the others give him, I should think. It may be a +very costly business, even if it is possible, and you--" + +"I have twenty thousand pounds," she said. + +"Earned by your voice?" he asked, kindly. + +"Every penny of it." + +"Well, I wouldn't waste it on Blantyre, if I were you. No, by Heaven, +you shall not do it, even if it can be done! It is too horrible." + +"I owe it to myself to do it. After all, he is still my husband. I +have let it be so; and while it is so, and while"--her eyes looked +away, her face suffused slightly, her lips tightened--"while things +are as they are, I am bound--bound by something, I don't know what, +but it is not love, and it is not friendship--to come to his +rescue. There will be legal expenses--" + +Byng frowned. "Yes, but the others wouldn't see him in a hole--yet I'm +not sure, either, Blantyre being Blantyre. In any case, I'm ready to +do anything you wish." + +She smiled gratefully. "Did you ever know any one to do a favor who +wasn't asked to repeat it--paying one debt by contracting another, +finding a creditor who will trust, and trading on his trust? Yet I'd +rather owe you two debts than most men one." She held out her hand to +him. "Well, it doesn't do to mope--'The merry heart goes all the day, +the sad one tires in a mile-a.' And I am out for all day. Please wish +me a happy new year." + +He took her hand in both of his. "I wish you to go through this year +as you ended the last--in a blaze of glory." + +"Yes, really a blaze if not of glory," she said, with bright tears, +yet laughing, too, a big warm humour shining in her strong face with +the dark brown eyes and the thick, heavy eyebrows under a low, broad +forehead like his own. They were indeed strangely alike in many ways +both of mind and body. + +"They say we end the year as we begin it," he said, cheerily. "You +proved to Destiny that you were entitled to all she could give in the +old year, and you shall have the best that's to be had in 1897. You +are a woman in a million, and--" + +"May I come and breakfast with you some morning?" she asked, gaily. + +"Well, if ever I'm thought worthy of that honour, don't hesitate. As +the Spanish say, It is all yours." He waved a hand to the +surroundings. + +"No, it is all yours," she said, reflectively, her eyes slowly roaming +about her. "It is all you. I'm glad to have been here, to be as near +as this to your real life. Real life is so comforting after the mock +kind so many of us live; which singers and actors live anyhow." + +She looked round the room again. "I feel--I don't know why it is, but +I feel that when I'm in trouble I shall always want to come to this +room. Yes, and I will surely come; for I know there's much trouble in +store for me. You must let me come. You are the only man I would go to +like this, and you can't think what it means to me--to feel that I'm +not misunderstood, and that it seems absolutely right to come. That's +because any woman could trust you--as I do. Good-bye." + +In another moment she had gone, and he stood beside the table with the +envelope she had left with him. Presently he opened it, and unfolded +the cheque which was in it. Then he gave an exclamation of +astonishment. + +"Seven thousand pounds!" he exclaimed. "That's a better estimate of +Krugerism than I thought she had. It'll take much more than that, +though, if it's done at all; but she certainly has sense. It's seven +thousand times too much for Blantyre," he added, with an exclamation +of disgust. "Blantyre--that outsider!" Then he fell to thinking of all +she had told him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" he said aloud. "But she must +not come here, just the same. She doesn't see that it's not the thing, +just because she thinks I'm a Sir Galahad--me!" He glanced at the +picture of his mother, and nodded toward it tenderly. "So did she +always. I might have turned Kurd and robbed caravans, or become a Turk +and kept concubines, and she'd never have seen that it was so. But +Al'mah mustn't come here any more, for her own sake.... I'd find it +hard to explain if ever, by any chance--" + +He fell to thinking of Jasmine, and looked at the clock. It was only +ten, and he would not see Jasmine till six; but if he had gone to +South Africa he would not have seen her at all! Fate and Wallstein had +been kind. + +Presently, as he went to the hall to put on his coat and hat to go +out, he met Barry Whalen. Barry looked at him curiously; then, as +though satisfied, he said: "Early morning visitor, eh? I just met her +coming away. Card of thanks for kind services au theatre, eh?" + +"Well, it isn't any business of yours what it is, Barry," came the +reply in tones which congealed. + +"No, perhaps not," answered his visitor, testily, for he had had a +night of much excitement, and, after all, this was no way to speak to +a friend, to a partner who had followed his lead always. Friendship +should be allowed some latitude, and he had said hundreds of things +less carefully to Byng in the past. The past--he was suddenly +conscious that Byng had changed within the past few days, and that he +seemed to have put restraint on himself. Well, he would get back at +him just the same for the snub. + +"It's none of my business," he retorted, "but it's a good deal of +Adrian Fellowes' business--" + +"What is a good deal of Adrian Fellowes' business?" + +"Al'mah coming to your rooms. Fellowes is her man. Going to marry her, +I suppose," he added, cynically. + +Byng's jaw set and his eyes became cold. "Still, I'd suggest your +minding your own business, Barry. Your tongue will get you into +trouble some day.... You've seen Wallstein this morning--and Fleming?" + +Barry replied sullenly, and the day's pressing work began, with the +wires busy under the seas. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WITHIN THE POWER-HOUSE + + +At a few moments before six o'clock Byng was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room. As he entered, the man who sat at the end of the front +row of stalls the first night of "Manassa" rose to his feet. It was +Adrian Fellowes, slim, well groomed, with the colour of an apple in +his cheeks, and his gold-brown hair waving harmoniously over his +unintellectual head. + +"But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I've ever known," Jasmine +was saying as Byng entered. + +Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she +pretended not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that +Byng heard them as he came forward. + +"Well, he is selfish," she added to Byng, as she shook hands. "I've +known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of +everything and given nothing for it." Turning again to Fellowes, she +continued: "Yes, it's true. The golden apples just fall into your +hands." + +"Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation," +Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an +enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room. + +"Such a boy--Adrian," Jasmine said, as they sat down. + +"Boy--he looks thirty or more!" remarked Byng in a dry tone. + +"He is just thirty. I call him a boy because he is so young +in most things that matter to people. He is the most sumptuous +person--entirely a luxury. Did you ever see such colouring--like a +woman's! But selfish, as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian. Yes, he +really is very useful. He would be a private secretary beyond price to +any one who needed such an article. He has tact--as you saw--and would +make a wonderful master of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the +household and equerry and lord-chamberlain in one. There, if ever you +want such a person, or if--" + +She paused. As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast +between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance. Byng's +clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who +knew their man was not particular, and that he would not "try on." The +result was a looseness and carelessness of good things--giving him, in +a way, the look of shambling power. Yet in spite of the tie a little +crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had +touches of that distinction which power gives. His large hands with +the square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not +common. + +"Certainly," he intervened, smiling indulgently; "if ever I want a +comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I'll remember +'Adrian.' In these days one can never tell. There's the Sahara. It +hasn't been exploited yet. It has no emperor." + +"I like you in this mood," she said, eagerly. "You seem on the surface +so tremendously practical and sensible. You frighten me a little, and +I like to hear you touch things off with raillery. But, seriously, if +you can ever put anything in that boy's way, please do so. He has had +bad luck--in your own Rand mine. He lost nearly everything in that, +speculating, and--" + +Byng's face grew serious again. "But he shouldn't have speculated; he +should have invested. It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth +to speculate. But I will remember him, if you say so. I don't like to +think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine. I'll keep him +in mind. Make him one of my secretaries perhaps." + +Then Barry Whalen's gossip suddenly came to his mind, and he added: +"Fellowes will want to get married some day. That face and manner will +lead him into ways from which there's only one outlet." + +"Matrimony?" She laughed. "Oh dear, no, Adrian is much too selfish to +marry." + +"I thought that selfishness was one of the elements of successful +marriages. I've been told so." + +A curious look stole into her eyes. All at once she wondered if his +words had any hidden meaning, and she felt angrily self-conscious; but +she instantly put the reflection away, for if ever any man travelled +by the straight Roman road of speech and thought, it was he. He had +only been dealing in somewhat obvious worldly wisdom. + +"You ought not to give encouragement to such ideas by repeating them," +she rejoined with raillery. "This is an age of telepathy and +suggestion, and the more silent we are the safer we are. Now, please, +tell me everything--of the inside, I mean--about Cecil Rhodes and the +Raiders. Is Rhodes overwhelmed? And Mr. Chamberlain--you have seen +him? The papers say you have spent many hours at the Colonial +Office. I suppose you were with him at six o'clock last evening, +instead of being here with me, as you promised." + +He shook his head. "Rhodes? The bigger a man is the greater the crash +when he falls; and no big man falls alone." + +She nodded. "There's the sense of power, too, which made everything +vibrate with energy, which gave a sense of great empty places +filled--of that power withdrawn and collapsed. Even the bad great man +gone leaves a sense of desolation behind. Power--power, that is the +thing of all," she said, her eyes shining and her small fingers +interlacing with eager vitality: "power to set waves of influence in +motion which stir the waters on distant shores. That seems to me the +most wonderful thing." + +Her vitality, her own sense of power, seemed almost incongruous. She +was so delicately made, so much the dresden-china shepherdess, that +intensity seemed out of relation to her nature. Yet the tiny hands +playing before her with natural gestures like those of a child had, +too, a decision and a firmness in keeping with the perfectly modelled +head and the courageous poise of the body. There was something regnant +in her, while, too, there was something sumptuous and sensuous and +physically thrilling to the senses. To-day she was dressed in an +exquisite blue gown, devoid of all decoration save a little chinchilla +fur, which only added to its softness and richness. She wore no +jewelry whatever except a sapphire brooch, and her hair shone and +waved like gossamer in the sun. + +"Well, I don't know," he rejoined, admiration unbounded in his eyes +for the picture she was of maidenly charm and womanly beauty, "I +should say that goodness was a more wonderful thing. But power is the +most common ambition, and only a handful of the hundreds of millions +get it in any large way. I used to feel it tremendously when I first +heard the stamps pounding the quartz in the mills on the Rand. You +never heard that sound? In the clear height of that plateau the air +reverberates greatly; and there's nothing on earth which so much gives +a sense of power--power that crushes--as the stamps of a great mine +pounding away night and day. There they go, thundering on, till it +seems to you that some unearthly power is hammering the world into +shape. You get up and go to the window and look out into the +night. There's the deep blue sky--blue like nothing you ever saw in +any other sky, and the stars so bright and big, and so near, that you +feel you could reach up and pluck one with your hand; and just over +the little hill are the lights of the stamp-mills, the smoke and the +mad red flare, the roar of great hammers as they crush, crush, crush; +while the vibration of the earth makes you feel that you are living in +a world of Titans." + +"And when it all stops?" she asked, almost breathlessly. "When the +stamps pound no more, and the power is withdrawn? It is empty and +desolate--and frightening?" + +"It is anything you like. If all the mills all at once, with the +thousands of stamps on the Rand reef, were to stop suddenly, and the +smoke and the red flare were to die, it would be frightening in more +ways than one. But I see what you mean. There might be a sense of +peace, but the minds and bodies which had been vibrating with the stir +of power would feel that the soul had gone out of things, and they +would dwindle too." + +"If Rhodes should fall, if the stamps on the Rand should cease--?" + +He got to his feet. "Either is possible, maybe probable; and I don't +want to think of it. As you say, there'd be a ghastly sense of +emptiness and a deadly kind of peace." He smiled bitterly. + +She rose now also, and fingering some flowers in a vase, arranging +them afresh, said: "Well, this Jameson Raid, if it is proved that +Cecil Rhodes is mixed up in it, will it injure you greatly--I mean +your practical interests?" + +He stood musing for a moment. "It's difficult to say at this +distance. One must be on the spot to make a proper estimate. Anything +may happen." + +She was evidently anxious to ask him a question, but hesitated. At +last she ventured, and her breath came a little shorter as she spoke. + +"I suppose you wish you were in South Africa now. You could do so much +to straighten things out, to prevent the worst. The papers say you +have a political mind--the statesman's intelligence, the Times +said. That letter you wrote, that speech you made at the Chamber of +Commerce dinner--" + +She watched him, dreading what his answer might be. There was silence +for a moment, then he answered: "Fleming is going to South Africa, not +myself. I stay here to do Wallstein's work. I was going, but Wallstein +was taken ill suddenly. So I stay--I stay." + +She sank down in her chair, going a little pale from excitement. The +whiteness of her skin gave a delicate beauty to the faint rose of her +cheeks--that rose-pink which never was to fade entirely from her face +while life was left to her. + +"If it had been necessary, when would you have gone?" she asked. + +"At once. Fleming goes to-morrow," he added. + +She looked slowly up at him. "Wallstein is a new name for a special +Providence," she murmured, and the colour came back to her face. "We +need you here. We--" + +Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind and suffused his face. He was +conscious of that perfume which clung to whatever she touched. It +stole to his senses and intoxicated them. He looked at her with +enamoured eyes. He had the heart of a boy, the impulsiveness of a +nature which had been unschooled in women's ways. Weaknesses in other +directions had taught him much, but experiences with her sex had been +few. The designs of other women had been patent to him, and he had +been invincible to all attack; but here was a girl who, with her +friendly little fortune and her beauty, could marry with no +difficulty; who, he had heard, could pick and choose, and had so far +rejected all comers; and who, if she had shown preference at all, had +shown it for a poor man like Ian Stafford. She had courage and +simplicity and a downright mind; that was clear. And she was +capable. She had a love for big things, for the things that +mattered. Every word she had ever said to him had understanding, not +of the world alone, and of life, but of himself, Rudyard Byng. She +grasped exactly what he would say, and made him say things he would +never have thought of saying to any one else. She drew him out, made +the most of him, made him think. Other women only tried to make him +feel. If he had had a girl like this beside him during the last ten +years, how many wasted hours would have been saved, how many bottles +of champagne would not have been opened, how many wild nights would +have been spent differently! + +Too good, too fine for him--yes, a hundred times, but he would try to +make it up to her, if such a girl as this could endure him. He was not +handsome, he was not clever, so he said to himself, but he had a +little power. That he had to some degree rough power, of course, but +power; and she loved power, force. Had she not said so, shown it, but +a moment before? Was it possible that she was really interested in +him, perhaps because he was different from the average Englishman and +not of a general pattern? She was a woman of brains, of great +individuality, and his own individuality might influence her. It was +too good to be true; but there had ever been something of the gambler +in him, and he had always plunged. If he ever had a conviction he +acted on it instantly, staked everything, when that conviction got +into his inner being. It was not, perhaps, a good way, and it had +failed often enough; but it was his way, and he had done according to +the light and the impulse that were in him. He had no diplomacy, he +had only purpose. + +He came over to her. "If I had gone to South Africa would you have +remembered my name for a month?" he asked with determination and +meaning. + +"My friends never suffer lunar eclipse," she answered, gaily. "Dear +sir, I am called Hold-Fast. My friends are century-flowers and are +always blooming." + +"You count me among your friends?" + +"I hope so. You will let me make all England envious of me, won't you? +I never did you any harm, and I do want to have a hero in my tiny +circle." + +"A hero--you mean me? Well, I begin to think I have some courage when +I ask you to let me inside your 'tiny' circle. I suppose most people +would think it audacity, not courage." + +"You seem not to be aware what an important person you are--how almost +sensationally important. Why, I am only a pebble on a shore like +yours, a little unknown slip of a girl who babbles, and babbles in +vain." + +She got to her feet now. "Oh, but believe me, believe me," she said, +with sweet and sudden earnestness, "I am prouder than I can say that +you will let me be a friend of yours! I like men who have done things, +who do things. My grandfather did big, world-wide things, and--" + +"Yes, I know; I met your grandfather once. He was a big man, big as +can be. He had the world by the ear always." + +"He spoiled me for the commonplace," she replied. "If I had lived in +Pizarro's time, I'd have gone to Peru with him, the splendid robber." + +He answered with the eager frankness and humour of a boy. "If you mean +to be a friend of mine, there are those who will think that in one way +you have fulfilled your ambition, for they say I've spoiled the +Peruvians, too." + +"I like you when you say things like that," she murmured. "If you said +them often--" + +She looked at him archly, and her eyes brimmed with amusement and +excitement. + +Suddenly he caught both her hands in his and his eyes burned. "Will +you--" + +He paused. His courage forsook him. Boldness had its limit. He feared +a repulse which could never be overcome. "Will you, and all of you +here, come down to my place in Wales next week?" he blundered out. + +She was glad he had faltered. It was too bewildering. She dared not +yet face the question she had seen he was about to ask. Power--yes, he +could give her that; but power was the craving of an ambitious +soul. There were other things. There was the desire of the heart, the +longing which came with music and the whispering trees and the bright +stars, the girlish dreams of ardent love and the garlands of youth and +joy--and Ian Stafford. + +Suddenly she drew herself together. She was conscious that the servant +was entering the room with a letter. + +"The messenger is waiting," the servant said. + +With an apology she opened the note slowly as Byng turned to the +fire. She read the page with a strange, tense look, closing her eyes +at last with a slight sense of dizziness. Then she said to the +servant: + +"Tell the messenger to wait. I will write an answer." + +"I am sure we shall be glad to go to you in Wales next week," she +added, turning to Byng again. "But won't you be far away from the +centre of things in Wales?" + +"I've had the telegraph and a private telephone wire to London put +in. I shall be as near the centre as though I lived in Grosvenor +Square; and there are always special trains." + +"Special trains--oh, but it's wonderful to have power to do things +like that! When do you go down?" she asked. + +"To-morrow morning." + +She smiled radiantly. She saw that he was angry with himself for his +cowardice just now, and she tried to restore him. "Please, will you +telephone me when you arrive at your castle? I should like the +experience of telephoning by private wire to Wales." + +He brightened. "Certainly, if you really wish it. I shall arrive at +ten to-morrow night, and I'll telephone you at eleven." + +"Splendid--splendid! I'll be alone in my room then. I've got a +telephone instrument there, and so we could say good-night." + +"So we can say good-night," he repeated in a low voice, and he held +out his hand in good-bye. When he had gone, with a new, great hope in +his heart, she sat down and tremblingly re-opened the note she had +received a moment before. + +"I am going abroad" it read--"to Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and +St. Petersburg. I think I've got my chance at last. I want to see you +before I go--this evening, Jasmine. May I?" + +It was signed "Ian." + +"Fate is stronger than we are," she murmured; "and Fate is not kind to +you, Ian," she added, wearily, a wan look coming into her face. + +"Mio destino," she said at last--"mio destino!" But who was her +destiny--which of the two who loved her? + + + + +BOOK II + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THREE YEARS LATER + + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about Kruger an' his guns!" + +The shrill, acrid cry rang down St. James's Street, and a newsboy with +a bunch of pink papers under his arm shot hither and thither on the +pavement, offering his sensational wares to all he met. + +"Extra speshul--extra speshul--all about the war wot's comin'--all +about Kruger's guns!" + +From an open window on the second floor of a building in the street a +man's head was thrust out, listening. + +"The war wot's comin'!" he repeated, with a bitter sort of smile. "And +all about Kruger's guns. So it is coming, is it, Johnny Bull; and you +do know all about his guns, do you? If it is, and you do know, then a +shattering big thing is coming, and you know quite a lot, Johnny +Bull." + +He hummed to himself an impromptu refrain to an impromptu tune: + + + +"Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull, Johnny Bull, +Then you know quite a lot, Johnny Bull!" + + +Stepping out of the French window upon a balcony now, he looked down +the street. The newsboy was almost below. He whistled, and the lad +looked up. In response to a beckoning finger the gutter-snipe took the +doorway and the staircase at a bound. Like all his kind, he was a good +judge of character, and one glance had assured him that he was +speeding upon a visit of profit. Half a postman's knock--a sharp, +insistent stroke--and he entered, his thin weasel-like face thrust +forward, his eyes glittering. The fire in such eyes is always cold, +for hunger is poor fuel to the native flame of life. + +"Extra speshul, m'lord--all about Kruger's guns." + +He held out the paper to the figure that darkened the window, and he +pronounced the g in Kruger soft, as in Scrooge. + +The hand that took the paper deftly slipped a shilling into the cold, +skinny palm. At its first touch the face of the paper-vender fell, for +it was the same size as a halfpenny; but even before the swift fingers +had had a chance to feel the coin, or the glance went down, the face +regained its confidence, for the eyes looking at him were generous. He +had looked at so many faces in his brief day that he was an expert +observer. + +"Thank y' kindly," he said; then, as the fingers made assurance of the +fortune which had come to him, "Ow, thank ye werry much, y'r gryce," +he added. + +Something alert and determined in the face of the boy struck the giver +of the coin as he opened the paper to glance at its contents, and he +paused to scan him more closely. He saw the hunger in the lad's eyes +as they swept over the breakfast-table, still heavy with uneaten +breakfast--bacon, nearly the whole of an omelette, and rolls, toast, +marmalade and honey. + +"Wait a second," he said, as the boy turned toward the door. + +"Yes, y'r gryce." + +"Had your breakfast?" + +"I has me brekfist w'en I sells me pypers." The lad hugged the +remaining papers closer under his arms, and kept his face turned +resolutely away from the inviting table. His host correctly +interpreted the action. + +"Poor little devil--grit, pure grit!" he said under his breath. "How +many papers have you got left?" he asked. + +The lad counted like lightning. "Ten," he answered. "I'll soon get 'em +off now. Luck's wiv me dis mornin'." The ghost of a smile lighted his +face. + +"I'll take them all," the other said, handing over a second shilling. + +The lad fumbled for change and the fumbling was due to honest +agitation. He was not used to this kind of treatment. + +"No, that's all right," the other interposed. + +"But they're only a h'ypenny," urged the lad, for his natural cupidity +had given way to a certain fine faculty not too common in any grade of +human society. + +"Well, I'm buying them at a penny this morning. I've got some friends +who'll be glad to give a penny to know all about Kruger's guns." He +too softened the g in Kruger in consideration of his visitor's +idiosyncrasies. + +"You won't be mykin' anythink on them, y'r gryce," said the lad with a +humour which opened the doors of Ian Stafford's heart wide; for to him +heaven itself would be insupportable if it had no humorists. + +"I'll get at them in other ways," Stafford rejoined. "I'll get my +profit, never fear. Now what about breakfast? You've sold all your +papers, you know." + +"I'm fair ready for it, y'r gryce," was the reply, and now the lad's +glance went eagerly towards the door, for the tension of labour was +relaxed, and hunger was scraping hard at his vitals. + +"Well, sit down--this breakfast isn't cold yet.... But, no, you'd +better have a wash-up first, if you can wait," Stafford added, and +rang a bell. + +"Wot, 'ere--brekfist wiv y'r gryce 'ere?" + +"Well, I've had mine"--Stafford made a slight grimace--" and there's +plenty left for you, if you don't mind eating after me." + +"I dusted me clothes dis mornin'," said the boy, with an attempt to +justify his decision to eat this noble breakfast. "An' I washed me +'ends--but pypers is muck," he added. + +A moment later he was in the fingers of Gleg the valet in the +bath-room, and Stafford set to work to make the breakfast piping hot +again. It was an easy task, as heaters were inseparable from his +bachelor meals, and, though this was only the second breakfast he had +eaten since his return to England after three years' absence, +everything was in order. + +For Gleg was still more the child of habit--and decorous habit--than +himself. It was not the first time that Gleg had had to deal with his +master's philanthropic activities. Much as he disapproved of them, he +could discriminate; and there was that about the newsboy which somehow +disarmed him. He went so far as to heap the plate of the lad, and +would have poured the coffee too, but that his master took the pot +from his hand and with a nod and a smile dismissed him; and his +master's smile was worth a good deal to Gleg. It was an exacting if +well-paid service, for Ian Stafford was the most particular man in +Europe, and he had grown excessively so during the past three years, +which, as Gleg observed, had brought great, if quiet, changes in +him. He had grown more studious, more watchful, more exclusive in his +daily life, and ladies of all kinds he had banished from direct +personal share in his life. There were no more little tea-parties and +dejeuners chez lui, duly chaperoned by some gracious cousin or +aunt--for there was no embassy in Europe where he had not relatives. + +"'Ipped--a bit 'ipped. 'E 'as found 'em out, the 'uzzies," Gleg had +observed; for he had decided that the general cause of the change in +his master was Woman, though he did not know the particular woman who +had 'ipped him. + +As the lad ate his wonderful breakfast, in which nearly half a pot of +marmalade and enough butter for three ordinary people figured, +Stafford read the papers attentively, to give his guest a fair chance +at the food and to overcome his self-consciousness. He got an +occasional glance at the trencherman, however, as he changed the +sheets, stepped across the room to get a cigarette, or poked the small +fire--for, late September as it was, a sudden cold week of rain had +come and gone, leaving the air raw; and a fire was welcome. + +At last, when he realized that the activities of the table were +decreasing, he put down his paper. "Is it all right?" he asked. "Is +the coffee hot?" + +"I ain't never 'ad a meal like that, y'r gryce, not never any time," +the boy answered, with a new sort of fire in his eyes. + +"Was there enough?" + +"I've left some," answered his guest, looking at the jar of marmalade +and half a slice of toast. "I likes the coffee hot--tykes y'r longer +to drink it," he added. + +Ian Stafford chuckled. He was getting more than the worth of his +money. He had nibbled at his own breakfast, with the perturbations of +a crossing from Flushing still in his system, and its equilibrium not +fully restored; and yet, with the waste of his own meal and the +neglect of his own appetite, he had given a great and happy half-hour +to a waif of humanity. + +As he looked at the boy he wondered how many thousands there were like +him within rifle-shot from where he sat, and he thought each of them +would thank whatever gods they knew for such a neglected meal. The +words from the scare-column of the paper he held smote his sight: + +"War Inevitable--Transvaal Bristling with Guns and Loaded to the +Nozzle with War Stores--Milner and Kruger No Nearer a Settlement-- +Sullen and Contemptuous Treatment of British Outlander." +. . . And so on. + +And if war came, if England must do this ugly thing, fulfil her bitter +and terrible task, then what about such as this young outlander here, +this outcast from home and goodly toil and civilized conditions, this +sickly froth of the muddy and dolorous stream of lower England? So +much withdrawn from the sources of the possible relief, so much less +with which to deal with their miseries--perhaps hundreds of millions, +mopped up by the parched and unproductive soil of battle and disease +and loss. + +He glanced at the paper again. "Britons Hold Your Own," was the +heading of the chief article. "Yes, we must hold our own," he said, +aloud, with a sigh. "If it comes, we must see it through; but the +breakfasts will be fewer. It works down one way or another--it all +works down to this poor little devil and his kind." + +"Now, what's your name?" he asked. + +"Jigger," was the reply. + +"What else?" + +"Nothin', y'r gryce." + +"Jigger--what?" + +"It's the only nyme I got," was the reply. + +"What's your father's or your mother's name?" + +"I ain't got none. I only got a sister." + +"What's her name?" + +"Lou," he answered." That's her real name. But she got a fancy name +yistiddy. She was took on at the opera yistiddy, to sing with a +hunderd uvver girls on the styge. She's Lulu Luckingham now." + +"Oh--Luckingham!" said Stafford, with a smile, for this was a name of +his own family, and of much account in circles he frequented. "And who +gave her that name? Who were her godfathers and godmothers?" + +"I dunno, y'r gryce. There wasn't no religion in it. They said she'd +have to be called somefink, and so they called her that. Lou was +always plenty for 'er till she went there yistiddy." + +"What did she do before yesterday?" + +"Sold flowers w'en she could get 'em to sell. 'Twas when she couldn't +sell her flowers that she piped up sort of dead wild--for she 'adn't +'ad nothin' to eat, an' she was fair crusty. It was then a gentleman, +'e 'eard 'er singin' hot, an' he says, 'That's good enough for a +start,' 'e says, 'an' you come wiv me,' he says. 'Not much,' Lou says, +'not if I knows it. I seed your kind frequent.' But 'e stuck to it, +an' says, 'It's stryght, an' a lydy will come for you to-morrer, if +you'll be 'ere on this spot, or tell me w'ere you can be found.' An' +Lou says, says she, 'You buy my flowers, so's I kin git me +bread-baskit full, an' then I'll think it over.' An' he bought 'er +flowers, an' give 'er five bob. An' Lou paid rent for both of us wiv +that, an' 'ad brekfist; an' sure enough the lydy come next dy an' took +her off. She's in the opery now, an' she'll 'ave 'er brekfist +reg'lar. I seed the lydy meself. Her picture 's on the 'oardings--" + +Suddenly he stopped. "W'y, that's 'er--that's 'er!" he said, pointing +to the mantel-piece. + +Stafford followed the finger and the glance. It was Al'mah's portrait +in the costume she had worn over three years ago, the night when +Rudyard Byng had rescued her from the flames. He had bought it +then. It had been unpacked again by Gleg, and put in the place it had +occupied for a day or two before he had gone out of England to do his +country's work--and to face the bitterest disillusion of his life; to +meet the heaviest blow his pride and his heart had ever known. + +"So that's the lady, is it?" he said, musingly, to the boy, who nodded +assent. + +"Go and have a good look at it," urged Stafford. + +The boy did so. "It's 'er--done up for the opery," he declared. + +"Well, Lulu Luckingham is all right, then. That lady will be good to +her." + +"Right. As soon as I seed her, I whispers to Lou 'You keep close to +that there wall,' I sez. 'There's a chimbey in it, an' you'll never be +cold,' I says to Lou." + +Stafford laughed softly at the illustration. Many a time the lad +snuggled up to a wall which had a warm chimney, and he had got his +figure of speech from real life. + +"Well, what's to become of you?" Stafford asked. + +"Me--I'll be level wiv me rent to-day," he answered, turning over the +two shillings and some coppers in his pocket; "an' Lou and me's got a +fair start." + +Stafford got up, came over, and laid a hand on the boy's +shoulder. "I'm going to give you a sovereign," he said--"twenty +shillings, for your fair start; and I want you to come to me here next +Sunday-week to breakfast, and tell me what you've done with it." + +"Me--y'r gryce!" A look of fright almost came into the lad's +face. "Twenty bob--me!" + +The sovereign was already in his hand, and now his face suffused. He +seemed anxious to get away, and looked round for his cap. He couldn't +do here what he wanted to do. He felt that he must burst. + +"Now, off you go. And you be here at nine o'clock on Sunday-week with +the papers, and tell me what you've done." + +"Gawd--my Gawd!" said the lad, huskily. The next minute he was out in +the hall, and the door was shut behind him. A moment later, hearing a +whoop, Stafford went to the window and, looking down, he saw his late +visitor turning a cart-wheel under the nose of a policeman, and then, +with another whoop, shooting down into the Mall, making Lambeth way. + +With a smile he turned from the window. "Well, we shall see," he +said. "Perhaps it will be my one lucky speculation. Who knows--who +knows!" + +His eye caught the portrait of Al'mah on the mantelpiece. He went over +and stood looking at it musingly. + +"You were a good girl," he said, aloud. "At any rate, you wouldn't +pretend. You'd gamble with your immortal soul, but you wouldn't sell +it--not for three millions, not for a hundred times three millions. Or +is it that you are all alike, you women? Isn't there one of you that +can be absolutely true? Isn't there one that won't smirch her soul and +kill the faith of those that love her for some moment's excitement, +for gold to gratify a vanity, or to have a wider sweep to her skirts? +Vain, vain, vain--and dishonourable, essentially dishonourable. There +might be tragedies, but there wouldn't be many intrigues if women +weren't so dishonourable--the secret orchard rather than the open +highway and robbery under arms.... Whew, what a world!" + +He walked up and down the room for a moment, his eyes looking straight +before him; then he stopped short. "I suppose it's natural that, +coming back to England, I should begin to unpack a lot of old +memories, empty out the box-room, and come across some useless and +discarded things. I'll settle down presently; but it's a thoroughly +useless business turning over old stock. The wise man pitches it all +into the junk-shop, and cuts his losses." + +He picked up the Morning Post and glanced down the middle page--the +social column first--with the half-amused reflection that he hadn't +done it for years, and that here were the same old names reappearing, +with the same brief chronicles. Here, too, were new names, some of +them, if not most of them, of a foreign turn to their syllables--New +York, Melbourne, Buenos Ayres, Johannesburg. His lip curled a little +with almost playful scorn. At St. Petersburg, Vienna, and elsewhere he +had been vaguely conscious of these social changes; but they did not +come within the ambit of his daily life, and so it had not +mattered. And there was no reason why it should matter now. His +England was a land the original elements of which would not change, +had not changed; for the old small inner circle had not been invaded, +was still impervious to the wash of wealth and snobbery and push. That +refuge had its sequestered glades, if perchance it was unilluminating +and rather heavily decorous; so that he could let the climbers, the +toadies, the gold-spillers, and the bribers have the middle of the +road. + +It did not matter so much that London was changing fast. The old clock +on the tower of St. James's would still give the time to his step as +he went to and from the Foreign Office, and there were quiet places +like Kensington Gardens where the bounding person would never think to +stray. Indeed, they never strayed; they only rushed and pushed where +their spreading tails could be seen by the multitude. They never got +farther west than Rotten Row, which was in possession of three classes +of people--those who sat in Parliament, those who had seats on the +Stock Exchange, and those who could not sit their horses. Three years +had not done it all, but it had done a good deal; and he was more +keenly alive to the changes and developments which had begun long +before he left and had increased vastly since. Wealth was more and +more the master of England--new-made wealth; and some of it was too +ostentatious and too pretentious to condone, much less indulge. + +All at once his eye, roaming down the columns, came upon the following +announcement: + +"Mr. and Mrs. Rudyard Byng have returned to town from Scotland for a +few days, before proceeding to Wales, where they are presently to +receive at Glencader Castle the Duke and Duchess of Sheffield, the +Prince and Princess of Cleaves, M. Santon, the French Foreign +Minister, the Slavonian Ambassador, the Earl and Countess of +Tynemouth, and Mr. Tudor Tempest." + +"'And Mr. Tudor Tempest,'" Ian repeated to himself. "Well, she +would. She would pay that much tribute to her own genius. Four-fifths +to the claims of the body and the social nervous system, and one-fifth +to the desire of the soul. Tempest is a literary genius by what he has +done, and she is a genius by nature, and with so much left undone. The +Slavonian Ambassador--him, and the French Foreign Minister! That looks +like a useful combination at this moment--at this moment. She has a +gift for combinations, a wonderful skill, a still more wonderful +perception--and a remarkable unscrupulousness. She's the naturally +ablest woman I have ever known; but she wants to take short-cuts to a +worldly Elysium, and it can't be done, not even with three times three +millions--and three millions was her price." + +Suddenly he got up and went over to a table where were several +dispatch-boxes. Opening one, he drew forth from the bottom, where he +had placed it nearly three years ago, a letter. He looked at the long, +sliding handwriting, so graceful and fine, he caught the perfume which +had intoxicated Rudyard Byng, and, stooping down, he sniffed the +dispatch-box. He nodded. + +"She's pervasive in everything," he murmured. He turned over several +other packets of letters in the box. "I apologize," he said, +ironically, to these letters. "I ought to have banished her long ago, +but, to tell you the truth, I didn't realize how much she'd influence +everything--even in a box." He laughed cynically, and slowly opened +the one letter which had meant so much to him. + +There was no show of agitation. His eye was calm; only his mouth +showed any feeling or made any comment. It was a little supercilious +and scornful. Sitting down by the table, he spread the letter out, and +read it with great deliberation. It was the first time he had looked +at it since he received it in Vienna and had placed it in the +dispatch-box. + +"Dear Ian," it ran, "our year of probation--that is the word isn't +it?--is up; and I have decided that our ways must lie apart. I am +going to marry Rudyard Byng next month. He is very kind and very +strong, and not too ragingly clever. You know I should chafe at being +reminded daily of my own stupidity by a very clever man. You and I +have had so many good hours together, there has been such confidence +between us, that no other friendship can ever be the same; and I shall +always want to go to you, and ask your advice, and learn to be +wise. You will not turn a cold shoulder on me, will you? I think you +yourself realized that my wish to wait a year before giving a final +answer was proof that I really had not that in my heart which would +justify me in saying what you wished me to say. Oh yes, you knew; and +the last day when you bade me good-bye you almost said as much! I was +so young, so unschooled, when you first asked me, and I did not know my +own mind; but I know it now, and so I go to Rudyard Byng for better or +for worse--" + +He suddently stopped reading, sat back in his char, and laughed +sardonically. + +"For richer, for poorer'--now to have launched out on the first +phrase, and to have jibbed at the second was distinctly stupid. The +quotation could only have been carried off with audacity of the ripest +kind. 'For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and +in health, till death us do part, amen--' That was the way to have +done it, if it was to be done at all. Her cleverness forsook her when +she wrote that letter. 'Our year of probation'--she called it +that. Dear, dear, what a poor prevaricator the best prevaricator is! +She was sworn to me, bound to me, wanted a year in which to have her +fling before she settled down, and she threw me over--like that." + +He did not read the rest of the letter, but got up, went over to the +fire, threw it in, and watched it burn. + +"I ought to have done so when I received it," he said, almost kindly +now. "A thing like that ought never to be kept a minute. It's a +terrible confession, damning evidence, a self-made exposure, and to +keep it is too brutal, too hard on the woman. If anything had +happened to me and it had been read, 'Not all the King's horses nor +all the King's men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.'" + +Then he recalled the brief letter he had written her in reply. Unlike +him, she had not kept his answer, when it came into her hands, but, +tearing it up into fifty fragments, had thrown it into the waste- +basket, and paced her room in shame, anger and humiliation. Finally, +she had taken the waste-basket and emptied it into the flames. She had +watched the tiny fragments burn in a fire not hotter than that in her +own eyes, which presently were washed by a flood of bitter tears and +passionate and unavailing protest. For hours she had sobbed, and when +she went out into the world the next day, it was with his every word +ringing in her ears, as they had rung ever since: the sceptic comment +at every feast, the ironical laughter behind every door, the whispered +detraction in every loud accent of praise. + +"Dear Jasmine," his letter had run, "it is kind of you to tell me of +your intended marriage before it occurs, for in these distant lands +news either travels slowly or does not reach one at all. I am +fortunate in having my information from the very fountain of first +knowledge. You have seen and done much in the past year; and the end +of it all is more fitting than the most meticulous artist could desire +or conceive. You will adorn the new sphere into which you enter. You +are of those who do not need training or experience: you are a genius, +whose chief characteristic is adaptability. Some people, to whom +nature and Providence have not been generous live up to things; to you +it is given to live down to them; and no one can do it so well. We +have had good times together--happy conversations and some cheerful +and entertaining dreams and purposes. We have made the most of +opportunity, each in his and her own way. But, my dear Jasmine, don't +ever think that you will need to come to me for advice and to learn to +be wise. I know of no one from whom I could learn, from whom I have +learned, so I much. I am deeply your debtor for revelations which +never could have come to me without your help. There is a wonderful +future before you, whose variety let Time, not me, attempt to +reveal. I shall watch your going on"--(he did not say goings +on)--"your Alpine course, with clear memories of things and hours +dearer to me than all the world, and with which I would not have +parted for the mines of the Rand. I lose them now for nothing--and +less than nothing. I shall be abroad for some years, and, meanwhile, a +new planet will swim into the universe of matrimony. I shall see the +light shining, but its heavenly orbit will not be within my +calculations. Other astronomers will watch, and some no doubt will +pray, and I shall read in the annals the bright story of the flower +that was turned into a star! + +"Always yours sincerely, +IAN STAFFORD." + +From the filmy ashes of her letter to him Stafford now turned away +to his writing-table. There he sat for a while and answered several +notes, among them one to Alice Mayhew, now the Countess of Tynemouth, +whose red parasol still hung above the mantel-piece, a relic of the +Zambesi--and of other things. + +Periodically Lady Tynemouth's letters had come to him while he was +abroad, and from her, in much detail, he had been informed of the rise +of Mrs. Byng, of her great future, her "delicious" toilettes, her +great entertainments for charity, her successful attempts to gather +round her the great figures in the political and diplomatic world; and +her partial rejection of Byng's old mining and financial confreres and +their belongings. It had all culminated in a visit of royalty to their +place in Suffolk, from which she had emerged radiantly and delicately +aggressive, and sweeping a wider circle with her social scythe. + +Ian had read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could +and would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in +the not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not +malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, +and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her +invitation now to spend the next week-end with her and her husband; +and then, with letters to two young nephews in his pocket, he prepared +to sally forth to buy them presents, and to get some sweets for the +children of a poor invalid cousin to whom for years he had been a +generous friend. For children he had a profound love, and if he had +married, he would not have been content with a childless home--with a +childless home like that of Rudyard Byng. That news also had come to +him from Alice Tynemouth, who honestly lamented that Jasmine Byng had +no "balance-wheel," which was the safety and the anchor of women "like +her and me," Lady Tynemouth's letter had said. + +Three millions then--and how much more now?--and big houses, and no +children. It was an empty business, or so it seemed to him, who had +come of a large and agreeably quarrelsome and clever family, with whom +life had been checkered but never dull. + +He took up his hat and stick, and went towards the door. His eyes +caught Al'mah's photograph as he passed. + +"It was all done that night at the opera," he said. "Jasmine made up +her mind then to marry him, . . . I wonder what the end will +be.... Sad little, bad little girl.... The mess of pottage at the +last? Quien sabe!" + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +"HE SHALL NOT TREAT ME SO" + + +The air of the late September morning smote Stafford's cheeks +pleasantly, and his spirits rose as he walked up St. James's +Street. His step quickened imperceptibly to himself, and he nodded to +or shook hands with half a dozen people before he reached +Piccadilly. Here he completed the purchases for his school-boy +nephews, and then he went to a sweet-shop in Regent Street to get +chocolates for his young relatives. As he entered the place he was +suddenly brought to a standstill, for not two dozen yards away at a +counter was Jasmine Byng. + +She did not see him enter, and he had time to note what matrimony, and +the three years and the three million pounds, had done to her. She was +radiant and exquisite, a little paler, a little more complete, but +increasingly graceful and perfectly appointed. Her dress was of dark +green, of a most delicate shade, and with the clinging softness and +texture of velvet. She wore a jacket of the same material, and a +single brilliant ornament at her throat relieved the simplicity. In +the hat, too, one big solitary emerald shone against the lighter +green. + +She was talking now with animation and amusement to the shop-girl who +was supplying her with sweets, and every attendant was watching her +with interest and pleasure. Stafford reflected that this was always +her way: wherever she went she attracted attention, drew interest, +magnetized the onlooker. Nothing had changed in her. nothing of charm +and beauty and eloquence,--how eloquent she had always been!--of +esprit, had gone from her; nothing. Presently she turned her face full +toward him, still not seeing him, half hidden as he was behind some +piled-up tables in the centre of the shop. + +Nothing changed? Yes, instantly he was aware of a change, in the eyes, +at the mouth. An elusive, vague, distant kind of disturbance--he could +not say trouble--had stolen into her eyes, had taken possession of the +corners of the mouth; and he was conscious of something exotic, +self-indulgent, and "emancipated." She had always been self-indulgent +and selfish, and, in a wilful, innocent way, emancipated, in the old +days; but here was a different, a fuller, a more daring expression of +these qualities.... Ah, he had it now! That elusive something was a +lurking recklessness, which, perhaps, was not bold enough yet to leap +into full exercise, or even to recognize itself. + +So this was she to whom he had given the best of which he had been +capable--not a very noble or priceless best, he was willing to +acknowledge, but a kind of guarantee of the future, the nucleus of +fuller things. As he looked at her now his heart did not beat faster, +his pulses did not quicken, his eye did not soften, he did not even +wish himself away. Love was as dead as last year's leaves--so dead +that no spirit of resentment, or humiliation, or pain of heart was in +his breast at this sight of her again. On the contrary, he was +conscious of a perfect mastery of himself, of being easily superior to +the situation. + +Love was dead; youth was dead; the desire that beats in the veins of +the young was dead; his disillusion and disappointment and contempt +for one woman had not driven him, as it so often does, to other +women--to that wild waste which leaves behind it a barren and +ill-natured soil exhausted of its power, of its generous and native +health. There was a strange apathy in his senses, an emotional +stillness, as it were, the atrophy of all the passionate elements of +his nature. But because of this he was the better poised, the more +evenly balanced, the more perceptive. His eyes were not blurred or +dimmed by any stress of emotion, his mind worked in a cool quiet, and +his forward tread had leisurely decision and grace. He had sunk one +part of himself far below the level of activity or sensation, while +new resolves, new powers of mind, new designs were set in motion to +make his career a real and striking success. He had the most friendly +ear and the full confidence of the Prime Minister, who was also +Foreign Secretary--he had got that far; and now, if one of his great +international schemes could but be completed, an ambassadorship would +be his reward, and one of first-class importance. The three years had +done much for him in a worldly way, wonderfully much. + +As he looked at the woman who had shaken his life to the centre--not +by her rejection of him, but by the fashion of it, the utter +selfishness and cold-blooded calculation of it, he knew that love's +fires were out, and that he could meet her without the agitation of a +single nerve. He despised her, but he could make allowance for her. He +knew the strain that was in her, got from her brilliant and rather +plangent grandfather. He knew the temptation of a vast fortune, the +power that it would bring--and the notoriety, too, again an +inheritance from her grandfather. He was not without magnanimity, and +he could the more easily exercise it because his pulses of emotion +were still. + +She was by nature the most brilliantly endowed woman he had ever met, +the most naturally perceptive and artistic, albeit there was a touch +of gorgeousness to the inherent artistry which time, training and +experience would have chastened. Would have chastened? Was it not, +then, chastened? Looking at her now, he knew that it was not. It was +still there, he felt; but how much else was also there--of charm, of +elusiveness, of wit, of mental adroitness, of joyous eagerness to +discover a new thought or a new thing! She was a creature of rare +splendour, variety and vanity. + +Why should he deny himself the pleasure of her society? His +intellectual side would always be stimulated by her, she would always +"incite him to mental riot," as she had often said. Time had flown, +love had flown, and passion was dead; but friendship stayed. Yes, +friendship stayed--in spite of all. Her conduct had made him blush for +her, had covered him with shame, but she was a woman, and therefore +weak--he had come to that now. She was on a lower plateau of honour, +and therefore she must be--not forgiven--that was too banal; but she +must be accepted as she was. And, after all, there could be no more +deception; for opportunity and occasion no longer existed. He would go +and speak to her now. + +At that moment he was aware that she had caught sight of him, and that +she was startled. She had not known of his return to England, and she +was suddenly overwhelmed by confusion. The words of the letter he had +written her when she had thrown him over rushed through her brain now, +and hurt her as much as they did the first day they had been +received. She became a little pale, and turned as though to find some +other egress from the shop. There being none, there was but one +course, and that was to go out as though she had not seen him. He had +not even been moved at all at seeing her; but with her it was +different. She was disturbed--in her vanity? In her peace? In her +pride? In her senses? In her heart? In any, or each, or all? But she +was disturbed: her equilibrium was shaken. He had scorched her soul by +that letter to her, so gently cold, so incisive, so subtly cruel, so +deadly in its irony, so final--so final. + +She was ashamed, and no one else in the world but Ian Stafford could +so have shamed her. Power had been given to her, the power of great +riches--the three millions had been really four--and everything and +everybody, almost, was deferential towards her. Had it brought her +happiness, or content, or joy? It had brought her excitement--much of +that--and elation, and opportunity to do a thousand things, and to +fatigue herself in a thousand ways; but had it brought happiness? + +If it had, the face of this man who was once so much to her, and whom +she had flung into outer darkness, was sufficient to cast a cloud over +it. She felt herself grow suddenly weak, but she determined to go out +of the place without appearing to see him. + +He was conscious of it all, saw it out of a corner of his eye, and as +she started forward, he turned, deliberately walked towards her, and, +with a cheerful smile, held out his hand. + +"Now, what good fortune!" he said, spiritedly. "Life plays no tricks, +practices no deception this time. In a book she'd have made us meet on +a grand staircase or at a court ball." + +As he said this, he shook her hand warmly, and again and again, as +would be fitting with old friends. He had determined to be master of +the situation, and to turn the moment to the credit of his +account--not hers; and it was easy to do it, for love was dead, and +the memory of love atrophied. + +Colour came back to her face. Confusion was dispelled, a quick and +grateful animation took possession of her, to be replaced an instant +after by the disconcerting reflection that there was in his face or +manner not the faintest sign of emotion or embarrassment. From his +attitude they might have been good friends who had not met for some +time; nothing more. + +"Yes, what a place to meet!" she said. "It really ought to have been +at a green-grocer's, and the apotheosis of the commonplace would have +been celebrated. But when did you return? How long do you remain in +England?" + +Ah, the sense of relief to feel that he was not reproaching her for +anything, not impeaching her by an injured tone and manner, which so +many other men had assumed with infinitely less right or cause than +he! + +"I came back thirty-six hours ago, and I stay at the will of the +master-mind," he answered. + +The old whimsical look came into her face, the old sudden flash which +always lighted her eyes when a daring phrase was born in her mind, and +she instantly retorted: + +"The master-mind--how self-centred you are!" + +Whatever had happened, certainly the old touch of intellectual +diablerie was still hers, and he laughed good-humoredly. Yes, she +might be this or that, she might be false or true, she might be one +who had sold herself for mammon, and had not paid tribute to the one +great natural principle of being, to give life to the world, man and +woman perpetuating man and woman; but she was stimulating and +delightful without effort. + +"And what are you doing these days?" he asked. "One never hears of you +now." + +This was cruel, but she knew that he was "inciting her to riot," and +she replied: "That's because you are so secluded--in your kindergarten +for misfit statesmen. Abandon knowledge, all ye who enter there!" + +It was the old flint and steel, but the sparks were not bright enough +to light the tinder of emotion. She knew it, for he was cool and +buoyant and really unconcerned, and she was feverish--and determined. + +"You still make life worth living," he answered, gaily. + +"It is not an occupation I would choose," she replied. "It is sure to +make one a host of enemies." + +"So many of us make our careers by accident," he rejoined. + +"Certainly I made mine not by design," she replied instantly; and +there was an undercurrent of meaning in it which he was not slow to +notice; but he disregarded her first attempt to justify, however +vaguely, her murderous treatment of him. + +"But your career is not yet begun," he remarked. + +Her eyes flashed--was it anger, or pique, or hurt, or merely the fire +of intellectual combat? + +"I am married," she said, defiantly, in direct retort. + +"That is not a career--it is casual exploration in a dark continent," +he rejoined. + +"Come and say that to my husband," she replied, boldly. Suddenly a +thought lighted her eyes. "Are you by any chance free to-morrow night +to dine with us--quite, quite en famille' Rudyard will be glad to see +you--and hear you," she added, teasingly. + +He was amused. He felt how much he had really piqued her and provoked +her by showing her so plainly that she had lost every vestige of the +ancient power over him; and he saw no reason why he should not spend +an evening where she sparkled. + +"I am free, and will come with pleasure," he replied. + +"That is delightful," she rejoined, "and please bring a box of bons +mots with you. But you will come, then--?" She was going to add, +"Ian," but she paused. + +"Yes, I'll come--Jasmine," he answered, coolly, having read her +hesitation aright. + +She flushed, was embarrassed and piqued, but with a smile and a nod +she left him. + +In her carriage, however, her breath came quick and fast, her tiny +hand clenched, her face flushed, and there was a devastating fire in +her eyes. + +"He shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall--he +shall--he shall!" she gasped, angrily. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE APPIAN WAY + + +"Cape to Cairo be damned!" + +The words were almost spat out. The man to whom they were addressed +slowly drew himself up from a half-recumbent position in his +desk-chair, from which he had been dreamily talking into the ceiling, +as it were, while his visitor leaned against a row of bookshelves and +beat the floor impatiently with his foot. + +At the rude exclamation, Byng straightened himself, and looked fixedly +at his visitor. He had been dreaming out loud again the dream which +Rhodes had chanted in the ears of all those who shared with him the +pioneer enterprises of South Africa. The outburst which had broken in +on his monologue was so unexpected that for a moment he could scarcely +realize the situation. It was not often, in these strenuous and +perilous days--and for himself less often than ever before, so had +London and London life worked upon him--that he, or those who shared +with him the vast financial responsibilities of the Rand, indulged in +dreams or prophecies; and he resented the contemptuous phrase just +uttered, and the tone of the speaker even more. + +Byng's blank amazement served only to incense his visitor +further. "Yes, be damned to it, Byng!" he continued. "I'm sick of the +British Empire and the All Red, and the 'immense future.' What I want +is the present. It's about big enough for you and me and the rest of +us. I want to hold our own in Johannesburg. I want to pull thirty-five +millions a year out of the eighty miles of reef, and get enough native +labour to do it. I want to run the Rand like a business concern, with +Kruger gone to Holland; and Leyds gone to blazes. That's what I want +to see, Mr. Invincible Rudyard Byng." + +The reply to this tirade was deliberate and murderously +bitter. "That's what you want to see, is it, Mr. Blasphemous Barry +Whalen? Well, you can want it with a little less blither and a little +more manners." + +A hard and ugly look was now come into the big clean-shaven face which +had become sleeker with good living, and yet had indefinably coarsened +in the three years gone since the Jameson raid; and a gloomy anger +looked out of the deep-blue eyes as he slowly went on: + +"It doesn't matter what you want--not a great deal, if the others +agree generally on what ought to be done; and I don't know that it +matters much in any case. What have you come to see me about?" + +"I know I'm not welcome here, Byng. It isn't the same as it used to +be. It isn't--" + +Byng jerked quickly to his feet and lunged forward as though he would +do his visitor violence; but he got hold of himself in time, and, with +a sudden and whimsical toss of the head, characteristic of him, he +burst into a laugh. + +"Well, I've been stung by a good many kinds of flies in my time, and I +oughtn't to mind, I suppose," he growled.... "Oh, well, there," he +broke off; "you say you're not welcome here? If you really feel that, +you'd better try to see me at my chambers--or at the office in London +Wall. It can't be pleasant inhaling air that chills or stifles +you. You take my advice, Barry, and save yourself annoyance. But let +me say in passing that you are as welcome here as anywhere, neither +more nor less. You are as welcome as you were in the days when we +trekked from the Veal to Pietersburg and on into Bechuanaland, and +both slept in the cape-wagon under one blanket. I don't think any more +of you than I did then, and I don't think any less, and I don't want +to see you any more or any fewer. But, Barry"--his voice changed, grew +warmer, kinder--" circumstances are circumstances. The daily lives of +all of us are shaped differently--yours as well as mine--here in this +pudding-faced civilization and in the iron conventions of London town; +and we must adapt ourselves accordingly. We used to flop down on our +Louis Quinze furniture on the Vaal with our muddy boots on--in our +front drawing-room. We don't do it in Thamesfontein, my noble +buccaneer--not even in Barry Whalen's mansion in Ladbroke Square, +where Barry Whalen, Esq., puts his silk hat on the hall table, and-- +and, 'If you please, sir, your bath is ready'! . . . Don't be an +idiot-child, Barry, and don't spoil my best sentences when I let +myself go. I don't do it often these days--not since Jameson spilt the +milk and the can went trundling down the area. It's little time we get +for dreaming, these sodden days, but it's only dreams that do the +world's work and our own work in the end. It's dreams that do it, +Barry; it's dreams that drive us on, that make us see beyond the +present and the stupefying, deadening grind of the day. So it'll be +Cape to Cairo in good time, dear lad, and no damnation, if you +please.... Why, what's got into you? And again, what have you come to +see me about, anyhow? You knew we were to meet at dinner at +Wallstein's to-night. Is there anything that's skulking at our heels +to hurt us?" + +The scowl on Barry Whalen's dissipated face cleared a little. He came +over, rested both hands on the table and leaned forward as he spoke, +Byng resuming his seat meanwhile. + +Barry's voice was a little thick with excitement, but he weighed his +words too. "Byng, I wanted you to know beforehand what Fleming intends +to bring up to-night--a nice kind of reunion, isn't it, with war ahead +as sure as guns, and the danger of everything going to smash, in spite +of Milner and Jo?" + +A set look came into Byng's face. He caught the lapels of his big, +loose, double-breasted jacket, and spread his feet a little, till he +looked as though squaring himself to resist attack. + +"Go on with your story," he interposed. "What is Fleming going to +say--or bring up, you call it?" + +"He's going to say that some one is betraying us--all we do that's of +any importance and most we say that counts--to Kruger and Leyds. He's +going to say that the traitor is some one inside our circle." + +Byng started, and his hands clutched at the chairback, then he became +quiet and watchful. "And whom does Fleming--or you--suspect?" he +asked, with lowering eyelids and a slumbering malice in his eyes. + +Barry straightened himself and looked Byng rather hesitatingly in the +face; then he said, slowly: + +"I don't know much about Fleming's suspicions. Mine, though, are at +least three years old, and you know them. + +"Krool?" + +"Krool--for sure." + +"What would be Krool's object in betraying us, even if he knew all we +say and do?" + +"Blood is thicker than water, Byng, and double pay to a poor man is a +consideration." + +"Krool would do nothing that injured me, Barry. I know men. What sort +of thing has been given away to Brother Boer?" + +Barry took from his pocket a paper and passed it over. Byng scanned it +very carefully and slowly, and his face darkened as he read; for there +were certain things set down of which only he and Wallstein and one or +two others knew; which only he and one high in authority in England +knew, besides Wallstein. His face slowly reddened with anger. London +life, and its excitements multiplied by his wife and not avoided by +himself, had worn on him, had affected his once sunny and even temper, +had given him greater bulk, with a touch of flabbiness under the chin +and at the neck, and had slackened the firmness of the muscles. +Presently he got up, went over to a table, and helped himself to brandy +and soda, motioning to Barry to do the same. There were two or three +minutes' silence, and then he said: + +"There's something wrong, certainly, but it isn't Krool. No, it isn't +Krool." + +"Nevertheless, if you're wise you'll ship him back beyond the Vaal, my +friend." + +"It isn't Krool. I'll stake my life on that. He's as true to me as I +am to myself; and, anyhow, there are things in this Krool couldn't +know." He tossed the paper into the fire and watched it burn. + +He had talked over many, if not all, of these things with Jasmine, and +with no one else; but Jasmine would not gossip. He had never known her +to do so. Indeed, she had counselled extreme caution so often to +himself that she would, in any case, be innocent of having +babbled. But certainly there had been leakage--there had been leakage +regarding most critical affairs. They were momentous enough to cause +him to say reflectively now, as he watched the paper burn: + +"You might as well carry dynamite in your pocket as that." + +"You don't mind my coming to see you?" Barry asked, in an anxious +tone. + +He could not afford to antagonize Byng; in any case, his heart was +against doing so; though, like an Irishman, he had risked everything +by his maladroit and ill-mannered attack a little while ago. + +"I wanted to warn you, so's you could be ready when Fleming jumped +in," Barry continued. + +"No; I'm much obliged, Barry," was Byng's reply, in a voice where +trouble was well marked, however. "Wait a minute," he continued, as +his visitor prepared to leave. "Go into the other room"--he +pointed. "Glue your ear to the door first, then to the wall, and tell +me if you can hear anything--any word I say." + +Barry did as he was bidden. Presently Byng spoke in a tone rather +louder than in ordinary conversation to an imaginary interlocutor for +some minutes. Then Barry Whalen came back into the room. + +"Well?" Byng asked. "Heard anything?" + +"Not a word--scarcely a murmur." + +"Quite so. The walls are thick, and those big mahogany doors fit like +a glove. Nothing could leak through. Let's try the other door, leading +into the hall." They went over to it. "You see, here's an inside +baize-door as well. There's not room for a person to stand between the +two. I'll go out now, and you stay. Talk fairly loud." + +The test produced the same result. + +"Maybe I talk in my sleep," remarked Byng, with a troubled, ironical +laugh. + +Suddenly there shot into Barry Whalen's mind a thought which startled +him, which brought the colour to his face with a rush. For years he +had suspected Krool, had considered him a danger. For years he had +regarded Byng as culpable, for keeping as his servant one whom the +Partners all believed to be a spy; but now another, a terrible thought +came to him, too terrible to put into words--even in his own mind. + +There were two other people besides Krool who were very close to +Byng. There was Mrs. Byng for one; there was also Adrian Fellowes, who +had been for a long time a kind of handy-man of the great house, doing +the hundred things which only a private secretary, who was also a kind +of master-of-ceremonies and lord-in-waiting, as it were, could +do. Yes, there was Adrian Fellowes, the private secretary; and there +was Mrs. Byng, who knew so much of what her husband knew! And the +private secretary and the wife necessarily saw much of each +other. What came to Barry's mind now stunned him, and he mumbled out +some words of good-bye with an almost hang-dog look to his face; for +he had a chivalrous heart and mind, and he was not prone to be +malicious. + +"We'll meet at eight, then?" said Byng, taking out his watch. "It's a +quarter past seven now. Don't fuss, Barry. We'll nose out the spy, +whoever he is, or wherever to be found. But we won't find him here, I +think--not here, my friend." + +Suddenly Barry Whalen turned at the door. "Oh, let's go back to the +veld and the Rand!" he burst out, passionately. "This is no place for +us, Byng--not for either of us. You are getting flabby, and I'm +spoiling my temper and my manners. Let's get out of this infernal +jack-pot. Let's go where we'll be in the thick of the broiling when it +comes. You've got a political head, and you've done more than any one +else could do to put things right and keep them right; but it's no +good. Nothing'll be got except where the red runs. And the red will +run, in spite of all Jo or Milner or you can do. And when it comes, +you and I will be sick if we're not there--yes, even you with your +millions, Byng." + +With moist eyes Byng grasped the hand of the rough-hewn comrade of the +veld, and shook it warmly. + +"England has got on your nerves, Barry," he said, gently." But we're +all right in London. The key-board of the big instrument is here." + +"But the organ is out there, Byng, and it's the organ that makes the +music, not the keys. We're all going to pieces here, every one of +us. I see it. Herr Gott, I see it plain enough! We're in the wrong +shop. We're not buying or selling; we're being sold. Baas--big Baas, +let's go where there's room to sling a stone; where we can see what's +going on round us; where there's the long sight and the strong sight; +where you can sell or get sold in the open, not in the alleyways; +where you can have a run for your money." + +Byng smiled benevolently. Yet something was stirring his senses +strangely. The smell of the karoo was in his nostrils. "You're not +ending up as you began, Barry," he replied. "You started off like an +Israelite on the make, and you're winding up like Moody and Sankey." + +"Well, I'm right now in the wind-up. I'm no better, I'm no worse, than +the rest of our fellows, but I'm Irish--I can see. The Celt can +always see, even if he can't act. And I see dark days coming for this +old land. England is wallowing. It's all guzzle and feed and finery, +and nobody cares a copper about anything that matters--" + +"About Cape to Cairo, eh?" + +"Byng, that was one of my idiocies. But you think over what I say, +just the same. I'm right. We're rotten cotton stuff now in these +isles. We've got fatty degeneration of the heart, and in all the rest +of the organs too." + +Again Byng shook him by the hand warmly. "Well, Wallstein will give us +a fat dinner to-night, and you can moralize with lime-light effects +after the foie gras, Barry." + +Closing the door slowly behind his friend, whom he had passed into the +hands of the dark-browed Krool, Byng turned again to his desk. As he +did so he caught sight of his face in the mirror over the +mantel-piece. A shadow swept over it; his lips tightened. + +"Barry was right," he murmured, scrutinizing himself. "I've +degenerated. We've all degenerated. What's the matter, anyhow? What is +the matter? I've got everything--everything--everything." + +Hearing the door open behind him, he turned to see Jasmine in evening +dress smiling at him. She held up a pink finger in reproof. + +"Naughty boy," she said. "What's this I hear--that you have thrown me +over--me--to go and dine with the Wallstein! It's nonsense! You can't +go. Ian Stafford is coming to dine, as I told you." + +His eyes beamed protectingly, affectionately, and yet, somehow, a +little anxiously, on her "But I must go, Jasmine. It's the first time +we've all been together since the Raid, and it's good we should be in +the full circle once again. There's work to do--more than ever there +was. There's a storm coming up on the veld, a real jagged lightning +business, and men will get hurt, hosts beyond recovery. We must +commune together, all of us. If there's the communion of saints, +there's also the communion of sinners. Fleming is back, and Wolff is +back, and Melville and Reuter and Hungerford are back, but only for a +few days, and we all must meet and map things out. I forgot about the +dinner. As soon as I remembered it I left a note on your +dressing-table." + +With sudden emotion he drew her to him, and buried his face in her +soft golden hair. "My darling, my little jasmine-flower," he +whispered, softly, "I hate leaving you, but--" + +"But it's impossible, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away? +It's too late to put him off." + +"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends +as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person +that's got anything to say about that." + +She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten +that, coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his +friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had +forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and +she had said nothing, done nothing. + +As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far +depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the +obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on +Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no +perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she +answered: + +"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--" + +"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he +rejoined. "What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself +some latitude." + +"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the +responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the +dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she +closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of +satisfaction. + +"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him. + +Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be +inspected. "Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself +and swept into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did +so. "You're wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I +seem to remember that gown before--years ago--" + +She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and +ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you +think I wear my gowns for years?" + +"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a +frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and +it looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as +new." + +"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever +lived. Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them +rather hate wearing them two times." + +"Then what do they do with them--after the two times?" + +"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over, +if they like them; then, perhaps, they give them away to their poor +cousins or their particular friends--" + +"Their particular friends--?" + +"Why, every woman has some friends poorer than herself who love her +very much, and she is good to them. Or there's the Mart--" + +"Wait. What's 'the Mart'?" + +"The place where ladies can get rid of fine clothes at a wicked +discount." + +"And what becomes of them then?" + +"They are bought by ladies less fortunate." + +"Ladies who wear them?" + +"Why, what else would they do? Wear them--of course, dear child." + +Byng made a gesture of disgust. "Well, I call it sickening. To me +there's something so personal and intimate about clothes. I think I +could kill any woman that I saw wearing clothes of yours--of yours." + +She laughed mockingly. "My beloved, you've seen them often enough, but +you haven't known they were mine; that's all." + +"I didn't recognize them, because no one could wear your clothes like +you. It would be a caricature. That's a fact, Jasmine." + +She reached up and swept his cheek with a kiss. "What a darling you +are, little big man! Yet you never make very definite remarks about my +clothes." + +He put his hands on his hips and looked her up and down +approvingly. "Because I only see a general effect, but I always +remember colour. Tell me, have you ever sold your clothes to the Mart, +or whatever the miserable coffin-shop is called?" + +"Well, not directly." + +"What do you mean by 'not directly'?" + +"Well, I didn't sell them, but they were sold for me." She hesitated, +then went on hurriedly. "Adrian Fellowes knew of a very sad case--a +girl in the opera who had had misfortune, illness, and bad luck; and +he suggested it. He said he didn't like to ask for a cheque, because +we were always giving, but selling my old wardrobe would be a sort of +lucky find--that's what he called it." + +Byng nodded, with a half-frown, however. "That was ingenious of +Fellowes, and thoughtful, too. Now, what does a gown cost, one like +that you have on?" + +"This--let me see. Why, fifty pounds, perhaps. It's not a ball gown, +of course." + +He laughed mockingly. "Why, 'of course,' And what does a ball gown +cost--perhaps?" There was a cynical kind of humour in his eye. + +"Anything from fifty to a hundred and fifty--maybe," she replied, with +a little burst of merriment. + +"And how much did you get for the garments you had worn twice, and +then seen them suddenly grow aged in their extreme youth?" + +"Ruddy, do not be nasty--or scornful. I've always worn my gowns more +than twice--some of them a great many times, except when I detested +them. And anyhow, the premature death of a gown is very, very good for +trade. That influences many ladies, of course." + +He burst out laughing, but there was a satirical note in the gaiety, +or something still harsher. + +"'We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,'" he +answered. "It's all such a hollow make-believe." + +"What is?" + +She gazed at him inquiringly, for this mood was new to her. She was +vaguely conscious of some sort of change in him--not exactly toward +her, but a change, nevertheless. + +"The life we rich people lead is a hollow make-believe, Jasmine," he +said, with sudden earnestness. "I don't know what's the matter, but +we're not getting out of life all we ought to get; and we're not +putting into it all we ought to put in. There's a sense of +emptiness--of famine somewhere." + +He caught the reflection of his face in the glass again, and his brow +contracted. "We get sordid and sodden, and we lose the proportions of +life. I wanted Dick Wilberforce to do something with me the other day, +and he declined. 'Why, my dear fellow,' I said, 'you know you want to +do it?' 'Of course I do,' he answered, 'but I can't afford that kind +of thing, and you know it.' Well, I did know it, but I had +forgotten. I was only thinking of what I myself could afford to do. I +was setting up my own financial standard, and was forgetting the other +fellows who hadn't my standard. What's the result? We drift apart, +Wilberforce and I--well, I mean Wilberforce as a type. We drift into +sets of people who can afford to do certain things, and we leave such +a lot of people behind that we ought to have clung to, and that we +would have clung to, if we hadn't been so much thinking of ourselves, +or been so soddenly selfish." + +A rippling laugh rang through the room. "Boanerges--oh, Boanerges +Byng! 'Owever can you be so heloquent!" + +Jasmine put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with that +look which had fascinated him--and so many others--in their day. The +perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of +her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them +again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught +her in his arms and pressed her to him almost roughly. + +"You exquisite siren--you siren of all time," he said, with a note of +joy in which there was, too, a stark cry of the soul. He held her face +back from him.... "If you had lived a thousand years ago you would +have had a thousand lovers, Jasmine. Perhaps you did--who knows! And +now you come down through the centuries purified by Time, to be my +jasmine-flower." + +His lip trembled a little. There was a strange melancholy in his eyes, +belying the passion and rapture of his words. + +In all their days together she had never seen him in this mood. She +had heard him storm about things at times, had watched his big +impulses working; had drawn the thunder from his clouds; but there was +something moving in him now which she had never seen before. Perhaps +it was only a passing phase, even a moment's mood, but it made a +strange impression on her. It was remembered by them both long after, +when life had scattered its vicissitudes before their stumbling feet +and they had passed through flood and fire. + +She drew back and looked at him steadily, reflectively, and with an +element of surprise in her searching look. She had never thought him +gifted with perception or insight, though he had eloquence and an eye +for broad effects. She had thought him curiously ignorant of human +nature, born to be deceived, full of child-like illusions, never +understanding the real facts of life, save in the way of business--and +politics. Women he never seemed by a single phrase or word to +understand, and yet now he startled her with a sudden revelation and +insight of which she had not thought him capable. + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers. Perhaps you did--who knows! . . . And now you come down +through the centuries purified by Time--" + +The words slowly repeated themselves in her brain. Many and many a +time she had imagined herself as having lived centuries ago, and again +and again in her sleep these imaginings had reflected themselves in +wild dreams of her far past--once as a priestess of Isis, once as a +Slavonian queen, once as a peasant in Syria, and many times as a +courtezan of Alexandria or Athens--many times as that: one of the +gifted, beautiful, wonderful women whose houses were the centres of +culture, influence, and power. She had imagined herself, against her +will, as one of these women, such as Cleopatra, for whom the world +were well lost; and who, at last, having squeezed the orange dry, but +while yet the sun was coming towards noon, in scorn of Life and Time +had left the precincts of the cheerful day without a lingering +look.... Often and often such dreams, to her anger and confusion, had +haunted her, even before she was married; and she had been alternately +humiliated and fascinated by them. Years ago she had told Ian Stafford +of one of the dreams of a past life--that she was a slave in Athens +who saved her people by singing to the Tyrant; and Ian had made her +sing to him, in a voice quite in keeping with her personality, +delicate and fine and wonderfully high in its range, bird-like in its +quality, with trills like a lark--a little meretricious but +captivating. He had also written for her two verses which were as +sharp and clear in her mind as the letter he wrote when she had thrown +him over so dishonourably: + + +"Your voice I knew, its cadences and trill; +It stilled the tumult and the overthrow +When Athens trembled to the people's will; +I knew it--'twas a thousand years ago. + +"I see the fountains, and the gardens where +You sang the fury from the Satrap's brow; +I feel the quiver of the raptured air +I heard you in the Athenian grove--I hear you now." + + +As the words flashed into her mind now she looked at her husband +steadfastly. Were there, then, some unexplored regions in his nature, +where things dwelt, of which she had no glimmering of knowledge? Did +he understand more of women than she thought? Could she then really +talk to him of a thousand things of the mind which she had ever ruled +out of any commerce between them, one half of her being never opened +up to his sight? Not that he was deficient in intellect, but, to her +thought, his was a purely objective mind; or was it objective because +it had not been trained or developed subjectively? Had she ever really +tried to find a region in his big nature where the fine allusiveness +and subjectivity of the human mind could have free life and +untrammelled exercise, could gambol in green fields of imagination and +adventure upon strange seas of discovery? A shiver of pain, of +remorse, went through her frame now, as he held her at arm's length +and looked at her.... Had she started right? Had she ever given their +natures a chance to discover each other? Warmth and passion and youth +and excitement and variety--oh, infinite variety there had been!--but +had the start been a fair one, had she, with a whole mind and a full +soul of desire, gone to him first and last? What had been the +governing influence in their marriage where she was concerned? + +Three years of constant motion, and never an hour's peace; three years +of agitated waters, and never in all that time three days alone +together. What was there to show for the three years? That for which +he had longed with a great longing had been denied him; for he had +come of a large family, and had the simple primitive mind and +heart. Even in his faults he had ever been primitively simple and +obvious. She had been energetic, helping great charities, aiding in +philanthropic enterprises, with more than a little shrewdness +preventing him from being robbed right and left by adventurers of all +descriptions; and yet--and yet it was all so general, so soulless, her +activity in good causes. Was there a single afflicted person, one +forlorn soul whom she had directly and personally helped, or sheltered +from the storm for a moment, one bereaved being whose eyes she had +dried by her own direct personal sympathy? + +Was it this which had been more or less vaguely working in his mind a +little while before when she had noticed a change in him; or was it +that he was disappointed that they were two and no more--always two, +and no more? Was it that which was working in his mind, and making him +say hard things about their own two commendable selves? + +"If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand +lovers.... And now you come down through the centuries purlfied by +Time, to be my jasmine-flower"-- + +She did not break the silence for some time, but at last she said: +"And what were you a thousand years ago, my man?" + +He drew a hot hand across a troubled brow. "I? I was the Satrap whose +fury you soothed away, or I was the Antony you lured from fighting +Caesar." + +It was as though he had read those lines written by Ian Stafford long +ago. + +Again that perfume of hers caught his senses, and his look softened +wonderfully. A certain unconscious but underlying discontent appeared +to vanish from his eyes, and he said, abruptly: "I have it--I have +it. This dress is like the one you wore the first night that we +met. It's the same kind of stuff, it's just the same colour and the +same style. Why, I see it all as plain as can be--there at the +opera. And you wore blue the day I tried to propose to you and +couldn't, and asked you down to Wales instead. Lord, how I funked it!" +He laughed, happily almost. "Yes, you wore blue the first time we +met--like this." + +"It was the same skirt, and a different bodice, of course both those +first times," she answered. Then she stepped back and daintily +smoothed out the gown she was wearing, smiling at him as she did that +day three years ago. She had put on this particular gown, remembering +that Ian Stafford had said charming things about that other blue gown +just before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she +wore blue this night--to recall to Ian what it appeared he had +forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her +husband's house--and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were +in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was +adamantine; at least she had never met one--not one, neither bishop +nor octogenarian. + +"Come, Ruddy, you must dress, or you'll be late," she continued, +lightly, touching his cheek with her fingers; "and you'll come down +and apologize, and put me right with Ian Stafford, won't you?" + +"Certainly. I won't be five minutes. I'll--" + +There was a tap at the door and a footman, entering, announced that +Mr. Stafford was in the drawing-room. + +"Show him into my sitting-room," she said. "The drawing-room, indeed," +she added to her husband--"it is so big, and I am so small. I feel +sometimes as though I wanted to live in a tiny, tiny house." + +Her words brought a strange light to his eyes. Suddenly he caught her +arm. + +"Jasmine," he said, hurriedly, "let us have a good talk over +things--over everything. I want to see if we can't get more out of +life than we do. There's something wrong. What is it? I don't know; +but perhaps we could find out if we put our heads together--eh?" There +was a strange, troubled longing in his look. + +She nodded and smiled. "Certainly--to-night when you get back," she +said. "We'll open the machine and find what's wrong with it." She +laughed, and so did he. + +As she went down the staircase she mused to herself and there was a +shadow in her eyes and over her face. + +"Poor Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said. + +Once again before she entered the sitting-room, as she turned and +looked back, she said: + +"Poor boy . . . Yet he knew about a thousand years ago!" she added +with a nervous little laugh, and with an air of sprightly eagerness +she entered to Ian Stafford. + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN ARROW FINDS A BREAST + + +As he entered the new sphere of Jasmine's influence, charm, and +existence, Ian Stafford's mind became flooded by new impressions. He +was not easily moved by vastness or splendour. His ducal grandfather's +houses were palaces, the estates were a fair slice of two counties, +and many of his relatives had sumptuous homes stored with priceless +legacies of art. He had approached the great house which Byng had +built for himself with some trepidation; for though Byng came of +people whose names counted for a good deal in the north of England, +still, in newly acquired fortunes made suddenly in new lands there was +something that coarsened taste--an unmodulated, if not a garish, +elegance which "hit you in the eye," as he had put it to himself. He +asked himself why Byng had not been content to buy one of the great +mansions which could always be had in London for a price, where time +had softened all the outlines, had given that subdued harmony in +architecture which only belongs to age. Byng could not buy with any +money those wonderful Adam's mantels, over-mantels and ceilings which +had a glory quite their own. There must, therefore, be an air of +newness in the new mansion, which was too much in keeping with the new +money, the gold as yet not worn smooth by handling, the staring, +brand-new sovereigns looking like impostors. + +As he came upon the great house, however, in the soft light of +evening, he was conscious of no violence done to his artistic +sense. It was a big building, severely simple in design, yet with the +rich grace, spacious solidity, and decorative relief of an Italian +palace: compact, generous, traditionally genuine and wonderfully +proportionate. + +"Egad, Byng, you had a good architect--and good sense!" he said to +himself. "It's the real thing; and he did it before Jasmine came on +the scene too." + +The outside of the house was Byng's, but the inside would, in the +essentials, of course, be hers; and he would see what he would see. + +When the door opened, it came to him instantly that the inside and +outside were in harmony. How complete was that harmony remained to be +seen, but an apparently unstudied and delightful reticence was +noticeable at once. The newness had been rubbed off the gold somehow, +and the old furniture--Italian, Spanish--which relieved the +spaciousness of the entrance gave an air of Time and Time's eloquence +to this three-year-old product of modern architectural skill. + +As he passed on, he had more than a glimpse of the ball-room, which +maintained the dignity and the refined beauty of the staircase and the +hallways; and only in the insistent audacity and intemperate colouring +of some Rubens pictures did he find anything of that inherent tendency +to exaggeration and Oriental magnificence behind the really delicate +artistic faculties possessed by Jasmine. + +The drawing-room was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It +was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking +exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its +nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its +half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, +the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too +much like the stage. He smiled at the sight of it, for he saw and knew +that Jasmine had had his playful criticism of her occasionally +flamboyant taste in mind, and that she had over-revised, as it +were. She had, like a literary artist, polished and refined and +stippled the effect, till something of personal touch had gone, and +there remained classic elegance without the sting of life and the +idiosyncrasy of its creator's imperfections. No, the drawing-room +would not quite do, though it was near the perfect thing. His judgment +was not yet complete, however. When he was shown into Jasmine's +sitting-room his breath came a little quicker, for here would be the +real test; and curiosity was stirring greatly in him. + +Yes, here was the woman herself, wilful, original, delightful, with a +flower-like delicacy joined to a determined and gorgeous +audacity. Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian +lamps and lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up +cushions, the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; +but everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with +that paper so dear to every lover of literature. Instinctively he +picked them up one by one, and most of them were affectionately marked +by marginal notes of criticism, approval, or reference; and all +showing the eager, ardent mind of one who loved books. He noticed, +however, that most of the books he had seen before, and some of them +he had read with her in the days which were gone forever. Indeed, in +one of them he found some of his own pencilled marginal notes, beneath +which she had written her insistent opinions, sometimes with amazing +point. There were few new books, and they were mostly novels; and it +was borne in on him that not many of these annotated books belonged to +the past three years. The millions had come, the power and the place; +but something had gone with their coming. + +He was turning over the pages of a volume of Browning when she +entered; and she had an instant to note the grace and manly dignity of +his figure, the poise of the intellectual head--the type of a perfect, +well-bred animal, with the accomplishment of a man of purpose and +executive design. A little frown of trouble came to her forehead, but +she drove it away with a merry laugh, as he turned at the rustle of +her skirts and came forward. + +He noted her blue dress, he guessed the reason she had put it on; and +he made an inward comment of scorn. It was the same blue, and it was +near the same style of the dress she wore the last time he saw +her. She watched to see whether it made any impression on him, and was +piqued to observe that he who had in that far past always swept her +with an admiring, discriminating, and deferential glance, now only +gave her deference of a courteous but perfunctory kind. It made the +note to all she said and did that evening--the daring, the brilliance, +the light allusion to past scenes and happenings, the skilful comment +on the present, the joyous dominance of a position made supreme by +beauty and by gold; behind which were anger and bitterness, and wild +and desperate revolt. + +For, if love was dead in him, and respect, and all that makes man's +association with woman worth while, humiliation and the sting of +punishment and penalty were alive in her, flaying her spirit, rousing +that mad streak which was in her grandfather, who had had many a +combat, the outcome of wild elements of passion in him. She was not +happy; she had never been happy since she married Rudyard Byng; yet +she had said to herself so often that she might have been at peace, in +a sense, had it not been for the letter which Ian Stafford had written +her, when she turned from him to the man she married. + +The passionate resolve to compel him to reproach himself in soul for +his merciless, if subtle, indictment of her to bring him to the old +place where he had knelt in spirit so long ago--ah, it was so +long!--came to her. Self-indulgent and pitifully mean as she had been, +still this man had influenced her more than any other in the world--in +that region where the best of herself lay, the place to which her eyes +had turned always when she wanted a consoling hour. He belonged to her +realm of the imagination, of thought, of insight, of intellectual +passions and the desires of the soul. Far above any physical +attraction Ian had ever possessed for her was the deep conviction that +he gave her mind what no one else gave it, that he was the being who +knew the song her spirit sang.... He should not go forever from her +and with so cynical a completeness. He should return; he should not +triumph in his self-righteousness, be a living reproach to her always +by his careless indifference to everything that had ever been between +them. If he treated her so because of what she had done to him, with +what savagery might not she be treated, if all that had happened in +the last three years were open as a book before him! + +Her husband--she had not thought of that. So much had happened in the +past three years; there had been so much adulation and worship and +daring assault upon her heart--or emotions--from quarters of unusual +distinction, that the finest sense of her was blunted, and true +proportions were lost. Rudyard ought never to have made that five +months' visit to South Africa a year before, leaving her alone to make +the fight against the forces round her. Those five months had brought +a change in her, had made her indignant at times against Rudyard. + +"Why did he go to South Africa? Why did he not take me with him? Why +did he leave me here alone?" she had asked herself. She did not +realize that there would have been no fighting at all, that all the +forces contending against her purity and devotion would never have +gathered at her feet and washed against the shores of her resolution, +if she had loved Rudyard Byng when she married him as she might have +loved him, ought to have loved him. + +The faithful love unconsciously announces its fidelity, and men +instinctively are aware of it, and leave it unassailed. It is the +imperfect love which subtly invites the siege, which makes the call +upon human interest, selfishness, or sympathy, so often without +intended unscrupulousness at first. She had escaped the suspicion, if +not the censure, of the world--or so she thought; and in the main she +was right. But she was now embarked on an enterprise which never would +have been begun, if she had not gambled with her heart and soul three +years ago; if she had not dragged away the veil from her inner self, +putting her at the mercy of one who could say, "I know you--what you +are." + +Just before they went to the dining-room Byng came in and cheerily +greeted Stafford, apologizing for having forgotten his engagement to +dine with Wallstein. + +"But you and Jasmine will have much to talk about," he said--"such old +friends as you are; and fond of books and art and music and all that +kind of thing.... Glad to see you looking so well, Stafford," he +continued. "They say you are the coming man. Well, au revoir. I hope +Jasmine will give you a good dinner." Presently he was gone--in a +heavy movement of good-nature and magnanimity. + +"Changed--greatly changed, and not for the better," said Ian Stafford +to himself." This life has told on him. The bronze of the veld has +vanished, and other things are disappearing." + +At the table with the lights and the flowers and the exquisite +appointments, with appetite flattered and tempted by a dinner of rare +simplicity and perfect cooking, Jasmine was radiant, amusing, and +stimulating in her old way. She had never seemed to him so much a +mistress of delicate satire and allusiveness. He rose to the combat +with an alacrity made more agile by considerable abstinence, for +clever women were few, and real talk was the rarest occurrence in his +life, save with men in his own profession chiefly. + +But later, in her sitting-room, after the coffee had come, there was a +change, and the transition was made with much skill and +sensitiveness. Into Jasmine's voice there came another and more +reflective note, and the drift of the conversation changed. Books +brought the new current; and soon she had him moving almost +unconsciously among old scenes, recalling old contests of ideas, and +venturing on bold reproductions of past intellectual ideals. But +though they were in this dangerous field of the past, he did not once +betray a sign of feeling, not even when, poring over Coventry +Patmore's poems, her hand touched his, and she read the lines which +they had read together so long ago, with no thought of any +significance to themselves: + + + +"With all my will, but much against my heart, +We two now part. +My very Dear, +Our solace is the sad road lies so clear. . . +Go thou to East, I West. +We will not say +There's any hope, it is so far away. . ." + + + +He read the verses with a smile of quiet enjoyment, saying, when he +had finished: + +"A really moving and intimate piece of work. I wonder what their story +was--a hopeless love, of course. An affaire--an 'episode'--London +ladies now call such things." + +"You find London has changed much since you went away--in three years +only?" she asked. + +"Three years--why, it's an eternity, or a minute, as you are obliged +to live it. In penal servitude it is centuries, in the Appian Way of +pleasure it is a sunrise moment. Actual time has nothing to do with +the clock." + +She looked up to the little gold-lacquered clock on the +mantel-piece. "See, it is going to strike," she said. As she spoke, +the little silver hammer softly struck. "That is the clock-time, but +what time is it really--for you, for instance?" + +"In Elysium there is no time," he murmured with a gallantry so +intentionally obvious and artificial that her pulses beat with anger. + +"It is wonderful, then, how you managed the dinner-hour so +exactly. You did not miss it by a fraction." + +"It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight +o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been +dead to time--and the world." + +"You do not suggest that you are in heaven?" she asked, ironically. + +"Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent." + +"Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?" + +"But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with +a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?" His voice trailed along +so coolly that it incensed her further. + +"Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering," she said with great effort to +still the raging tumult within her. "Yet I would not cool it if I +could." + +Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as +she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, +childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied +the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her +more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had "Tossed +him violently like a ball into a far country," and that she had not +now a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; +that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a +man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was +very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard +to get--by what devious ways had she travelled to find it! + +As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, +and Vandyke, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a +strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came +from her lips, so like those of that lass who caught and held her +Nelson to the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, +and alone. Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her +sigh--his name, Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came +over him to turn and clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which +never but once he had kissed, and that was when she had plighted her +secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why +not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured +him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, +the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated +since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of +the wife of Rudyard Byng. Why not? For an instant he had the dark +impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss "as long as my +exile, as sweet as my revenge"; but then the bitter memory came that +this was the woman to whom he had given the best of which he was +capable and the promise of that other best which time and love and +life truly lived might accomplish; and the wild thing died in him. + +The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of +Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not +for the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in +so much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the +hereditary taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive +and wise, in so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he +determined that she should never have that absolution which any +outward or inward renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too +deep--that arrogant, cruel, adventitious attribute of the sinner who +has not committed the same sin as the person he despises-- + +"Sweet is the refuge of scorn." + +His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the +price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had +sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a +woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always +present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it +brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It +ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been +impeccable-- + + + +"The shaft of slander shot +Missed only the right blot!" + + + +Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him +with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye. + +She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at +the door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one +lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of +the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans +the veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the +life. His look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and +Stafford inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife +whose hatred was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized +the antipathy. Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had +seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to +send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year +when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which +Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which +she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes +had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been +Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had +made light of Jasmine's prejudices. + +"The butler is out and they come me," Krool said. "Mr. Stafford's +servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The +boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens." + +Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, +and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the +reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have +induced his servant to fetch the girl. + +"I will come," he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused. + +"Won't you see her here?" she asked. + +Stafford nodded assent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the +room. + +For an instant she stood embarrassed and confused, then she addressed +herself to Stafford. "I'm Lou--Jigger's sister," she said, with white +lips. "I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked +down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer +a promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but +if so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer +himself. 'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all +right--the best as ever--the top best." Suddenly the tears flooded +her eyes and streamed down her pale cheeks. "Oh, 'e was the best--my +Gawd, 'e was the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r +gryce, wouldn't y'r?" + +Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was +simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like +Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep +black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech +that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that +Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in +the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and +friendly help. + +"Where is he? In the hospital?" Stafford asked. + +"It was just beside our own 'ome it 'appened. We got two rooms now, +Jigger and me. 'E was took in there. The doctor come, but 'e says it +ain't no use. 'E didn't seem to care much, and 'e didn't give no 'ope, +not even when I said I'd give him all me wages for a year." + +Jasmine was beside her now, wiping her tears and holding her hand, her +impulsive nature stirred, her heart throbbing with desire to +help. Suddenly she remembered what Rudyard had said up-stairs three +hours ago, that there wasn't a single person in the world to whom they +had done an act which was truly and purely personal during the past +three years: and she had a tremulous desire to help this crude, +mothering, passionately pitiful girl. + +"What will you do?" Jasmine said to Stafford. + +"I will go at once. Tell my servant to have up a cab," he said to +Krool, who stood outside the door. + +"Truly, 'e will be glad," the girl exclaimed. "'E told me about the +suvring, and Sunday-week for brekfis," she murmured. "You'll never +miss the time, y'r gryce. Gawd knows you'll not miss it--an' 'e ain't +got much left." + +"I will go, too--if you will let me," said Jasmine to Stafford. "You +must let me go. I want to help--so much." + +"No, you must not come," he replied. "I will pick up a surgeon in +Harley Street, and we'll see if it is as hopeless as she says. But you +must not come to-night. To-morrow, certainly, to-morrow, if you +will. Perhaps you can do some good then. I will let you know." + +He held out his hand to say good-bye, as the girl passed out with +Jasmine's kiss on her cheek and a comforting assurance of help. + +Jasmine did not press her request. First there was the fact that +Rudyard did not know, and might strongly disapprove; and secondly, +somehow, she had got nearer to Stafford in the last few minutes than +in all the previous hours since they had met again. Nowhere, by all +her art, had she herself touched him, or opened up in his nature one +tiny stream of feeling; but this girl's story and this piteous +incident had softened him, had broken down the barriers which had +checked and baffled her. There was something almost gentle in his +smile as he said good-bye, and she thought she detected warmth in the +clasp of his hand. + +Left alone, she sat in the silence, pondering as she had not pondered +in the past three years. These few days in town, out of the season, +were sandwiched between social functions from which their lives were +never free. They had ever passed from event to event like minor +royalties with endless little ceremonies and hospitalities; and there +had been so little time to meditate--had there even been the wish? + +The house was very still, and the far-off, muffled rumble of omnibuses +and cabs gave a background of dignity to this interior peace and +luxurious quiet. For long she sat unmoving--nearly two hours--alone +with her inmost thoughts. Then she went to the little piano in the +corner where stood the statue of Andromeda, and began to play +softly. Her fingers crept over the keys, playing snatches of things +she knew years before, improvising soft, passionate little +movements. She took no note of time. At last the clock struck twelve, +and still she sat there playing. Then she began to sing a song which +Alice Tynemouth had written and set to music two years before. It was +simply yet passionately written, and the wail of anguished +disappointment, of wasted chances was in it-- + + + +"Once in the twilight of the Austrian hills, +A word came to me, beautiful and good; +If I had spoken it, that message of the stars, +Love would have filled thy blood: +Love would have sent thee pulsing to my arms, +Thy heart a nestling bird; +A moment fled--it passed: +I seek in vain +For that forgotten word." + + + +In the last notes the voice rose in passionate pain, and died away +into an aching silence. + +She leaned her arms on the piano in front of her and laid her forehead +on them. + +"When will it all end--what will become of me!" she cried in pain that +strangled her heart. "I am so bad--so bad. I was doomed from the +beginning. I always felt it so--always, even when things were +brightest. I am the child of black Destiny. For me--there is nothing, +nothing, for me. The straight path was before me, and I would not walk +in it." + +With a gesture of despair, and a sudden faintness, she got up and went +over to the tray of spirits and liqueurs which had been brought in +with the coffee. Pouring out a liqueur-glass of brandy, she was about +to drink it, when her ear became attracted by a noise without, a +curious stumbling, shuffling sound. She put down the glass, went to +the door that opened into the hall, and looked out and down. One light +was still burning below, and she could see distinctly. A man was +clumsily, heavily, ascending the staircase, holding on to the +balustrade. He was singing to himself, breaking into the maudlin +harmony with an occasional laugh-- + + + +"For this is the way we do it on the veld, +When the band begins to play; +With one bottle on the table and one below the belt, +When the band begins to play--" + + + +It was Rudyard, and he was drunk--almost helplessly drunk. + +A cry of pain rose to her lips, but her trembling hand stopped +it. With a shudder she turned back to her sitting-room. Throwing +herself on the divan where she had sat with Ian Stafford, she buried +her face in her arms. The hours went by. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +IN WALES, WHERE JIGGER PLAYS HIS PART + + +"Really, the unnecessary violence with which people take their own +lives, or the lives of others, is amazing. They did it better in olden +days in Italy and the East. No waste or anything--all scientifically +measured." + +With a confident and satisfied smile Mr. Mappin, the celebrated +surgeon, looked round the little group of which he was the centre at +Glencader, Rudyard Byng's castle in Wales. + +Rudyard blinked at him for a moment with ironical amusement, then +remarked: "When you want to die, does it matter much whether you kill +yourself with a bludgeon or a pin, take gas from a tap or cyanide of +potassium, jump in front of a railway train or use the revolting +razor? You are dead neither less nor more, and the shock to the world +is the same. It's only the housemaid or the undertaker that notices +any difference. I knew a man at Vleifontein who killed himself by +jumping into the machinery of a mill. It gave a lot of trouble to all +concerned. That was what he wanted--to end his own life and exasperate +the foreman." + +"Rudyard, what a horrible tale!" exclaimed his wife, turning again to +the surgeon, eagerly. "It is most interesting, and I see what you +mean. It is, that if we only really knew, we could take our own lives +or other people's with such ease and skill that it would be hard to +detect it?" + +The surgeon nodded. "Exactly, Mrs. Byng. I don't say that the expert +couldn't find what the cause of death was, if suspicion was aroused; +but it could be managed so that 'heart failure' or some such silly +verdict would be given, because there was no sign of violence, or of +injury artificially inflicted." + +"It is fortunate the world doesn't know these ways to euthanasia," +interposed Stafford. "I fancy that murders would be more numerous than +suicides, however. Suicide enthusiasts would still pursue their +melodramatic indulgences--disfiguring themselves unnecessarily." + +Adrian Fellowes, the amiable, ever-present secretary and "chamberlain" +of Rudyard's household, as Jasmine teasingly called him, whose +handsome, unintellectual face had lighted with amusement at the +conversation, now interposed. "Couldn't you give us some idea how it +can be done, this smooth passage of the Styx?" he asked. "We'll +promise not to use it." + +The surgeon looked round the little group reflectively. His eyes +passed from Adrian to Jasmine, who stood beside him, to Byng, and to +Ian Stafford, and stimulated by their interest, he gave a pleased +smile of gratified vanity. He was young, and had only within the past +three years got to the top of the tree at a bound, by a certain +successful operation in royal circles. + +Drawing out of his pocket a small case, he took from it a needle and +held it up. "Now that doesn't look very dangerous, does it?" he +asked. "Yet a firm pressure of its point could take a life, and there +would be little possibility of finding how the ghastly trick was done +except by the aroused expert." + +"If you will allow me," he said, taking Jasmine's hand and poising the +needle above her palm. "Now, one tiny thrust of this steel point, +which has been dipped in a certain acid, would kill Mrs. Byng as +surely as though she had been shot through the heart. Yet it would +leave scarcely the faintest sign. No blood, no wound, just a tiny +pin-prick, as it were; and who would be the wiser? Imagine an average +coroner's jury and the average examination of the village doctor, who +would die rather than expose his ignorance, and therefore gives 'heart +failure' as the cause of death." + +Jasmine withdrew her hand with a shudder. "Please, I don't like being +so near the point," she said. + +"Woman-like," interjected Byng ironically. + +"How does it happen you carry this murdering asp about with you, +Mr. Mappin?" asked Stafford. + +The surgeon smiled. "For an experiment to-morrow. Don't start. I have +a favorite collie which must die. I am testing the poison with the +minimum. If it kills the dog it will kill two men." + +He was about to put the needle back into the case when Adrian Fellowes +held out a hand for it. "Let me look at it," he said. Turning the +needle over in his palm, he examined it carefully. "So near and yet so +far," he remarked. "There are a good many people who would pay a high +price for the little risk and the dead certainty. You wouldn't, +perhaps, tell us what the poison is, Mr. Mappin? We are all very +reliable people here, who have no enemies, and who want to keep their +friends alive. We should then be a little syndicate of five, holding a +great secret, and saving numberless lives every day by not giving the +thing away. We should all be entitled to monuments in Parliament +Square." + +The surgeon restored the needle to the case. "I think one monument +will be sufficient," he said. "Immortality by syndicate is too modern, +and this is an ancient art." He tapped the case." Turkey and the +Mongol lands have kept the old cult going. In England, it's only for +the dog!" He laughed freely but noiselessly at his own joke. + +This talk had followed the news brought by Krool to the Baas, that the +sub-manager of the great mine, whose chimneys could be seen from the +hill behind the house, had thrown himself down the shaft and been +smashed to a pulp. None of them except Byng had known him, and the +dark news had brought no personal shock. + +They had all gathered in the library, after paying an afternoon visit +to Jigger, who had been brought down from London in a special +carriage, and was housed near the servants' quarters with a nurse. On +the night of Jigger's accident Ian Stafford on his way from Jasmine's +house had caught Mr. Mappin, and the surgeon had operated at once, +saving the lad's life. As it was necessary to move him in any case, it +was almost as easy, and no more dangerous, to bring him to Glencader +than to take him to a London hospital. + +Under the surgeon's instructions Jasmine had arranged it all, and +Jigger had travelled like royalty from Paddington into Wales, and +there had captured the household, as he had captured Stafford at +breakfast in St. James's Street. + +Thinking that perhaps this was only a whim of Jasmine's, and merely +done because it gave a new interest to a restless temperament, +Stafford had at first rejected the proposal. When, however, the +surgeon said that if the journey was successfully made, the +after-results would be all to the good, Stafford had assented, and had +allowed himself to be included in the house-party at Glencader. + +It was a triumph for Jasmine, for otherwise Stafford would not have +gone. Whether she would have insisted on Jigger going to Glencader if +it had not meant that Ian would go also, it would be hard to say. Her +motives were not unmixed, though there had been a real impulse to do +all she could. In any case, she had lessened the distance between Ian +and herself, and that gave her wilful mind a rather painful +pleasure. Also, the responsibility for Jigger's well-being, together +with her duties as hostess, had prevented her from dwelling on that +scene in the silent house at midnight which had shocked her so--her +husband reeling up the staircase, singing a ribald song. + +The fullest significance of this incident had not yet come home to +her. She had fought against dwelling on it, and she was glad that +every moment since they had come to Glencader had been full; that +Rudyard had been much away with the shooters, and occupied in trying +to settle a struggle between the miners and the proprietors of the +mine itself, of whom he was one. Still, things that Rudyard had said +before he left the house to dine with Wallstein, leaving her with +Stafford, persistently recurred to her mind. + +"What's the matter?" had been Rudyard's troubled cry. "We've got +everything--everything, and yet--!" Her eyes were not opened. She had +had a shock, but it had not stirred the inner, smothered life; there +had been no real revelation. She was agitated and disturbed--no +more. She did not see that the man she had married to love and to +cherish was slowly changing--was the change only a slow one +now?--before her eyes; losing that brave freshness which had so +appealed to London when he first came back to civilization. Something +had been subtracted from his personality which left it poorer, +something had been added which made it less appealing. Something had +given way in him. There had been a subsidence of moral energy, and +force had inwardly declined, though to all outward seeming he had +played a powerful and notable part in the history of the last three +years, gaining influence in many directions, without suffering +excessive notoriety. + +On the day Rudyard married Jasmine he would have cut off his hand +rather than imagine that he would enter his wife's room helpless from +drink and singing a song which belonged to loose nights on the Limpopo +and the Vaal. + +As the little group drew back, their curiosity satisfied, Mr. Mappin, +putting the case carefully into his pocket again, said to Jasmine: + +"The boy is going on so well that I am not needed longer. Mr. Wharton, +my locum tenens, will give him every care." + +"When did you think of going?" Jasmine asked him, as they all moved on +towards the hall, where the other guests were assembled. + +"To-morrow morning early, if I may. No night travel for me, if I can +help it." + +"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, +graciously. "Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us +this evening. Is it not thrilling?" + +There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian +Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an +enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry +Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was +cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely +bring Al'mah to Glencader and play Fellowes' game for him. + +Jasmine, in fact, had not heard. Days before she had wondered that +Adrian had tried to discourage her invitation to Al'mah. While it was +an invitation, it was also an engagement, on terms which would have +been adequate for Patti in her best days. It would, if repeated a few +times, reimburse Al'mah for the sums she had placed in Byng's hands at +the time of the Raid, and also, later still, to buy the life of her +husband from Oom Paul. It had been insufficient, not because of the +value of the article for sale, but because of the rapacity of the +vender. She had paid half the cruel balance demanded; Byng and his +friends had paid the rest without her knowledge; and her husband had +been set free. + +Byng had only seen Al'mah twice since the day when she first came to +his rooms, and not at all during the past two years, save at the +opera, where she tightened the cords of captivity to her gifts around +her admirers. Al'mah had never met Mrs. Byng since the day after that +first production of "Manassa," when Rudyard rescued her, though she +had seen her at the opera again and again. She cared nothing for +society or for social patronage or approval, and the life that Jasmine +led had no charms for her. The only interest she had in it was that it +suited Adrian from every standpoint. He loved the splendid social +environment of which Jasmine was the centre, and his services were +well rewarded. + +When she received Jasmine's proposal to sing at Glencader she had +hesitated to accept it, for society had no charms for her; but at +length three considerations induced her to do so. She wanted to see +Rudyard Byng, for South Africa and its shadow was ever present with +her; and she dreaded she knew not what. Blantyre was still her +husband, and he might return--and return still less a man than when he +deserted her those sad long years ago. Also, she wanted to see Jigger, +because of his sister Lou, whose friendless beauty, so primitively +set, whose transparent honesty appealed to her quick, generous +impulses. Last of all she wanted to see Adrian in the surroundings and +influences where his days had been constantly spent during the past +three years. + +Never before had she had the curiosity to do so. Adrian had, however, +deftly but clearly tried to dissuade her from coming to Glencader, and +his reasons were so new and unconvincing that, for the first +time,--she had a nature of strange trustfulness once her faith was +given--a vague suspicion concerning Adrian perplexed and troubled +her. His letter had arrived some hours after Jasmine's, and then her +answer was immediate--she would accept. Adrian heard of the acceptance +first through Jasmine, to whom he had spoken of his long +"acquaintance" with the great singer. + +From Byng's look, as they moved towards the hall, Adrian gathered that +rumour had reached a quarter where he had much at stake; but it did +not occur to him that this would be to his disadvantage. Byng was a +man of the world. Besides, he had his own reasons for feeling no +particular fear where Byng was concerned. His glance ran from Byng's +face to that of Jasmine; but, though her eyes met his, there was +nothing behind her glance which had to do with Al'mah. + +In the great hall whose windows looked out on a lovely, sunny valley +still as green as summer, the rest of the house-party were gathered, +and Jigger's visitors were at once surrounded. + +Among the visitors were Alice, Countess of Tynemouth, also the +Slavonian ambassador, whose extremely pale face, stooping shoulders, +and bald head with the hair carefully brushed over from each side in a +vain attempt to cover the baldness, made him seem older than he really +was. Count Landrassy had lived his life in many capitals up to the +limit of his vitality, and was still covetous of notice from the sex +who had, in a checkered career, given him much pleasure, and had +provided him with far more anxiety. But he was almost uncannily able +and astute, as every man found who entered the arena of diplomacy to +treat with him or circumvent him. Suavity, with an attendant mordant +wit, and a mastery of tactics unfamiliar to the minds and capacities +of Englishmen, made him a great factor in the wide world of haute +politique; but it also drew upon him a wealth of secret hatred and +outward attention. His follies were lashed by the tongues of virtue +and of slander; but his abilities gave him a commanding place in the +arena of international politics. + +As Byng and his party approached, the eyes of the ambassador and of +Lady Tynemouth were directed towards Ian Stafford. The glance of the +former was ironical and a little sardonic. He had lately been deeply +engaged in checkmating the singularly skilful and cleverly devised +negotiations by which England was to gain a powerful advantage in +Europe, the full significance of which even he had not yet +pierced. This he knew, but what he apprehended with the instinct of an +almost scientific sense became unduly important to his mind. The +author of the profoundly planned international scheme was this young +man, who had already made the chancelleries of Europe sit up and look +about them in dismay; for its activities were like those of +underground wires; and every area of diplomacy, the nearest, the most +remote, was mined and primed, so that each embassy played its part +with almost startling effect. Tibet and Persia were not too far, and +France was not too near to prevent the incalculably smooth working of +a striking and far-reaching political move. It was the kind of thing +that England's Prime Minister, with his extraordinary frankness, with +his equally extraordinary secretiveness, insight and immobility, +delighted in; and Slavonia and its ambassador knew, as an American +high in place had colloquially said, "that they were up against a +proposition which would take some moving." + +The scheme had taken some moving. But it had not yet succeeded; and if +M. Mennaval, the ambassador of Moravia, influenced by Count Landrassy, +pursued his present tactics on behalf of his government, Ian +Stafford's coup would never be made, and he would have to rise to fame +in diplomacy by slower processes. It was the daily business of the +Slavonian ambassador to see that M. Mennaval of Moravia was not +captured either by tactics, by smooth words, or all those arts which +lay beneath the outward simplicity of Ian Stafford and of those who +worked with him. + +With England on the verge of war, the outcome of the negotiations was +a matter of vital importance. It might mean the very question of +England's existence as an empire. England in a conflict with South +Africa, the hour long desired by more than one country, in which she +would be occupied to the limit of her capacity, with resources taxed +to the utmost, army inadequate, and military affairs in confusion, +would come, and with it the opportunity to bring the Titan to her +knees. This diplomatic scheme of Ian Stafford, however, would prevent +the worst in any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be +working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give +England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new +territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre. + +Count Landrassy had thought at first, when Ian Stafford came to +Glencader, that this meeting had been purposely arranged; but through +Byng's frankness and ingenuous explanations he saw that he was +mistaken. The two subtle and combating diplomats had not yet conversed +save in a general way by the smoking-room fire. + +Lady Tynemouth's eyes fell on Ian with a different meaning. His coming +to Glencader had been a surprise to her. He had accepted an invitation +to visit her in another week, and she had only come to know later of +the chance meeting of Ian and Jasmine in London, and the subsequent +accident to Jigger which had brought Ian down to Wales. The man who +had saved her life on her wedding journey, and whose walls were still +garish with the red parasol which had nearly been her death, had a +place quite his own in her consideration. She had, of course, known of +his old infatuation for Jasmine, though she did not know all; and she +knew also that he had put Jasmine out of his life completely when she +married Byng; which was not a source of regret to her. She had written +him about Jasmine, again and again,--of what she did and what the +world said--and his replies had been as casual and as careless as the +most jealous woman could desire; though she was not consciously +jealous, and, of course, had no right to be. + +She saw no harm in having a man as a friend on a basis of intimacy +which drew the line at any possibility of divorce-court +proceedings. Inside this line she frankly insisted on latitude, and +Tynemouth gave it to her without thought or anxiety. He was too fond +of outdoor life, of racing and hunting and shooting and polo and +travel, to have his eye unnerved by any such foolishness as jealousy. + +"Play the game--play the game, Alice, and so will I, and the rest of +the world be hanged!" was what Tynemouth had said to his wife; and it +would not have occurred to him to suspect Stafford, or to read one of +his letters to Lady Tynemouth. He had no literary gifts; in truth, he +had no "culture," and he looked upon his wife's and Stafford's +interest in literature and art as a game of mystery he had never +learned. Inconsequent he thought it in his secret mind, but played by +nice, clever, possible, "livable" people; and, therefore, not to be +pooh-poohed openly or kicked out of the way. Besides, it "gave Alice +something to do, and prevented her from being lonely--and all that +kind of thing." + +Thus it was that Lady Tynemouth, who had played the game all round +according to her lights, and thought no harm of what she did, or of +her weakness for Ian Stafford--of her open and rather gushing +friendship for him--had an almost honest dislike to seeing him +brought into close relations again with the woman who had +dishonourably treated him. Perhaps she wanted his friendship wholly +for herself; but that selfish consideration did not overshadow the +feeling that Jasmine had cheated at cards, as it were; and that Ian +ought not to be compelled to play with her again. + +"But men, even the strongest, are so weak," she had said to Tynemouth +concerning it, and he had said in reply, "And the weakest are so +strong--sometimes." + +At which she had pulled his shoulder, and had said with a delighted +laugh, "Tynie, if you say clever things like that I'll fall in love +with you." + +To which he had replied: "Now, don't take advantage of a moment's +aberration, Alice; and for Heaven's sake don't fall in love wiv me" +(he made a v of a th, like Jigger). "I couldn't go to Uganda if you +did." + +To which she had responded, "Dear me, are you going to Uganda?" and +was told with a nod that next month he would be gone. This +conversation had occurred on the day of their arrival at Glencader; +and henceforth Alice had forcibly monopolized Stafford whenever and +wherever possible. So far, it had not been difficult, because Jasmine +had, not ostentatiously, avoided being often with Stafford. It seemed +to Jasmine that she must not see much of him alone. Still there was +some new cause to provoke his interest and draw him to herself. The +Jigger episode had done much, had altered the latitudes of their +association, but the perihelion of their natures was still far off; +and she was apprehensive, watchful, and anxious. + +This afternoon, however, she felt that she must talk with him. Waiting +and watching were a new discipline for her, and she was not yet the +child of self-denial. Fate, if there be such a thing, favoured her, +however, for as they drew near to the fireplace where the ambassador +and Alice Tynemouth and her husband stood, Krool entered, came forward +to Byng, and spoke in a low tone to him. + +A minute afterward, Byng said to them all: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm +afraid we can't carry out our plans for the afternoon. There's trouble +again at the mine, and I am needed, or they think I am. So I must go +there--and alone, I'm sorry to say; not with you all, as I had +hoped. Jasmine, you must plan the afternoon. The carriages are +ready. There's the Glen o' Smiling, well worth seeing, and the +Murderer's Leap, and Lover's Land--something for all tastes," he +added, with a dry note to his voice. + +"Take care of yourself, Ruddy man," Jasmine said, as he left them +hurriedly, with an affectionate pinch of her arm. "I don't like these +mining troubles," she added to the others, and proceeded to arrange +the afternoon. + +She did it so deftly that she and Ian and Adrian Fellowes were the +only ones left behind out of a party of twelve. She had found it +impossible to go on any of the excursions, because she must stay and +welcome Al'mah. She meant to drive to the station herself, she +said. Adrian stayed behind because he must superintend the +arrangements of the ball-room for the evening, or so he said; and Ian +Stafford stayed because he had letters to write--ostensibly; for he +actually meant to go and sit with Jigger, and to send a code message +to the Prime Minister, from whom he had had inquiries that morning. + +When the others had gone, the three stood for a moment silent in the +hall, then Adrian said to Jasmine, "Will you give me a moment in the +ball-room about those arrangements?" + +Jasmine glanced out of the corner of her eye at Ian. He showed no sign +that he wanted her to remain. A shadow crossed her face, but she +laughingly asked him if he would come also. + +"If you don't mind--!" he said, shaking his head in negation; but he +walked with them part of the way to the ball-room, and left them at +the corridor leading to his own little sitting-room. + +A few minutes later, as Jasmine stood alone at a window looking down +into the great stone quadrangle, she saw him crossing toward the +servants' quarters. + +"He is going to Jigger," she said, her heart beating faster. "Oh, but +he is 'the best ever,'" she added, repeating Lou's words--"the best +ever!" + +Her eye brightened with intention. She ran down the corridor, and +presently made her way to the housekeeper's room. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE KEY IN THE LOCK + + +A quarter of an hour later Jasmine softly opened the door of the room +where Jigger lay, and looked in. The nurse stood at the foot of the +bed, listening to talk between Jigger and Ian, the like of which she +had never heard. She was smiling, for Jigger was original, to say the +least of it, and he had a strange, innocent, yet wise philosophy. Ian +sat with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, leaning towards the +gallant little sufferer, talking like a boy to a boy, and getting +revelations of life of which he had never even dreamed. + +Jasmine entered with a little tray in one hand, bearing a bowl of +delicate broth, while under an arm was a puzzle-box, which was one of +the relics of a certain house-party in which a great many smart people +played at the simple life, and sought to find a new sensation in +making believe they were the village rector's brood of innocents. She +was dressed in a gown almost as simple in make as that of the nurse, +but of exquisite material--the soft green velvet which she had worn +when she met Ian in the sweetshop in Regent Street. Her hair was a +perfect gold, wavy and glistening and prettily fine, and her eyes were +shining--so blue, so deep, so alluring. + +The boy saw her first, and his eyes grew bigger with welcome and +interest. + +"It's her--me lydy," he said with a happy gasp, for she seemed to him +like a being from another sphere. When she came near him the faint, +delicious perfume exhaling from her garments was like those +flower-gardens and scented fields to which he had once been sent for a +holiday by some philanthropic society. + +Ian rose as the nurse came forward quickly to relieve Jasmine of the +tray and the box. His first glance was enigmatical--almost +suspicious--then, as he saw the radiance in her face and the burden +she carried, a new light came into his eyes. In this episode of Jigger +she had shown all that gentle charm, sympathy, and human feeling which +he had once believed belonged so much to her. It seemed to him in the +old days that at heart she was simple, generous, and capable of the +best feelings of woman, and of living up to them; and there began to +grow at the back of his mind now the thought that she had been carried +away by a great temptation--the glitter and show of power and all that +gold can buy, and a large circle for the skirts of woman's pride and +vanity. If she had married him instead of Byng, they would now be +living in a small house in Curzon Street, or some such fashionable +quarter, with just enough to enable them to keep their end up with +people who had five thousand a year--with no box at the opera, or +house in the country, or any of the great luxuries, and with a +thriving nursery which would be a promise of future expense--if she +had married him! . . . A kinder, gentler spirit was suddenly awake in +him, and he did not despise her quite so much. On her part, she saw +him coming nearer, as, standing in the door of a cottage in a valley, +one sees trailing over the distant hills, with the light behind, a +welcome and beloved figure with face turned towards the home in the +green glade. + +A smile came to his lips, as suspicion stole away ashamed, and he +said: "This will not do. Jigger will be spoiled. We shall have to see +Mr. Mappin about it." + +As she yielded to him the puzzle-box, which she had refused to the +nurse, she said: "And pray who sets the example? I am a very imitative +person. Besides, I asked Mr. Mappin about the broth, so it's all +right; and Jigger will want the puzzle-box when you are not here," she +added, quizzically. + +"Diversion or continuity?" he asked, with a laugh, as she held the +bowl of soup to Jigger's lips. At this point the nurse had discreetly +left the room. + +"Continuity, of course," she replied. "All diplomatists are puzzles, +some without solution." + +"Who said I was a diplomatist?" he asked, lightly. + +"Don't think that I'm guilty of the slander," she rejoined. "It was +the Moravian ambassador who first suggested that what you were by +profession you were by nature." + +Jasmine felt Ian hold his breath for a moment, then he said in a low +tone, "M. Mennaval--you know him well?" + +She did not look towards him, but she was conscious that he was eying +her intently. She put aside the bowl, and began to adjust Jigger's +pillow with deft fingers, while the lad watched her with a worship +worth any money to one attacked by ennui and stale with purchased +pleasures. + +"I know him well--yes, quite well," she replied. "He comes sometimes +of an afternoon, and if he had more time--or if I had--he would no +doubt come oftener. But time is the most valuable thing I have, and I +have less of it than anything else." + +"A diminishing capital, too," he returned with a laugh; while his mind +was suddenly alert to an idea which had flown into his vision, though +its full significance did not possess him yet. + +"The Moravian ambassador is not very busy," he added with an undertone +of meaning. + +"Perhaps; but I am," she answered with like meaning, and looked him in +the eyes, steadily, serenely, determinedly. All at once there had +opened out before her a great possibility. Both from the Count +Landrassy and from the Moravian ambassador she had had hints of some +deep, international scheme of which Ian Stafford was the +engineer-in-chief, though she did not know definitely what it +was. Both ambassadors had paid their court to her, each in a different +way, and M. Mennaval would have been as pertinacious as he was vain +and somewhat weak (albeit secretive, too, with the feminine instinct +so strong in him) if she had not checked him at all points. From what +Count Landrassy had said, it would appear that Ian Stafford's future +hung in the balance--dependent upon the success of his great +diplomatic scheme. + +Could she help Ian? Could she help him? Had the time come when she +could pay her debt, the price of ransom from the captivity in which he +held her true and secret character? It had been vaguely in her mind +before; but now, standing beside Jigger's bed, with the lad's feverish +hand in hers, there spread out before her a vision of a lien lifted, +of an ugly debt redeemed, of freedom from this man's scorn. If she +could do some great service for him, would not that wipe out the +unsettled claim? If she could help to give him success, would not +that, in the end, be more to him than herself? For she would soon +fade, the dust would soon gather over her perished youth and beauty; +but his success would live on, ever freshening in his sight, rising +through long years to a great height, and remaining fixed and +exalted. With a great belief she believed in him and what he could +do. He was a Sisyphus who could and would roll the-huge stone to the +top of the hill--and ever with easier power. + +The old touch of romance and imagination which had been the governing +forces of her grandfather's life, the passion of an idea, however +essentially false and meretricious and perilous to all that was worth +while keeping in life, set her pulses beating now. As a child her +pulses used to beat so when she had planned with her good-for-nothing +brother some small escapade looming immense in the horizon of her +enjoyment. She had ever distorted or inflamed the facts of life by an +overheated fancy, by the spirit of romance, by a gift--or curse--of +imagination, which had given her also dark visions of a miserable end, +of a clouded and piteous close to her brief journey. "I am +doomed--doomed," had been her agonized cry that day before Ian +Stafford went away three years ago, and the echo of that cry was often +in her heart, waking and sleeping. It had come upon her the night when +Rudyard reeled, intoxicated, up the staircase. She had the penalties +of her temperament shadowing her footsteps always, dimming the +radiance which broke forth for long periods, and made her so rare and +wonderful a figure in her world. She was so young, and so exquisite, +that Fate seemed harsh and cruel in darkening her vision, making +pitfalls for her feet. + +Could she help him? Had her moment come when she could force him to +smother his scorn and wait at her door for bounty? She would make the +effort to know. + +"But, yes, I am very busy," she repeated. "I have little interest in +Moravia--which is fortunate; for I could not find the time to study +it." + +"If you had interest in Moravia, you would find the time with little +difficulty," he answered, lightly, yet thinking ironically that he +himself had given much time and study to Moravia, and so far had not +got much return out of it. Moravia was the crux of his diplomacy. +Everything depended on it; but Landrassy, the Slavonian ambassador, +had checkmated him at every move towards the final victory. + +"It is not a study I would undertake con amore," she said, smiling +down at Jigger, who watched her with sharp yet docile eyes. Then, +suddenly turning towards him again, she said: + +"But you are interested in Moravia--do you find it worth the time?" + +"Did Count Landrassy tell you that?" he asked. + +"And also the ambassador for Moravia; but only in the vaguest and +least consequential way," she replied. + +She regarded him steadfastly. "It is only just now--is it a kind of +telepathy'--that I seem to get a message from what we used to call the +power-house, that you are deeply interested in Moravia and +Slavonia. Little things which have been said seem to have new meaning +now, and I feel"--she smiled significantly--"that I am standing on the +brink of some great happening, and only a big secret, like a cloud, +prevents me from seeing it, realizing it. Is it so?" she added, in a +low voice. + +He regarded her intently. His look held hers. It would seem as though +he tried to read the depths of her soul; as though he was asking if +what had once proved so false could in the end prove true; for it came +to him with sudden force, with sure conviction, that she could help +him as no one else could; that at this critical moment, when he was +trembling between success and failure, her secret influence might be +the one reinforcement necessary to conduct him to victory. Greater and +better men than himself had used women to further their vast purposes; +could one despise any human agency, so long as it was not +dishonourable, in the carrying out of great schemes? + +It was for Britain--for her ultimate good, for the honour and glory of +the Empire, for the betterment of the position of all men of his race +in all the world, their prestige, their prosperity, their patriotism; +and no agency should be despised. He knew so well what powers of +intrigue had been used against him, by the embassy of Slavonia and +those of other countries. His own methods had been simple and direct; +only the scheme itself being intricate, complicated, and reaching +further than any diplomatist, except his own Prime Minister, had +dreamed. If carried, it would recast the international position in the +Orient, necessitating new adjustments in Europe, with cession of +territory and gifts for gifts in the way of commercial treaties and +the settlement of outstanding difficulties. + +His key, if it could be made to turn in the lock, would open the door +to possibilities of prodigious consequence. + +He had been three years at work, and the end must come soon. The +crisis was near. A game can only be played for a given time, then it +works itself out, and a new one must take its place. His top was +spinning hard, but already the force of the gyration was failing, and +he must presently make his exit with what the Prime Minister called +his Patent, or turn the key in the lock and enter upon his kingdom. In +three months--in two months--in one month--it might be too late, for +war was coming; and war would destroy his plans, if they were not +furfilled now. Everything must be done before war came, or be forever +abandoned. + +This beautiful being before him could help him. She had brains, she +was skilful, inventive, supple, ardent, yet intellectually +discreet. She had as much as told him that the ambassador of Moravia +had paid her the compliment of admiring her with some ardour. It would +not grieve him to see her make a fool and a tool of the impressionable +yet adroit diplomatist, whose vanity was matched by his unreliability, +and who had a passion for philandering--unlike Count Landrassy, who +had no inclination to philander, who carried his citadels by direct +attack in great force. Yes, Jasmine could help him, and, as in the +dead years when it seemed that she would be the courier star of his +existence, they understood each other without words. + +"It is so," he said at last, in a low voice, his eyes still regarding +her with almost painful intensity. + +"Do you trust me--now--again?" she asked, a tremor in her voice and +her small hand clasping ever and ever tighter the fingers of the lad, +whose eyes watched her with such dog-like adoration. + +A mournful smile stole to his lips--and stayed. "Come where we can be +quiet and I will tell you all," he said. "You can help me, maybe." + +"I will help you," she said, firmly, as the nurse entered the room +again and, approaching the bed, said, "I think he ought to sleep now"; +and forthwith proceeded to make Jigger comfortable. + +When Stafford bade Jigger good-bye, the lad said: "I wish I could 'ear +the singing to-night, y'r gryce. I mean the primmer donner. Lou says +she's a fair wonder." + +"We will open your window," Jasmine said, gently. "The ball-room is +just across the quadrangle, and you will be able to hear perfectly." + +"Thank you, me lydy," he answered, gratefully, and his eyes closed. + +"Come," said Jasmine to Stafford. "I will take you where we can talk +undisturbed." + +They passed out, and both were silent as they threaded the corridors +and hallways; but in Jasmine's face was a light of exaltation and of +secret triumph. + +"We must give Jigger a good start in life," she said, softly, as they +entered her sitting-room. Jigger had broken down many barriers between +her and the man who, a week ago, had been eternities distant from her. + +"He's worth a lot of thought," Ian answered, as the pleasant room +enveloped him, and they seated themselves on a big couch before the +fire. + +Again there was a long silence; then, not looking at her, but gazing +into the fire, Ian Stafford slowly unfolded the wide and wonderful +enterprise of diplomacy in which his genius was employed. She listened +with strained attention, but without moving. Her eyes were fixed on +his face, and once, as the proposed meaning of the scheme was made +dear by the turn of one illuminating phrase, she gave a low +exclamation of wonder and delight. That was all until, at last, +turning to her as though from some vision that had chained him, he saw +the glow in her eyes, the profound interest, which was like the +passion of a spirit moved to heroic undertaking. Once again it was as +in the years gone by--he trusted her, in spite of himself; in spite of +himself he had now given his very life into her hands, was making her +privy to great designs which belonged to the inner chambers of the +chancelleries of Europe. + +Almost timorously, as it seemed, she put out her hand and touched his +shoulder. "It is wonderful--wonderful," she said. "I can, I will help +you. Will let you let me win back your trust--Ian?" + +"I want your help, Jasmine," he replied, and stood up. "It is the last +turn of the wheel. It may be life or death to me professionally." + +"It shall be life," she said, softly. + +He turned slowly from her and went towards the door. + +"Shall we not go for a walk," she intervened--"before I drive to the +station for Al'mah?" + +He nodded, and a moment afterward they were passing along the +corridors. Suddenly, as they passed a window, Ian stopped. "I thought +Mr. Mappin went with the others to the Glen?" he said. + +"He did," was the reply. + +"Who is that leaving his room?" he continued, as she followed his +glance across the quadrangle. "Surely, it's Fellowes," he added. + +"Yes, it looked like Mr. Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of +wonder. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +"I WILL NOT SING" + + + +"I will not sing--it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid +with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in +determination. Her words came with low vehemence. + +Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing +and gentle. + +"Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked. "There are a hundred +people in the ball-room. Some of them have driven thirty miles to hear +you. Besides, you are bound in honour to keep your engagement." + +"I am bound to keep nothing that I don't wish to keep--you +understand!" she replied, with a passionate gesture. "I am free to do +what I please with my voice and with myself. I will leave here in the +morning. I sang before dinner. That pays my board and a little over," +she added, with bitterness. "I prefer to be a paying guest. Mrs. Byng +shall not be my paying hostess." + +Fellowes shrugged his shoulders, but his lips twitched with +excitement. "I don't know what has come over you, Al'mah," he said +helplessly and with an anxiety he could not disguise. "You can't do +that kind of thing. It isn't fair, it isn't straight business; from a +social standpoint, it isn't well-bred." + +"Well-bred!" she retorted with a scornful laugh and a look of angry +disdain. "You once said I had the manners of Madame Sans Gene, the +washer-woman--a sickly joke, it was. Are you going to be my guide in +manners? Does breeding only consist in having clothes made in Savile +Row and eating strawberries out of season at a pound a basket?" + +"I get my clothes from the Stores now, as you can see," he said, in a +desperate attempt to be humorous, for she was in a dangerous +mood. Only once before had he seen her so, and he could feel the air +charged with catastrophe. "And I'm eating humble pie in season now at +nothing a dish," he added. "I really am; and it gives me shocking +indigestion." + +Her face relaxed a little, for she could seldom resist any touch of +humour, but the stubborn and wilful light in her eyes remained. + +"That sounds like last year's pantomime," she said, sharply, and, with +a jerk of her shoulders, turned away. + +"For God's sake wait a minute, Al'mah!" he urged, desperately. "What +has upset you? What has happened? Before dinner you were yourself; +now--" he threw up his hands in despair--"Ah, my dearest, my star--" + +She turned upon him savagely, and it seemed as though a storm of +passion would break upon him; but all at once she changed, came up +close to him, and looked him steadily in the eyes. + +"I do not think I trust you," she said, quite quietly. + +His eyes could not meet hers fairly. He felt them shrinking from her +inquisition. "You have always trusted me till now. What has happened?" +he asked, apprehensively and with husky voice. + +"Nothing has happened," she replied in a low, steady +voice. "Nothing. But I seem to realize you to-night. It came to me +suddenly, at dinner, as I listened to you, as I saw you talk--I had +never before seen you in surroundings like these. But I realized you +then: I had a revelation. You need not ask me what it was. I do not +know quite. I cannot tell. It is all vague, but it is startling, and +it has gone through my heart like a knife. I tell you this, and I tell +you quite calmly, that if you prove to be what, for the first time, I +have a vision you are, I shall never look upon your face again if I +can help it. If I come to know that you are false in nature and in +act, that all you have said to me is not true, that you have degraded +me--Oh," she fiercely added, breaking off and speaking with infinite +anger and scorn--"it was only love, honest and true, however mistaken, +which could make what has been between us endurable in my eyes! What I +have thought was true love, and its true passion, helped me to forget +the degradation and the secret shame--only the absolute honesty of +that love could make me forget. But suppose I find it only imitation; +suppose I see that it is only selfishness, only horrible, ugly +self-indulgence; suppose you are a man who plays with a human soul! If +I find that to be so, I tell you I shall hate you; and I shall hate +myself; but I shall hate you more--a thousand times more." + +She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror +in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of +sullen fire. + +"Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this +later--not now--later. I will answer anything--everything. I can and I +will prove to you that this is only a mad idea of yours, that--" + +"No, no, no, not mad," she interrupted. "There is no madness in it. I +had a premonition before I came. It was like a cloud on my soul. It +left me when we met here, when I heard your voice again; and for a +moment I was happy. That was why I sang before dinner that song of +Lassen's, 'Thine Eyes So Blue and Tender.' But it has come +back. Something deep within me says, 'He is not true.' Something +whispers, 'He is false by nature; it is not in him to be true to +anything or anybody.'" + +He made an effort to carry off the situation lightly. With a great +sense of humour, she had also an infinite capacity for taking things +seriously--with an almost sensational gravity. Yet she had always +responded to his cheerful raillery when he had declined to be +tragical. He essayed the old way now. + +"This is just absurd, old girl;"--she shrank--"you really are +mad. Your home is Colney Hatch or thereabouts. Why, I'm just what I +always was to you--your constant slave, your everlasting lover, and +your friend. I'll talk it all over with you later. It's impossible +now. They're ready for you in the ball-room. The accompanist is +waiting. Do, do, do be reasonable. I will see you--afterwards--late." + +A determined poignant look came into her eyes. She drew still farther +away from him. "You will not, you shall not, see me 'afterwards--late.' +No, no, no; I will trust my instinct now. I am natural, I am true, +I hide nothing. I take my courage in both hands. I do not hide my head +in the sands. I have given, because I chose to give, and I made and make +no presences to myself. I answer to myself, and I do not play false with +the world or with you. Whatever I am the world can know, for I deceive +no one, and I have no fears. But you--oh, why, why is it I feel now, +suddenly, that you have the strain of the coward in you! Why it comes +to me now I do not know; but it is here"--she pressed her hand +tremblingly to her heart--"and I will not act as though it wasn't +here. I'm not of this world." + +She waved a hand towards the ball-room. "I am not of the world that +lives in terror of itself. Mine is a world apart, where one acts and +lives and sings the passion and sorrows and joys of others--all +unreal, unreal. The one chance of happiness we artists have is not to +act in our own lives, but to be true--real and true. For one's own +life as well as one's work to be all grease-paint--no, no, no. I have +hid all that has been between us, because of things that have nothing +to do with fear or courage, and for your sake; but I haven't acted, or +pretended. I have not flaunted my private life, my wretched sin--" + +"The sin of an angel--" + +She shrank from the blatant insincerity of the words, and still more +from the tone. Why had it not all seemed insincere before? + +"But I was true in all I did, and I believed you were," she continued. + +"And you don't believe it now?" + +"To-night I do not. What I shall feel to-morrow I cannot tell. Maybe I +shall go blind again, for women are never two days alike in their +minds or bodies." She threw up her hands with a despairing +helplessness. "But we shall not meet till to-morrow, and then I go +back to London. I am going to my room now. You may tell Mrs. Byng that +I am not well enough to sing--and indeed I am not well," she added, +huskily. "I am sick at heart with I don't know what; but I am wretched +and angry and dangerous--and bad." + +Her eyes fastened his with a fateful bitterness and gloom. "Where is +Mr. Byng?" she added, sharply. "Why was he not at dinner?" + +He hailed the change of idea gladly. He spoke quickly, eagerly. "He +was kept at the mine. There's trouble--a strike. He was needed. He has +great influence with the men, and the masters, too. You heard +Mrs. Byng say why he had not returned." + +"No; I was thinking of other things. But I wanted--I want to see +him. When will he be back?" + +"At any moment, I should think. But, Al'mah, no matter what you feel +about me, you must keep your engagement to sing here. The people in +there, a hundred of the best people of the county--" + +"The best people of the county--such abject snobbery!" she retorted, +sharply. "Do you think that would influence me? You ought to know me +well enough--but that's just it, you do not know me. I realize it at +last. Listen now. I will not sing to-night, and you will go and tell +Mrs. Byng so." + +Once again she turned away, but her exit was arrested by another +voice, a pleasant voice, which said: + +"But just one minute, please. Mr. Fellowes is quite +right.... Fellowes, won't you go and say that Madame Al'mah will be +there in five minutes?" + +It was Ian Stafford. He had come at Jasmine's request to bring Al'mah, +and he had overheard her last words. He saw that there had been a +scene, and conceived that it was the kind of quarrel which could be +better arranged by a third disinterested person. + +After a moment's hesitation, with an anxious yet hopeful look, +Fellowes disappeared, Al'mah's brown eyes following him with dark +inquisition. Presently she looked at Ian Stafford with a flash of +malice. Did this elegant and diplomatic person think that all he had +to do was to speak, and she would succumb to his blandishment? He +should see. + +He smiled, and courteously motioned her to a chair. + +"You said to Mr. Fellowes that I should sing in five minutes," she +remarked maliciously and stubbornly, but she moved forward to the +chair, nevertheless. + +"Yes, but there is no reason why we should not sit for three out of +the five minutes. Energy should be conserved in a tiring world." + +"I have some energy to spare--the overflow," she returned with a +protesting flash of the eyes, as, however, she slowly seated herself. + +"We call it power and magnetism in your case," he answered in that +low, soothing voice which had helped to quiet storms in more than one +chancellerie of Europe. . . . "What are you going to sing to-night?" +he added. + +"I am not going to sing," she answered, nervously. "You heard what I +said to Mr. Fellowes." + +"I was an unwilling eavesdropper; I heard your last words. But surely +you would not be so unoriginal, so cliche, as to say the same thing to +me that you said to Mr. Fellowes!" + +His smile was winning and his humour came from a deep well. On the +instant she knew it to be real, and his easy confidence, his +assumption of dominancy had its advantage. + +"I'll say it in a different way to you, but it will be the same +thing. I shall not sing to-night," she retorted, obstinately. + +"Then a hundred people will go hungry to bed," he rejoined. "Hunger is +a dreadful thing--and there are only three minutes left out of the +five," he added, looking at his watch. + +"I am not the baker or the butler," she replied with a smile, but her +firm lips did not soften. + +He changed his tactics with adroitness. If he failed now, it would be +final. He thought he knew where she might be really vulnerable. + +"Byng will be disappointed and surprised when he hears of the famine +that the prima donna has left behind her. Byng is one of the best that +ever was. He is trying to do his fellow-creatures a good turn down +there at the mine. He never did any harm that I ever heard of--and +this is his house, and these are his guests. He would, I'll stake my +life, do Al'mah a good turn if he could, even if it cost him something +quite big. He is that kind of a man. He would be hurt to know that you +had let the best people of the county be parched, when you could give +them drink." + +"You said they were hungry a moment ago," she rejoined, her resolution +slowly breaking under the one influence which could have softened her. + +"They would be both hungry and thirsty," he urged. "But, between +ourselves, would you like Byng to come home from a hard day's work, as +it were, and feel that things had gone wrong here while he was away on +humanity's business? Just try to imagine him having done you a +service--" + +"He has done me more than one service," she interjected. "You know it +as well as I do. You were there at the opera, three years ago, when he +saved me from the flames, and since then--" + +Stafford looked at his watch again with a smile. "Besides, there's a +far more important reason why you should sing to-night. I promised +some one who's been hurt badly, and who never heard you sing, that he +should hear you to-night. He is lying there now, and--" + +"Jigger?" she asked, a new light in her eyes, something fleeing from +her face and leaving a strange softness behind it. + +"Quite so," he replied. "That's a lad really worth singing for. +He's an original, if ever there was one. He worships you for what +you have done for his sister, Lou. I'd undergo almost any +humiliation not to disappoint Jigger. Byng would probably get over +his disappointment--he'd only feel that he hadn't been used fairly, +and he's used to that; but Jigger wouldn't sleep to-night, and it's +essential that he should. Think of how much happiness and how much +pain you can give, just by trilling a simple little song with your +little voice oh, madame la cantatrice?" + +Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She brushed them away hastily. +"I've been upset and angry and disturbed--and I don't know what," she +said, abruptly. "One of my black moods was on me. They only come once +in a blue moon; but they almost kill me when they do." . . . She +stopped and looked at him steadily for a moment, the tears still in +her eyes. "You are very understanding and gentle--and sensible," she +added, with brusque frankness and cordiality. "Yes, I will sing for +Rudyard Byng and for Jigger; and a little too for a very clever +diplomatist." She gave a spasmodic laugh. + +"Only half a minute left," he rejoined with gay raillery. "I said +you'd sing to them in five minutes, and you must. This way." + +He offered her his arm, she took it, and in cheerful silence he +hurried her to the ball-room. + +Before her first song he showed her the window which looked across to +that out of which Jigger gazed with trembling eagerness. The blinds +and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she +sang. + +Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well--with so +much feeling and an artist's genius--not even that night of all when +she made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past +hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with +thrilling power the story of a soul. + +Once after an outburst of applause from the brilliant audience, there +came a tiny echo of it from across the courtyard. It was Jigger, +enraptured by a vision of heaven and the sounds of it. Al'mah turned +towards the window with a shining face, and waved a kiss out of the +light and glory where she was, to the sufferer in the darkness. Then, +after a whispered word to the accompanist she began singing Gounod's +memorable song, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." It was not what the +audience expected; it was in strangest contrast to all that had gone +before; it brought a hush like a benediction upon the great +chamber. Her voice seemed to ache with the plaintive depth of the +song, and the soft night filled its soul with melody. + +A wonderful and deep solemnity was suddenly diffused upon the assembly +of world-worn people, to most of whom the things that mattered were +those which gave them diversion. They were wont to swim with the tide +of indolence, extravagance, self-seeking, and sordid pleasure now +flowing through the hardy isles, from which had come much of the +strength of the Old World and the vision and spirit of the New World. + +Why had she chosen this song? Because, all at once, as she thought of +Jigger lying there in the dark room, she had a vision of her own child +lying near to death in the grasp of pneumonia five years ago; and the +misery of that time swept over her--its rebellion, its hideous fear, +its bitter loneliness. She recalled how a woman, once a great singer, +now grown old in years as in sorrow, had sung this very song to her +then, in the hour of her direst apprehension. She sang it now to her +own dead child, and to Jigger. When she ceased, there was not a sound +save of some woman gently sobbing. Others were vainly trying to choke +back their tears. + +Presently, as Al'mah stood still in the hush which was infinitely more +grateful to her than any applause, she saw Krool advancing hurriedly +up the centre aisle. He was drawn and haggard, and his eyes were +sunken and wild. Turning at the platform, he said in a strange, hollow +voice: + +"At the mine--an accident. The Baas he go down to save--he not come +up." + +With a cry Jasmine staggered to her feet. Ian Stafford was beside her +in an instant. + +"The Baas--the Baas!" said Krool, insistently, painfully. "I have the +horses--come." + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE BAAS + + +There had been an explosion in the Glencader Mine, and twenty men had +been imprisoned in the stark solitude of the underground world. Or was +it that they lay dead in that vast womb of mother-earth which takes +all men of all time as they go, and absorbs them into her fruitful +body, to produce other men who will in due days return to the same +great mother to rest and be still? It mattered little whether +malevolence had planned the outrage in the mine, or whether accident +alone had been responsible; the results were the same. Wailing, +woebegone women wrung their hands, and haggard, determined men stood +by with bowed heads, ready to offer their lives to save those other +lives far down below, if so be it were possible. + +The night was serene and quiet, clear and cold, with glimmering stars +and no moon, and the wide circle of the hills was drowsy with night +and darkness. All was at peace in the outer circle, but at the centre +was travail and storm and outrage and death. What nature had made +beautiful, man had made ugly by energy and all the harsh necessities +of progress. In the very heart of this exquisite and picturesque +country-side the ugly, grim life of the miner had established itself, +and had then turned an unlovely field of industrial activity into a +cock-pit of struggle between capital and labour. First, discontent, +fed by paid agitators and scarcely steadied by responsible and +level-headed labour agents and leaders; then active disturbance and +threatening; then partial strike, then minor outrages, then some +foolishness on the part of manager or man, and now tragedy darkening +the field, adding bitterness profound to the discontent and strife. + +Rudyard Byng had arrived on the scene in the later stages of the +struggle, when a general strike with all its attendant miseries, its +dangers and provocations, was hovering. Many men in his own mine in +South Africa had come from this very district, and he was known to be +the most popular of all the capitalists on the Rand. His generosity to +the sick and poor of the Glencader Mine had been great, and he had +given them a hospital and a club with adequate endowment. Also, he had +been known to take part in the rough sports of the miners, and had +afterwards sat and drunk beer with them--as much as any, and carying +it better than any. + +If there was any one who could stay the strike and bring about a +settlement it was he; and it is probable he would have stayed it, had +it not been for a collision between a government official and a +miners' leader. Things had grown worse, until the day of catastrophe, +when Byng had been sent for by the leaders of both parties to the +quarrel. He had laboured hours after hour in the midst of grave unrest +and threats of violence, for some of the men had taken to drinking +heavily--but without success. Still he had stayed on, going here and +there, mostly among the men themselves, talking to them in little +groups, arguing simply with them, patiently dealing with facts and +figures, quietly showing them the economic injustice which lay behind +their full demands, and suggesting compromises. + +He was received with good feeling, but in the workers' view it was +"class against class--labour against capital, the man against the +master." In their view Byng represented class, capital and master, not +man; his interests were not identical with theirs; and though some +were disposed to cheer him, the majority said he was "as good a sort +as that sort can be," but shrugged their shoulders and remained +obstinate. The most that he did during the long afternoon and evening +was to prevent the worst; until, as he sat eating a slice of ham in a +miner's kitchen, there came the explosion: the accident or +crime--which, like the lances in an angry tumour, let out the fury, +enmity, and rebellion, and gave human nature its chance again. The +shock of the explosion had been heard at Glencader, but nothing was +thought of it, as there had been much blasting in the district for +days. + +"There's twenty men below," said the grimy manager who had brought the +news to Byng. Together they sped towards the mine, little groups +running beside them, muttering those dark sayings which, either as +curses or laments, are painful comments on the relations of life on +the lower levels with life on the higher plateaux. + +Among the volunteers to go below, Byng was of the first, and against +the appeal of the mine-manager, and of others who tried to dissuade +him, he took his place with two miners with the words: + +"I know this pit better than most; and I'd rather be down there +knowing the worst, than waiting to learn it up here. I'm going; so +lower away, lads." + +He had disappeared, and for a long time there was no sign; but at last +there came to the surface three of the imprisoned miners and two dead +bodies, and these were followed by others still alive; but Byng did +not come up. He remained below, leading the search, the first in the +places of danger and exploration, the last to retreat from any peril +of falling timbers or from fresh explosion. Twelve of the twenty men +were rescued. Six were dead, and their bodies were brought to the +surface and to the arms of women whose breadwinners were gone; whose +husbands or sons or brothers had been struck out into darkness without +time to strip themselves of the impedimenta of the soul. Two were left +below, and these were brothers who had married but three months +before. They were strong, buoyant men of twenty-five, with life just +begun, and home still welcome and alluring--warm-faced, bonny women to +meet them at the door, and lay the cloth, and comfort their beds, and +cheer them away to work in the morning. These four lovers had been the +target for the good-natured and half-affectionate scoffing of the +whole field; for the twins, Jabez and Jacob, were as alike as two +peas, and their wives were cousins, and were of a type in mind, body, +and estate. These twin toilers were left below, with Rudyard Byng +forcing his way to the place where they had worked. With him was one +other miner of great courage and knowledge, who had gone with other +rescue parties in other catastrophes. + +It was this man who was carried to the surface when another small +explosion occurred. He brought the terrible news that Byng, the +rescuer of so many, was himself caught by falling timbers and +imprisoned near a spot where Jabez and Jacob Holyhoke were entombed. + +Word had gone to Glencader, and within an hour and a half Jasmine, +Al'mah, Stafford, Lord Tynemouth, the Slavonian Ambassador, Adrian +Fellowes, Mr. Tudor Tempest and others were at the pit's mouth, +stricken by the same tragedy which had made so many widows and orphans +that night. Already two attempts had been made to descend, but they +had not been successful. Now came forward a burly and dour-looking +miner, called Brengyn, who had been down before, and had been in +command. His look was forbidding, but his face was that of a man on +whom you could rely; and his eyes had a dogged, indomitable +expression. Behind him were a dozen men, sullen and haggard, their +faces showing nothing of that pity in their hearts which drove them to +risk all to save the lives of their fellow-workers. Was it all pity +and humanity? Was there also something of that perdurable cohesion of +class against class; the powerful if often unlovely unity of faction, +the shoulder-to-shoulder combination of war; the tribal fanaticism +which makes brave men out of unpromising material? Maybe something of +this element entered into the heroism which had been displayed; but +whatever the impulse or the motive, the act and the end were the +same--men's lives were in peril, and they were risking their own to +rescue them. + +When Jasmine and her friends arrived, Ian Stafford addressed himself +to the groups of men at the pit's mouth, asking for news. Seeing +Brengyn approach Jasmine, he hurried over, recognizing in the stalwart +miner a leader of men. + +"It's a chance in a thousand," he heard Brengyn say to Jasmine, whose +white face showed no trace of tears, and who held herself with +courage. There was something akin in the expression of her face and +that of other groups of women, silent, rigid and bitter, who stood +apart, some with children's hands clasped in theirs, facing the worst +with regnant resolution. All had that horrible quietness of despair so +much more poignant than tears and wailing. Their faces showed the +weariness of labour and an ill-nourished daily life, but there was the +same look in them as in Jasmine's. There was no class in this +communion of suffering and danger. + +"Not one chance in a thousand," Brengyn added, heavily. "I know where +they are, but--" + +"You think they are--dead?" Jasmine asked in a hollow voice. + +"I think, alive or dead, it's all against them as goes down to bring +them out. It's more lives to be wasted." + +Stafford heard, and he stepped forward. "If there's a chance in a +thousand, it's good enough for a try," he said. "If you were there, +Mr. Byng would take the chance in the thousand for you." + +Brengyn looked Stafford up and down slowly. "What is it you've got to +say?" he asked, gloomily. + +"I am going down, if there's anybody will lead," Stafford replied. "I +was brought up in a mining country. I know as much as most of you +about mines, and I'll make one to follow you, if you'll lead--you've +been down, I know." + +Brengyn's face changed. "Mr. Byng isn't our class, he's with capital," +he said, "but he's a man. He went down to help save men of my class, +and to any of us he's worth the risk. But how many of his own class is +taking it on?" + +"I, for one," said Lord Tynemouth, stepping forward. + +"I--I," answered three other men of the house-party. + +Al'mah, who was standing just below Jasmine, had her eyes fixed on +Adrian Fellowes, and when Brengyn called for volunteers, her heart +almost stood still in suspense. Would Adrian volunteer? + +Brengyn's look rested on Adrian for an instant, but Adrian's eyes +dropped. Brengyn had said one chance in a thousand, and Adrian said to +himself that he had never been lucky--never in all his life. At games +of chance he had always lost. Adrian was for the sure thing always. + +Al'mah's face flushed with anger and shame at the thing she saw, and a +weakness came over her, as though the springs of life had been +suddenly emptied. + +Brengyn once again fastened the group from Glencader with his +eyes. "There's a gentleman in danger," he said, grimly, again. "How +many gentlemen volunteer to go down--ay, there's five!" he added, as +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others once again responded. + +Jasmine saw, but at first did not fully realize what was +happening. But presently she understood that there was one near, owing +everything to her husband, who had not volunteered to help to save +him--on the thousandth chance. She was stunned and stricken. + +"Oh, for God's sake, go!" she said, brokenly, but not looking at +Adrian Fellowes, and with a heart torn by misery and shame. + +Brengyn turned to the men behind him, the dark, determined toilers who +sustained the immortal spirit of courage and humanity on thirty +shillings a week and nine hours' work a day. "Who's for it, mates?" he +asked, roughly. "Who's going wi' me?" + +Every man answered hoarsely, "Ay," and every hand went up. Brengyn's +back was on Fellowes, Al'mah, and Jasmine now. There was that which +filled the cup of trembling for Al'mah in the way he nodded to the +men. + +"Right, lads," he said with a stern joy in his voice. "But there's +only one of you can go, and I'll pick him. Here, Jim," he added to a +small, wiry fellow not more than five feet four in height--"here, Jim +Gawley, you're comin' wi' me, an' that's all o' you as can come. No, +no," he added, as there was loud muttering and dissent. "Jim's got no +missis, nor mother, and he's tough as leather and can squeeze in small +places, and he's all right, too, in tight corners." Now he turned to +Stafford and Tynemouth and the others. "You'll come wi' me," he said +to Stafford--" if you want. It's a bad look-out, but we'll have a +try. You'll do what I say?" he sharply asked Stafford, whose face was +set. + +"You know the place," Stafford answered. "I'll do what you say." + +"My word goes?" + +"Right. Your word goes. Let's get on." + +Jasmine took a step forward with a smothered cry, but Alice Tynemouth +laid a hand on her arm. + +"He'll bring Rudyard back, if it can be done," she whispered. + +Stafford did not turn round. He said something in an undertone to +Tynemouth, and then, without a glance behind, strode away beside +Brengyn and Jim Gawley to the pit's mouth. + +Adrian Fellowes stepped up to Tynemouth. "What do you think the +chances are?" he asked in a low tone. + +"Go to--bed!" was the gruff reply of the irate peer, to whom cowardice +was the worst crime on earth, and who was enraged at being left +behind. Also he was furious because so many working-men had responded +to Brengyn's call for volunteers and Adrian Fellowes had shown the +white feather. In the obvious appeal to the comparative courage of +class his own class had suffered. + +"Or go and talk to the women," he added to Fellowes. "Make 'em +comfortable. You've got a gift that way." + +Turning on his heel, Lord Tynemouth hastened to the mouth of the pit +and watched the preparations for the descent. + +Never was night so still; never was a sky so deeply blue, nor stars so +bright and serene. It was as though Peace had made its habitation on +the wooded hills, and a second summer had come upon the land, though +wintertime was near. Nature seemed brooding, and the generous odour of +ripened harvests came over the uplands to the watchers in the +valley. All was dark and quiet in the sky and on the hills; but in the +valley were twinkling lights and the stir and murmur of troubled +life--that sinister muttering of angry and sullen men which has struck +terror to the hearts of so many helpless victims of revolution, when +it has been the mutterings of thousands and not of a few rough, +discontented toilers. As Al'mah sat near to the entrance of the mine, +wrapped in a warm cloak, and apart from the others who watched and +waited also, she seemed to realize the agony of the problem which was +being worked out in these labour-centres where, between capital and +the work of men's hands, there was so apparent a gulf of +disproportionate return. + +The stillness of the night was broken now by the hoarse calls of the +men, now by the wailing of women, and Al'mah's eyes kept turning to +those places where lights were shining, which, as she knew, were +houses of death or pain. For hours she and Jasmine and Lady Tynemouth +had gone from cottage to cottage where the dead and wounded were, and +had left everywhere gifts, and the promises of gifts, in the attempt +to soften the cruelty of the blow to those whose whole life depended +on the weekly wage. Help and the pledge of help had lightened many a +dark corner that night; and an unexplainable antipathy which had +suddenly grown up in Al'mah's mind against Jasmine after her arrival +at Glencader was dissipated as the hours wore on. + +Pale of face, but courageous and solicitous, Jasmine, accompanied by +Al'mah, moved among the dead and dying and the bitter and bereaved +living, with a gentle smile and a soft word or touch of the hand. Men +near to death, or suffering torture, looked gratefully at her or tried +to smile; and more than once Mr. Mappin, whose hands were kept busy +and whose skill saved more than a handful of lives that night, looked +at her in wonder. + +Jasmine already had a reputation in the great social world for being +of a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works +which Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich +and the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit +and great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? +Yes, there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her +husband's life was in infinite danger,--had not Brengyn said that his +chances were only one in a thousand?--death stared her savagely in the +face; yet she bore herself as calmly as those women who could not +afford the luxury of tears or the self-indulgence of a despairing +indolence; to whom tragedy was but a whip of scorpions to drive them +into action. How well they all behaved, these society butterflies-- +Jasmine, Lady Tynemouth, and the others! But what a wonderful +motherliness and impulsive sympathy steadied by common sense did +Al'mah the singing-woman show! + +Her instinct was infallible, her knowledge of how these poor people +felt was intuitive, and her great-heartedness was to be seen in every +motion, heard in every tone of her voice. If she had not had this work +of charity to do, she felt she would have gone shrieking through the +valley, as, this very midnight, she had seen a girl with streaming +hair and bare breast go crying through the streets, and on up the +hills to the deep woods, insane with grief and woe. + +Her head throbbed. She felt as though she also could tear the +coverings from her own bosom to let out the fever which was there; for +in her life she had loved two men who had trampled on her +self-respect, had shattered all her pride of life, had made her +ashamed to look the world in the face. Blantyre, her husband, had been +despicable and cruel, a liar and a deserter; and to-night she had seen +the man to whom she had given all that was left of her heart and faith +disgrace himself and his class before the world by a cowardice which +no woman could forgive. + +Adrian Fellowes had gone back to Glencader to do necessary things, to +prepare the household for any emergency; and she was grateful for the +respite. If she had been thrown with him in the desperate mood of the +moment, she would have lost her self-control. Happily, fate had taken +him away for a few hours; and who could tell what might not happen in +a few hours? Meanwhile, there was humanity's work to be done. + +About four o'clock in the morning, when she came out from a cottage +where she had assisted Mr. Mappin in a painful and dangerous +operation, she stood for a moment in reverie, looking up at the hills, +whose peace had been shrilly broken a few hours before by that +distracted waif of the world, fleeing from the pain of life. + +An ample star of rare brilliancy came stealing up over the trees +against the sky-line, twinkling and brimming with light. + +"No," she said, as though in reply to an inner voice, "there's nothing +for me--nothing. I have missed it all." Her hands clasped her breast +in pain, and she threw her face upwards. But the light of the star +caught her eyes, and her hands ceased to tremble. A strange quietness +stole over her. + +"My child, my lost beloved child," she whispered. + +Her eyes swam with tears now, the lines of pain at her mouth relaxed, +the dark look in her eyes stole away. She watched the star with +sorrowful eyes. "How much misery does it see!" she said. Suddenly, she +thought of Rudyard Byng. "He saved my life," she murmured. "I owe +him--ah, Adrian might have paid the debt!" she cried, in pain. "If he +had only been a man to-night--" + +At that moment there came a loud noise up the valley from the pit's +mouth--a great shouting. An instant later two figures ran past +her. One was Jasmine, the other was a heavy-footed miner. Gathering +her cloak around her Al'mah sped after them. + +A huddled group at the pit's mouth, and men and women running toward +it; a sharp voice of command, and the crowd falling back, making way +for men who carried limp bodies past; then suddenly, out of wild +murmurs and calls, a cry of victory like the call of a muezzin from +the tower of a mosque--a resonant monotony, in which a dominant +principle cries. + +A Welsh preaching hillman, carried away by the triumph of the moment, +gave the great tragedy the bugle-note of human joy and pride. + +Ian Stafford and Brengyn and Jim Gawley had conquered. The limp bodies +carried past Al'mah were not dead. They were living, breathing men +whom fresh air and a surgeon's aid would soon restore. Two of them +were the young men with the bonny wives who now with murmured +endearments grasped their cold hands. Behind these two was carried +Rudyard Byng, who could command the less certain concentration of a +heart. The men whom Rudyard had gone to save could control a greater +wealth, a more precious thing than anything he had. The boundaries of +the interests of these workers were limited, but their souls were +commingled with other souls bound to them by the formalities; and +every minute of their days, every atom of their forces, were moving +round one light, the light upon the hearthstone. These men were +carried ahead of Byng now, as though by the ritual of nature taking +their rightful place in life's procession before him. + +Something of what the working-women felt possessed Jasmine, but it was +an impulse born of the moment, a flood of feeling begotten by the +tragedy. It had in it more of remorse than aught else; it was, in +part, the agitation of a soul surprised into revelation. Yet there +was, too, a strange, deep, undefined pity welling up in her +heart,--pity for Rudyard, and because of what she did not say directly +even to her own soul. But pity was there, with also a sense of +inevitableness, of the continuance of things which she was too weak to +alter. + +Like the two women of the people ahead, she held Rudyard's hand, as +she walked beside him, till he was carried into the manager's office +near by. She was conscious that on the other side of Rudyard was a +tall figure that staggered and swayed as it moved on, and that two +dark eyes were turned towards her ever and anon. + +Into those eyes she had looked but once since the rescue, but all that +was necessary of gratitude was said in that one glance: "You have +saved Rudyard--you, Ian," it said. + +With Al'mah it was different. In the light of the open door of the +manager's office, she looked into Ian Stafford's face. "He saved my +life, you remember," she said; "and you have saved his. I love you." + +"I love you!" Greatness of heart was speaking, not a woman's +emotions. The love she meant was of the sort which brings no darkness +in its train. Men and women can speak of it without casting down their +eyes or feeling a flush in their cheeks. + +To him came also the two women whose husbands, Jacob and Jabez, were +restored to them. + +"Man, we luv ye," one said, and the other laid a hand on his breast +and nodded assent, adding, "Ay, we luv ye." + +That was all; but greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down +his life for his friend--and for his enemies, maybe. Enemies these two +rescued men were in one sense--young socialists--enemies to the +present social order, with faces set against the capitalist and the +aristocrat and the landlord; yet in the crisis of life dipping their +hands in the same dish, drinking from the same cup, moved by the same +sense of elementary justice, pity, courage, and love. + +"Man, we luv ye!" And the women turned away to their own--to their +capital, which in the slump of Fate had suffered no loss. It was +theirs, complete and paying large dividends. + +To the crowd, Brengyn, with gruff sincerity, said, loudly: "Jim +Gawley, he done as I knowed he'd do. He done his best, and he done it +prime. We couldn't ha' got on wi'out him. But first there was Mr. Byng +as had sense and knowledge more than any; an' he couldn't be denied; +an' there was Mr. Stafford--him--" pointing to Ian, who, with misty +eyes, was watching the women go back to their men. "He done his bit +better nor any of us. And Mr. Byng and Jacob and Jabez, they can thank +their stars that Mr. Stafford done his bit. Jim's all right an' I done +my duty, I hope, but these two that ain't of us, they done +more--Mr. Byng and Mr. Stafford. Here's three cheers, lads--no, this +ain't a time for cheerin'; but ye all ha' got hands." + +His hand caught Ian's with the grip of that brotherhood which is as +old as Adam, and the hand of miner after miner did the same. + +The strike was over--at a price too big for human calculation; but it +might have been bigger still. + +Outside the open door of the manager's office Stafford watched and +waited till he saw Rudyard, with a little laugh, get slowly to his +feet and stretch his limbs heavily. Then he turned away gloomily to +the darkness of the hills. In his soul there was a depression as deep +as in that of the singing-woman. + +"Al'mah had her debt to pay, and I shall have mine," he said, wearily. + + + + +BOOK III + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE WORLD WELL LOST + + +People were in London in September and October who seldom arrived +before November. War was coming. Hundreds of families whose men were +in the army came to be within touch of the War Office and Aldershot, +and the capital of the Empire was overrun by intriguers, harmless and +otherwise. There were ladies who hoped to influence officers in high +command in favour of their husbands, brothers, or sons; subalterns of +title who wished to be upon the staff of some famous general; colonels +of character and courage and scant ability, craving commands; +high-placed folk connected with great industrial, shipping, or +commercial firms, who were used by these firms to get "their share" of +contracts and other things which might be going; and patriotic +amateurs who sought to make themselves notorious through some civilian +auxiliary to war organization, like a voluntary field hospital or a +home of convalescence. But men, too, of the real right sort, longing +for chance of work in their profession of arms; ready for anything, +good for anything, brave to a miracle: and these made themselves fit +by hard riding or walking or rowing, or in some school of physical +culture, that they might take a war job on, if, and when, it was +going. + +Among all these Ian Stafford moved with an undercurrent of agitation +and anxiety unseen in his face, step, motion, or gesture. For days he +was never near the Foreign Office, and then for days he was there +almost continuously; yet there was scarcely a day when he did not see +Jasmine. Also there were few days in the week when Jasmine did not see +M. Mennaval, the ambassador for Moravia--not always at her own house, +but where the ambassador chanced to be of an evening, at a fashionable +restaurant, or at some notable function. This situation had not been +difficult to establish; and, once established, meetings between the +lady and monsieur were arranged with that skill which belongs to woman +and to diplomacy. + +Once or twice at the beginning Jasmine's chance question concerning +the ambassador's engagements made M. Mennaval keen to give information +as to his goings and comings. Thus if they met naturally, it was also +so constantly that people gossiped; but at first, certainly, not to +Jasmine's grave disadvantage, for M. Mennaval was thought to be less +dangerous than impressionable. + +In that, however, he was somewhat maligned, for his penchant for +beautiful and "select" ladies had capacities of development almost +unguessed. Previously Jasmine had never shown him any marked +preference; and when, at first, he met her in town on her return from +Wales he was no more than watchfully courteous and admiring. When, +however, he found her in a receptive mood, and evidently taking +pleasure in his society, his vanity expanded greatly. He at once +became possessed by an absorbing interest in the woman who, of all +others in London, had gifts which were not merely physical, but of a +kind that stimulate the mind and rouse those sensibilities so easily +dulled by dull and material people. Jasmine had her material side; but +there was in her the very triumph of the imaginative also; and through +it the material became alive, buoyant and magnetic. + +Without that magnetic power which belonged to the sensuous part of her +she would not have gained control of M. Mennaval's mind, for it was +keen, suspicious, almost abnormally acute; and, while lacking real +power, it protected itself against the power of others by assembled +and well-disciplined adroitness and evasions. + +Very soon, however, Jasmine's sensitive beauty, which in her desire to +intoxicate him became voluptuousness, enveloped his brain in a mist of +rainbow reflections. Under her deft questions and suggestions he +allowed her to see the springs of his own diplomacy and the machinery +inside the Moravian administration. She caught glimpses of its +ambitions, its unscrupulous use of its position in international +relations, to gain advantage for itself, even by a dexterity which +might easily bear another name, and by sudden disregard of +international attachments not unlike treachery. + +Rudyard was too busy to notice the more than cavalier attitude of +M. Mennaval; and if he had noticed it, there would have been no +intervention. Of late a lesion of his higher moral sense made him +strangely insensitive to obvious things. He had an inborn chivalry, +but the finest, truest chivalry was not his--that which carefully +protects a woman from temptation, by keeping her unostentatiously away +from it; which remembers that vanity and the need for admiration drive +women into pitfalls out of which they climb again maimed for life, if +they climb at all. + +He trusted Jasmine absolutely, while there was, at the same time, a +great unrest in his heart and life--an unrest which the accident at +the Glencader Mine, his own share in a great rescue, and her gratitude +for his safety did little to remove. It produced no more than a +passing effect upon Jasmine or upon himself. The very convention of +making light of bravery and danger, which has its value, was in their +case an evil, preventing them from facing the inner meaning of it +all. If they had been less rich, if their house had been small, if +their acquaintances had been fewer, if . . . + +It was not by such incidents that they were to be awakened, and with +the wild desire to make Stafford grateful to her, and owe her his +success, the tragedy yonder must, in the case of Jasmine, have been +obscured and robbed of its force. At Glencader Jasmine had not got +beyond desire to satisfy a vanity, which was as deep in her as life +itself. It was to regain her hold upon a man who had once acknowledged +her power and, in a sense, had bowed to her will. But that had +changed, and, down beneath all her vanity and wilfulness, there was +now a dangerous regard and passion for him which, under happy +circumstances, might have transformed her life--and his. Now it all +served to twist her soul and darken her footsteps. On every hand she +was engaged in a game of dissimulation, made the more dangerous by the +thread of sincerity and desire running through it all. Sometimes she +started aghast at the deepening intrigue gathering in her path; at the +deterioration in her husband; and at the hollow nature of her home +life; but the excitement of the game she was playing, the ardour of +the chase, was in her veins, and her inherited spirit of great daring +kept her gay with vitality and intellectual adventure. + +Day after day she had strengthened the cords by which she was drawing +Ian to her; and in the confidence begotten of her services to him, of +her influence upon M. Mennaval and the progress of her efforts, a new +intimacy, different from any they had ever known, grew and +thrived. Ian scarcely knew how powerful had become the feeling between +them. He only realized that delight which comes from working with +another for a cherished cause, the goal of one's life, which has such +deeper significance when the partner in the struggle is a woman. They +both experienced that most seductive of all influences, a secret +knowledge and a pact of mutual silence and purpose. + +"You trust me now?" Jasmine asked at last one day, when she had been +able to assure Ian that the end was very near, that M. Mennaval had +turned his face from Slavonia, and had carried his government with +him--almost. In the heir-apparent to the throne of Moravia, whose +influence with the Moravian Prime Minister was considerable, there +still remained one obdurate element; but Ian's triumph only lacked the +removal of this one obstructive factor, and thereafter England would +be secure from foreign attack, if war came in South Africa. In that +case Ian's career might culminate at the head of the Foreign Office +itself, or as representative of the throne in India, if he chose that +splendid sphere. + +"You do trust me, Ian?" Jasmine repeated, with a wistfulness as near +reality as her own deceived soul could permit. + +With a sincerity as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in +which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, Ian replied: + +"Yes, yes, I trust you, Jasmine, as I used to do when I was twenty and +you were five. You have brought back the boy in me. All the dreams of +youth are in my heart again, all the glow of the distant sky of +hope. I feel as though I lived upon a hill-top, under some greenwood +tree, and--" + +"And 'sported with Amaryllis in the shade,'" she broke in with a +little laugh of triumph, her eyes brighter than he had ever seen +them. They were glowing with a fire of excitement which was like a +fever devouring the spirit, with little dark, flying banners of fate +or tragedy behind. + +Strange that he caught the inner meaning of it as he looked into her +eyes now. In the depths of those eyes, where long ago he had drowned +his spirit, it was as though he saw an army of reckless battalions +marching to a great battle; but behind all were the black wings of +vultures--pinions of sorrow following the gay brigades. Even as he +gazed at her, something ominous and threatening caught his heart, and, +with the end of his great enterprise in sight, a black premonition +smothered him. + +But with a smile he said: "Well, it does look as though we are near +the end of the journey." + +"And 'journeys end in lovers' meeting,'" she whispered softly, lowered +her eyes, and then raised them again to his. + +The light in them blinded him. Had he not always loved her--before any +one came, before Rudyard came, before the world knew her? All that he +had ever felt in the vanished days rushed upon him with intolerable +force. Through his life-work, through his ambition, through helping +him as no one else could have done at the time of crisis, she had +reached the farthest confines of his nature. She had woven, thread by +thread, the magic carpet of that secret companionship by which the +best as the worst of souls are sometimes carried into a land +enchanted--for a brief moment, before Fate stoops down and hangs a +veil of plague over the scene of beauty, passion, and madness. + +Her eyes, full of liquid fire, met his. They half closed as her body +swayed slightly towards him. + +With a cry, almost rough in its intensity, he caught her in his arms +and buried his face in the soft harvest of her hair. "Jasmine--Jasmine, +my love!" he murmured. + +Suddenly she broke from him. "Oh no--oh no, Ian! The work is not +done. I can't take my pay before I have earned it--such pay--such +pay." + +He caught her hands and held them fast. "Nothing can alter what is. It +stands. Whatever the end, whatever happens to the thing I want to do, +I--" + +He drew her closer. + +"You say this before we know what Moravia will do; you--oh, Ian, tell +me it is not simply gratitude, and because I tried to help you; not +only because--" + +He interrupted her with a passionate gesture. "It belonged at first +to what you were doing for me. Now it is by itself, that which, for +good or ill, was to be between you and me--the foreordained thing." + +She drew back her head with a laugh of vanity and pride and bursting +joy. "Ah, it doesn't matter now!" she said. "It doesn't matter." + +He looked at her questioningly. + +"Nothing matters now," she repeated, less enigmatically. She stretched +her arms up joyously, radiantly. + +"The world well lost!" she cried. + +Her reckless mood possessed him also. They breathed that air which +intoxicates, before it turns heavy with calamity and stifles the whole +being; by which none ever thrived, though many have sought nourishment +in daring draughts of it. + +"The world well lost!" he repeated; and his lips sought hers. + +Her determined patience had triumphed. Hour by hour, by being that to +his plans, to his work of life, which no one else could be, she had +won back what she had lost when the Rand had emptied into her lap its +millions, at the bidding of her material soul. With infinite tact and +skill she had accomplished her will. The man she had lost was hers +again. What it must mean, what it must do, what price must be paid for +this which her spirit willed had never yet been estimated. But her +will had been supreme, and she took all out of the moment which was +possible to mortal pleasure. + +Like the Columbus, however, who plants his flag upon the cliffs of a +new land, and then, leaving his vast prize unharvested, retreats upon +the sea by which he came, so Ian suddenly realized that here was no +abiding-place for his love. It was no home for his faith, for those +joys which the sane take gladly, when it is right to take them, and +the mad long for and die for when their madness becomes unbearable. + +A cloud suddenly passed over him, darkened his eyes, made his bones +like water. For, whatever might come, he knew in his heart of hearts +that the "old paths" were the only paths which he could tread in +peace--or tread at all without the ruin of all he had slowly builded. + +Jasmine, however, did not see his look or realize the sudden physical +change which passed over him, leaving him cold and numbed; for a +servant now entered with a note. + +Seeing the handwriting on the envelope, with an exclamation of +excitement and surprise, Jasmine tore the letter open. One glance was +sufficient. + +"Moravia is ours--ours, Ian!" she cried, and thrust the letter into +his hands. + + "Dearest lady," it ran, "the Crown has intervened successfully. The +Heir Apparent has been set aside. The understanding may now be +ratified. May I dine with you to-night? + + "Yours, M. + + "P.S.--You are the first to know, but I have also sent a note to our +young friend, Ian Stafford. Mais, he cannot say, 'Alone I did it.' + + "M." + +"Thank God--thank God, for England!" said Ian solemnly, the greater +thing in him deeply stirred. "Now let war come, if it must; for we can +do our work without interference." + +"Thank God," he repeated, fervently, and the light in his eyes was +clearer and burned brighter than the fire which had filled them during +the past few moments. + +Then he clasped her in his arms again. + +As Ian drove swiftly in a hansom to the Foreign Office, his brain +putting in array and reviewing the acts which must flow from this +international agreement now made possible, the note Mennaval had +written Jasmine flashed before his eyes: "Dearest lady.... May I dine +with you to-night? . . . M." + +His face flushed. There was something exceedingly familiar--more in +the tone of the words than the words themselves--which irritated and +humiliated him. What she had done for him apparently warranted this +intimate, self-assured tone on the part of Mennaval, the +philanderer. His pride smarted. His rose of triumph had its thorns. + +A letter from Mennaval was at the Foreign Office awaiting him. He +carried it to the Prime Minister, who read it with grave satisfaction. + +"It is just in time, Stafford," he remarked. "You ran it close. We +will clinch it instantly. Let us have the code." + +As the Prime Minister turned over the pages of the code, he said, +dryly: "I hear from Pretoria, through Mr. Byng, that President Kruger +may send the ultimatum tomorrow. I fear he will have the laugh on us, +for ours is not ready. We have to make sure of this thing first.... I +wonder how Landrassy will take it." + +He chuckled deeply. "Landrassy made a good fight, but you made a +better one, Stafford. I shouldn't wonder if you got on in diplomacy," +he added, with quizzical humour.... "Ah, here is the code! Now to +clinch it all before Oom Paul's challenge arrives." + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE COMING OF THE BAAS + + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" + +Barry Whalen turned with an angry snort to the figure in the +doorway. "Here's the sweet Krool again," he said. "Here's the +faithful, loyal offspring of the Vaal and the karoo, the bulwark of +the Baas.... For God's sake smile for once in your life!" he growled +with an oath, and, snatching up a glass of whiskey and water, threw +the contents at the half-caste. + +Krool did not stir, and some of the liquid caught him in the +face. Slowly he drew out an old yellow handkerchief and wiped his +cheeks, his eyes fixed with a kind of impersonal scrutiny on Barry +Whalen and the scene before him. + +The night was well forward, and an air of recklessness and dissipation +pervaded this splendid room in De Lancy Scovel's house. The air was +thick with tobacco-smoke, trays were scattered about, laden with stubs +of cigars and ashes, and empty and half-filled glasses were +everywhere. Some of the party had already gone, their gaming instinct +satisfied for the night, their pockets lighter than when they came; +and the tables where they had sat were in a state of disorder more +suggestive of a "dive" than of the house of one who lived in Grosvenor +Square. + +No servant came to clear away the things. It was a rule of the +establishment that at midnight the household went to bed, and the host +and his guests looked after themselves thereafter. The friends of De +Lancy Scovel called him "Cupid," because of his cherubic face, but he +was more gnome than cherub at heart. Having come into his fortune by +being a henchman to abler men than himself, he was almost over-zealous +to retain it, knowing that he could never get it again; yet he was +hospitable with the income he had to spend. He was the Beau Brummel of +that coterie which laid the foundation of prosperity on the Rand; and +his house was a marvel of order and crude elegance--save when he had +his roulette and poker parties, and then it was the shambles of +murdered niceties. Once or twice a week his friends met here; and it +was not mendaciously said that small fortunes were lost and won within +these walls "between drinks." + +The critical nature of things on the Rand did not lessen the gaming or +the late hours, the theatrical entertainments and social functions at +which Al'mah or another sang at a fabulous fee; or from which a dancer +took away a pocketful of gold--partly fee. Only a few of all the +group, great and small, kept a quiet pace and cherished their nerves +against possible crisis or disaster; and these were consumed by inward +anxiety, because all the others looked to them for a lead, for policy, +for the wise act and the manoevre that would win. + +Rudyard Byng was the one person who seemed equally compacted of both +elements. He was a powerful figure in the financial inner circle; but +he was one of those who frequented De Lancy Scovel's house; and he +had, in his own house, a roulette-table and a card-room like a +banqueting-hall. Wallstein, Wolff, Barry Whalen, Fleming, Hungerford, +Reuter, and the others of the inner circle he laughed at in a +good-natured way for coddling themselves, and called them--not without +some truth--valetudinarians. Indeed, the hard life of the Rand in the +early days, with the bad liqueur and the high veld air, had brought to +most of the Partners inner physical troubles of some kind; and their +general abstention was not quite voluntary moral purpose. + +Of them all, except De Lancy Scovel, Rudyard was most free from any +real disease or physical weakness which could call for the care of a +doctor. With a powerful constitution, he had kept his general health +fairly, though strange fits of depression had consumed him of late, +and the old strong spring and resilience seemed going, if not gone, +from his mind and body. He was not that powerful virile animal of the +day when he caught Al'mah in his arms and carried her off the stage at +Covent Garden. He was vaguely conscious of the great change in him, +and Barry Whalen, who, with all his faults, would have gone to the +gallows for him, was ever vividly conscious of it, and helplessly +resented the change. At the time of the Jameson Raid Rudyard Byng had +gripped the situation with skill, decision, and immense resource, +giving as much help to the government of the day as to his colleagues +and all British folk on the Rand. + +But another raid was nearing, a raid upon British territory this +time. The Rand would be the centre of a great war; and Rudyard Byng +was not the man he had been, in spite of his show of valour and vigour +at the Glencader Mine. Indeed, that incident had shown a certain +physical degeneracy--he had been too slow in recovering from the few +bad hours spent in the death-trap. The government at Whitehall still +consulted him, still relied upon his knowledge and his natural tact; +but secret as his conferences were with the authorities, they were not +so secret that criticism was not viciously at work. Women jealous of +Jasmine, financiers envious of Rudyard, Imperial politicians resentful +of his influence, did their best to present him in the worst light +possible. It was more than whispered that he sat too long over his +wine, and that his desire for fiery liquid at other than meal-times +was not in keeping with the English climate, but belonged to lands of +drier weather and more absorptive air. + +"What damned waste!" was De Lancy Scovel's attempt at wit as Krool +dried his face and put the yellow handkerchief back into his +pocket. The others laughed idly and bethought themselves of their own +glasses, and the croupier again set the ball spinning and drew their +eyes. + +"Faites vos jeux!" the croupier called, monotonously, and the jingle +of coins followed. + +"The Baas--where the Baas?" came again the harsh voice from the +doorway. + +"Gone--went an hour ago," said De Lancy Scovel, coming forward. "What +is it, Krool?" + +"The Baas--" + +"The Baas!" mocked Barry Whalen, swinging round again. "The Baas is +gone to find a rope to tie Oom Paul to a tree, as Oom Paul tied you at +Lichtenburg." + +Slowly Krool's eyes went round the room, and then settled on Barry +Whalen's face with owl-like gravity. "What the Baas does goes good," +he said. "When the Baas ties, Alles zal recht kom." + +He turned away now with impudent slowness, then suddenly twisted his +body round and made a grimace of animal-hatred at Barry Whalen, his +teeth showing like those of a wolf. + +"The Baas will live long as he want," he added, "but Oom Paul will +have your heart--and plenty more," he added, malevolently, and moved +into the darkness without, closing the door behind him. + +A shudder passed through the circle, for the uncanny face and the +weird utterance had the strange reality of fate. A gloom fell on the +gamblers suddenly, and they slowly drew into a group, looking half +furtively at one another. + +The wheel turned on the roulette-table, the ball clattered. + +"Rien ne va plus!" called the croupier; but no coins had fallen on the +green cloth, and the wheel stopped spinning for the night, as though +by common consent. + +"Krool will murder you some day, Barry," said Fleming, with +irritation. "What's the sense in saying things like that to a +servant?" + +"How long ago did Rudyard leave?" asked De Lancy Scovel, curiously. "I +didn't see him go. He didn't say good-night to me. Did he to you--to +any of you?" + +"Yes, he said to me he was going," rejoined Barry Whalen. + +"And to me," said Melville, the Pole, who in the early days on the +Rand had been a caterer. His name then had been Joseph Sobieski, but +this not fitting well with the English language, he had searched the +directory of London till he found the impeachably English combination +of Clifford Melville. He had then cut his hair and put himself into +the hands of a tailor in Conduit Street, and they had turned him +into--what he was. + +"Yes, Byng thed good-night to me--deah old boy," he repeated. "'I'm so +damned thleepy, and I have to be up early in the morning,' he thed to +me." + +"Byng's example's good enough. I'm off," said Fleming, stretching up +his arms and yawning. + +"Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much earlier," +interposed De Lancy Scovel, with a meaning note in his voice. + +"Why?" growled out Barry Whalen. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm," was +the slow reply. + +For a moment a curious silence fell upon the group. It was as though +some one had heard what had been said--some one who ought not to have +heard. + +That is exactly what had happened. Rudyard had not gone home. He had +started to do so; but, remembering that he had told Krool to come at +twelve o'clock if any cables arrived, that he might go himself to the +cable-office, if necessary, and reply, he passed from the hallway into +a little room off the card-room, where there was a sofa, and threw +himself down to rest and think. He knew that the crisis in South +Africa must come within a few hours; that Oom Paul would present an +ultimatum before the British government was ready to act; and that +preparations must be made on the morrow to meet all chances and +consequences. Preparations there had been, but conditions altered from +day to day, and what had been arranged yesterday morning required +modification this evening. + +He was not heedless of his responsibilities because he was at the +gaming-table; but these were days when he could not bear to be +alone. Yet he could not find pleasure in the dinner-parties arranged +by Jasmine, though he liked to be with her--liked so much to be with +her, and yet wondered how it was he was not happy when he was beside +her. This night, however, he had especially wished to be alone with +her, to dine with her a deux, and he had been disappointed to find +that she had arranged a little dinner and a theatre-party. With a sigh +he had begged her to arrange her party without him, and, in unusual +depression, he had joined "the gang," as Jasmine called it, at De +Lancy Scovel's house. + +Here he moved in a kind of gloom, and had a feeling as though he were +walking among pitfalls. A dread seemed to descend upon him and deaden +his natural buoyancy. At dinner he was fitful in conversation, yet +inclined to be critical of the talk around him. Upon those who talked +excitedly of war and its consequences, with perverse spirit he fell +like a sledge-hammer, and proved their information or judgment +wrong. Then, again, he became amiable and almost sentimental in his +attitude toward them all, gripping the hands of two or three with a +warmth which more than surprised them. It was as though he was +subconsciously aware of some great impending change. It may be there +whispered through the clouded space that lies between the +dwelling-house of Fate and the place where a man's soul lives the +voice of that Other Self, which every man has, warning him of +darkness, or red ruin, or a heartbreak coming on. + +However that may be, he had played a good deal during the evening, had +drunk more than enough brandy and soda, had then grown suddenly +heavy-hearted and inert. At last he had said good-night, and had +fallen asleep in the little dark room adjoining the card-room. + +Was it that Other Self which is allowed to come to us as our trouble +or our doom approaches, who called sharply in his ear as De Lancy +Scovel said, "Byng ought to get up earlier in the morning--much +earlier." + +Rudyard wakened upon the words without stirring--just a wide opening +of the eyes and a moveless body. He listened with, as it were, a new +sense of hearing, so acute, so clear, that it was as though his +friends talked loudly in his very ears. + +"He'd see the Outlander early-bird after the young domestic worm." + +His heart beat so loud that it seemed his friends must hear it, in the +moment's silence following these suggestive words. + +"Here, there's enough of this," said Barry Whalen, sharply, upon the +stillness. "It's nobody's business, anyhow. Let's look after +ourselves, and we'll have enough to do, or I don't know any of us." + +"But it's no good pretending," said Fleming. "There isn't one of us +but 'd put ourselves out a great deal for Byng. It isn't human nature +to sit still and do naught, and say naught, when things aren't going +right for him in the place where things matter most. + +"Can't he see? Doesn't he see--anything?" asked a little wizened +lawyer, irritably, one who had never been married, the solicitor of +three of their great companies. + +"See--of course he doesn't see. If he saw, there'd be hell--at least," +replied Barry Whalen, scornfully. + +"He's as blind as a bat," sighed Fleming. + +"He got into the wrong garden and picked the wrong flower--wrong for +him," said another voice. "A passion-flower, not the flower her name +is," added De Lancy Scovel, with a reflective cynicism. + +"They they there's no doubt about it--she's throwing herself +away. Ruddy isn't in it, deah old boy, so they they," interposed +Clifford Melville, alias Joseph Sobieski of Posen." Diplomathy is all +very well, but thith kind of diplomathy is not good for the thoul." He +laughed as only one of his kidney can laugh. + +Upon the laugh there came a hoarse growl of anger. Barry Whalen was +standing above Mr. Clifford Melville with rage in every fibre, threat +in every muscle. + +"Shut up--curse you, Sobieski! It's for us, for any and every one, to +cut the throats of anybody that says a word against her. We've all got +to stand together. Byng forever, is our cry, and Byng's wife is +Byng--before the world. We've got to help him--got to help him, I +say." + +"Well, you've got to tell him first. He's got to know it first," +interposed Fleming; "and it's not a job I'm taking on. When Byng's +asleep he takes a lot of waking, and he's asleep in this thing." + +"And the world's too wide awake," remarked De Lancy Scovel, +acidly. "One way or another Byng's got to be waked. It's only him can +put it right." + +No one spoke for a moment, for all saw that Barry Whalen was about to +say something important, coming forward to the table impulsively for +the purpose, when a noise from the darkened room beyond fell upon the +silence. + +De Lancy Scovel heard, Fleming heard, others heard, and turned towards +the little room. Sobieski touched Barry Whalen's arm, and they all +stood waiting while a hand slowly opened wide the door of the little +room, and, white with a mastered agitation, Byng appeared. + +For a moment he looked them all full in the face, yet as though he did +not see them; and then, without a word, as they stepped aside to make +way for him, he passed down the room to the outer hallway. + +At the door he turned and looked at them again. Scorn, anger, pride, +impregnated with a sense of horror, were in his face. His white lips +opened to speak, but closed again, and, turning, he stepped out of +their sight. + +No one followed. They knew their man. + +"My God, how he hates us!" said Barry Whalen, and sank into a chair at +the table, with his head between his hands. + +The cheeks of the little wizened lawyer glistened with tears, and De +Lancy Scovel threw open a window and leaned out, looking into the +night remorsefully. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +IS THERE NO HELP FOR THESE THINGS? + + +Slowly, heavily, like one drugged, Rudyard Byng made his way through +the streets, oblivious of all around him. His brain was like some +engine pounding at high pressure, while all his body was cold and +lethargic. His anger at those he left behind was almost madness, his +humiliation was unlike anything he had ever known. In one sense he was +not a man of the world. All his thoughts and moods and habits had been +essentially primitive, even in the high social and civilized +surroundings of his youth; and when he went to South Africa, it was to +come into his own--the large, simple, rough, adventurous life. His +powerful and determined mind was confined in its scope to the big +essential things. It had a rare political adroitness, but it had +little intellectual subtlety. It had had no preparation for the +situation now upon him, and its accustomed capacity was suddenly +paralyzed. Like some huge ship staggered by the sea, it took its +punishment with heavy, sullen endurance. Socially he had never, as it +were, seen through a ladder; and Jasmine's almost uncanny brilliance +of repartee and skill in the delicate contest of the mind had ever +been a wonder to him, though less so of late than earlier in their +married life. Perhaps this was because his senses were more used to +it, more blunted; or was it because something had gone from her--that +freshness of mind and body, that resilience of temper and spirit, +without which all talk is travail and weariness? He had never thought +it out, though he was dimly conscious of some great loss--of the light +gone from the evening sky. + +Yes, it was always in the evening that he had most longed to see "his +girl"; when the day's work was done; when the political and financial +stress had subsided; or when he had abstracted himself from it all and +turned his face towards home. For the big place in Park Lane had +really been home to him, chiefly because, or alone because, Jasmine +had made it what it was; because in every room, in every corner, was +the product of her taste and design. It had been home because it was +associated with her. But of late ever since his five months' visit to +South Africa without her the year before--there had come a change, at +first almost imperceptible, then broadening and deepening. + +At first it had vexed and surprised him; but at length it had become a +feeling natural to, and in keeping with, a scheme of life in which +they saw little of each other, because they saw so much of other +people. His primitive soul had rebelled against it at first, not +bitterly, but confusedly; because he knew that he did not know why it +was; and he thought that if he had patience he would come to +understand it in time. But the understanding did not come, and on that +ominous, prophetic day before they went to Glencader, the day when Ian +Stafford had dined with Jasmine alone after their meeting in Regent +Street, there had been a wild, aching protest against it all. Not +against Jasmine--he did not blame her; he only realized that she was +different from what he had thought she was; that they were both +different from what they had been; and that--the light had gone from +the evening sky. + +But from first to last he had always trusted her. It had never crossed +his mind, when she "made up" to men in her brilliant, provoking, +intoxicating way, that there was any lack of loyalty to him. It simply +never crossed his mind. She was his wife, his girl, his flower which +he had plucked; and there it was, for the universe to see, for the +universe to heed as a matter of course. For himself, since he had +married her, he had never thought of another woman for an instant, +except either to admire or to criticize her; and his criticism was, as +Jasmine had said, "infantile." The sum of it was, he was married to +the woman of his choice, she was married to the man of her choice; and +there it was, there it was, a great, eternal, settled fact. It was not +a thing for speculation or doubt or reconsideration. + +Always, when he had been troubled of late years, his mind had +involuntarily flown to South Africa, as a bird flies to its nest in +the distant trees for safety, from the spoiler or from the storm. And +now, as he paced the streets with heavy, almost blundering tread,--so +did the weight of slander drag him down--his thoughts suddenly saw a +picture which had gone deep down into his soul in far-off days. It was +after a struggle with Lobengula, when blood had been shed and lives +lost, and the backbone of barbarism had been broken south of the +Zambesi for ever and ever and ever. He had buried two companions in +arms whom he had loved in that way which only those know who face +danger on the plain, by the river, in the mountain, or on the open +road together. After they had been laid to rest in the valley where +the great baboons came down to watch the simple cortege pass, where a +stray lion stole across the path leading to the grave, he had gone on +alone to a spot in the Matoppos, since made famous and sacred. + +Where John Cecil Rhodes sleeps on that high plateau of convex hollow +stone, with the great natural pillars standing round like sentinels, +and all the rugged unfinished hills tumbling away to an unpeopled +silence, he came that time to rest his sorrowing soul. The woods, the +wild animal life, had been left behind, and only a peaceful middle +world between God and man greeted his stern eyes. + +Now, here in London, at that corner where the lonely white statue +stands by Londonderry House, as he moved in a dream of pain, with vast +weights like giant manacles hampering every footstep, inwardly raging +that into his sweet garden of home the vile elements of slander had +been thrown, yet with a terrible and vague fear that something had +gone terribly wrong with him, that far-off day spent at the Matoppos +flashed upon his sight. + +Through streets upon streets he had walked, far, far out of his way, +subconsciously giving himself time to recover before he reached his +home; until the green quiet of Hyde Park, the soft depths of its empty +spaces, the companionable and commendable trees, greeted his +senses. Then, here, suddenly there swam before his eyes the bright sky +over those scarred and jagged hills beyond the Matoppos, purple and +grey, and red and amethyst and gold, and his soul's sight went out +over the interminable distance of loneliness and desolation which only +ended where the world began again, the world of fighting men. He saw +once more that tumbled waste of primeval creation, like a crazed sea +agitated by some Horror underneath, and suddenly transfixed in its +plunging turmoil--a frozen concrete sorrow, with all active pain +gone. He heard the loud echo of his feet upon that hollow plateau of +rock, with convex skin of stone laid upon convex skin, and then +suddenly the solid rock which gave no echo under his tread, where +Rhodes lies buried. He saw all at once, in the shining horizon at +different points, black, angry, marauding storms arise and roar and +burst: while all the time above his head there was nothing but sweet +sunshine, into which the mists of the distant storms drifted, and +rainbows formed above him. Upon those hollow rocks the bellow of the +storms was like the rumbling of the wheels of a million gun-carriages; +and yet high overhead there were only the bright sun and faint drops +of rain falling like mystic pearls. + +And then followed--he could hear it again, so plainly, as his eyes now +sought the friendly shades of the beeches and the elms yonder in Hyde +Park!--upon the air made denser by the storm, the call of a lonely +bird from one side of the valley. The note was deep and strong and +clear, like the bell-bird of the Australian salt-bush plains beyond +the Darling River, and it rang out across the valley, as though a soul +desired its mate; and then was still. A moment, and there came across +the valley from the other side, stealing deep sweetness from the +hollow rocks, the answer of the bird which had heard her master's +call. Answering, she called too, the viens ici of kindred things; and +they came nearer and nearer and nearer, until at last their two voices +were one. + +In that wild space there had been worked out one of the great wonders +of creation, and under the dim lamps of Park Lane, in his black, +shocked mood, Rudyard recalled it all by no will of his own. Upon his +eye and brain the picture had been registered, and in its appointed +time, with an automatic suggestion of which he was ignorant and +innocent, it came to play its part and to transform him. + +The thought of it all was like a cool hand laid upon his burning +brow. It gave him a glimpse of the morning of life. + +The light was gone from the evening sky: but was it gone forever? + +As he entered his house now he saw upon a Spanish table in the big +hall a solitary bunch of white roses--a touch of simplicity in an area +of fine artifice. Regarding it a moment, black thoughts receded, and +choosing a flower from the vase he went slowly up the stairs to +Jasmine's room. + +He would give her this rose as the symbol of his faith and belief in +her, and then tell her frankly what he had heard at De Lancy Scovel's +house. + +For the moment it did not occur to him that she might not be at +home. It gave him a shock when he opened the door and found her room +empty. On her bed, like a mesh of white clouds, lay the soft linen and +lace and the delicate clothes of the night; and by the bed were her +tiny blue slippers to match the blue dressing-gown. Some gracious +things for morning wear hung over a chair; an open book with a little +cluster of violets and a tiny mirror lay upon a table beside a sofa; a +footstool was placed at a considered angle for her well-known seat on +the sofa where the soft-blue lamp-shade threw the light upon her book; +and a little desk with dresden-china inkstand and penholder had little +pockets of ribbon-tied letters and bills--even business had an air of +taste where Jasmine was. And there on a table beside her bed was a +large silver-framed photograph of himself turned at an angle toward +the pillow where she would lay her head. + +How tender and delicate and innocent it all was! He looked round the +room with new eyes, as though seeing everything for the first +time. There was another photograph of himself on her dressing-table. +It had no companion there; but on another table near were many +photographs; four of women, the rest of men: celebrities, old friends +like Ian Stafford--and M. Mennaval. + +His face hardened. De Lancy Scovel's black slander swept through his +veins like fire again, his heart came up in his throat, his fingers +clinched. + +Presently, as he stood with clouded face and mist in his eyes, +Jasmine's maid entered, and, surprised at seeing him, retreated again, +but her eyes fastened for a moment strangely on the white rose he held +in his hand. Her glance drew his own attention to it again. Going over +to the gracious and luxurious bed, with its blue silk canopy, he laid +the white rose on her pillow. Somehow it was more like an offering to +the dead than a lover's tribute to the living. His eyes were fogged, +his lips were set. But all he was then in mind and body and soul he +laid with the rose on her pillow. + +As he left the rose there, his eyes wandered slowly over this retreat +of rest and sleep: white robe-de-nuit, blue silk canopy, blue +slippers, blue dressing-gown--all blue, the colour in which he had +first seen her. + +Slowly he turned away at last and went to his own room. But the +picture followed him. It kept shining in his eyes. Krool's face +suddenly darkened it. + +"You not ring, Baas," Krool said. + +Without a word Rudyard waved him away, a sudden and unaccountable fury +in his mind. Why did the sight of Krool vex him so? + +"Come back," he said, angrily, before the door of the bedroom closed. + +Krool returned. + +"Weren't there any cables? Why didn't you come to Mr. Scovel's at +midnight, as I told you?" + +"Baas, I was there at midnight, but they all say you come home, +Baas. There the cable--two." He pointed to the dressing-table. + +Byng snatched them, tore them open, read them. + +One had the single word, "Tomorrow." The other said, "Prepare." The +code had been abandoned. Tragedy needs few words. + +They meant that to-morrow Kruger's ultimatum would be delivered and +that the worst must be faced. + +He glanced at the cables in silence, while Krool watched him narrowly, +covertly, with a depth of purpose which made his face uncanny. + +"That will do, Krool; wake me at seven," he said, quietly, but with +suppressed malice in his tone. + +Why was it that at that moment he could, with joy, have taken Krool by +the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he +had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool--without +reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had +whispered something to his mind about Krool--something terrible and +malign? + +In this new mood he made up his mind that he would not see Jasmine +till the morning. How late she was! It was one o'clock, and yet this +was not the season. She had not gone to a ball, nor were these the +months of late parties. + +As he tossed in his bed and his head turned restlessly on his pillow, +Krool's face kept coming before him, and it was the last thing he saw, +ominous and strange, before he fell into a heavy but troubled sleep. + +Perhaps the most troubled moment of the night came an hour after he +went to bed. + +Then it was that a face bent over him for a minute, a fair face, with +little lines contracting the ripe lips, which were redder than usual, +with eyes full of a fevered brightness. But how harmonious and sweetly +ordered was the golden hair above! Nothing was gone from its lustre, +nothing robbed it of its splendour. It lay upon her forehead like a +crown. In its richness it seemed a little too heavy for the tired face +beneath, almost too imperial for so slight and delicate a figure. + +Rudyard stirred in his sleep, murmuring as she leaned over him; and +his head fell away from her hand as she stretched out her fingers with +a sudden air of pity--of hopelessness, as it might seem from her +look. His face restlessly turned to the wall--a vexed, stormy, anxious +face and head, scarred by the whip of that overlord more cruel and +tyrannous than Time, the Miserable Mind. + +She drew back with a little shudder. "Poor Ruddy!" she said, as she +had said that evening when Ian Stafford came to her after the +estranging and scornful years, and she had watched Rudyard leave +her--to her fate and to her folly. + +"Poor Ruddy!" + +With a sudden frenzied motion of her hands she caught her breath, as +though some pain had seized her. Her eyes almost closed with the shame +that reached out from her heart, as though to draw the veil of her +eyelids over the murdered thing before her--murdered hope, slaughtered +peace: the peace of that home they had watched burn slowly before +their eyes in the years which the locust had eaten. + +Which the locust had eaten--yes, it was that. More than once she had +heard Rudyard tell of a day on the veld when the farmer surveyed his +abundant fields with joy, with the gay sun flaunting it above; and +suddenly there came a white cloud out of the west, which made a weird +humming, a sinister sound. It came with shining scales glistening in +the light and settled on the land acre upon acre, morgen upon morgen; +and when it rose again the fields, ready for the harvest, were like a +desert--the fields which the locust had eaten. So had the years been, +in which Fortune had poured gold and opportunity and unlimited choice +into her lap. She had used them all; but she had forgotten to look for +the Single Secret, which, like a key, unlocks all doors in the House +of Happiness. + +"Poor Ruddy!" she said, but even as she said it for the second time a +kind of anger seemed to seize her. + +"Oh, you fool--you fool!" she whispered, fiercely. "What did you know +of women! Why didn't you make me be good? Why didn't you master +me--the steel on the wrist--the steel on the wrist!" + +With a little burst of misery and futile rage she went from the room, +her footsteps uneven, her head bent. One of the open letters she +carried dropped from her hand onto the floor of the hall outside. She +did not notice it. But as she passed inside her door a shadowy figure +at the end of the hall watched her, saw the letter drop, and moved +stealthily forward towards it. It was Krool. + +How heavy her head was! Her worshipping maid, near dead with fatigue, +watched her furtively, but avoided the eyes in the mirror which had a +half-angry look, a look at once disturbed and elated, reckless and +pitiful. Lablanche was no reader of souls, but there was something +here beyond the usual, and she moved and worked with unusual +circumspection and lightness of touch. Presently she began to unloose +the coils of golden hair; but Jasmine stopped her with a gesture of +weariness. + +"No, don't," she said. "I can't stand your touch tonight, +Lablanche. I'll do the rest myself. My head aches so. Good-night." + +"I will be so light with it, madame," Lablanche said, protestingly. + +"No, no. Please go. But the morning, quite early." + +"The hour, madame?" + +"When the letters come, as soon as the letters come, Lablanche--the +first post. Wake me then." + +She watched the door close, then turned to the mirror in front of her +and looked at herself with eyes in which brooded a hundred thoughts +and feelings: thoughts contradictory, feelings opposed, imaginings +conflicting, reflections that changed with each moment; and all under +the spell of a passion which had become in the last few hours the most +powerful influence her life had ever known. Right or wrong, and it was +wrong, horribly wrong; wise or unwise, and how could the wrong be +wise! she knew she was under a spell more tyrannous than death, +demanding more sacrifices than the gods of Hellas. + +Self-indulgent she had been, reckless and wilful and terribly modern, +taking sweets where she found them. She had tried to squeeze the +orange dry, in the vain belief that Wealth and Beauty can take what +they want, when they want it, and that happiness will come by +purchase; only to find one day that the thing you have bought, like a +slave that revolts, stabs you in your sleep, and you wake with +wide-eyed agony only to die, or to live--with the light gone from the +evening sky. + +Suddenly, with the letters in her hand with which she had entered the +room, she saw the white rose on her pillow. Slowly she got up from the +dressing-table and went over to the bed in a hushed kind of way. With +a strange, inquiring, half-shrinking look she regarded the flower. One +white rose. It was not there when she left. It had been brought from +the hall below, from the great bunch on the Spanish table. Those white +roses, this white rose, had come from one who, selfish as he was, knew +how to flatter a woman's vanity. From that delicate tribute of +flattery and knowledge Rudyard had taken this flowering stem and +brought it to her pillow. + +It was all too malevolently cynical. Her face contracted in pain and +shame. She had a soul to which she had never given its chance. It had +never bloomed. Her abnormal wilfulness, her insane love of pleasure, +her hereditary impulses, had been exercised at the expense of the +great thing in her, the soul so capable of memorable and beautiful +deeds. + +As she looked at the flower, a sense of the path by which she had +come, of what she had left behind, of what was yet to chance, +shuddered into her heart. + +That a flower given by Adrian Fellowes should be laid upon her pillow +by her husband, by Rudyard Byng, was too ghastly or too devilishly +humorous for words; and both aspects of the thing came to her. Her +face became white, and almost mechanically she put the letters she +held on a writing-table near; then coming to the bed again she looked +at the rose with a kind of horror. Suddenly, however, she caught it +up, and bursting into a laugh which was shrill and bitter she threw it +across the room. Still laughing hysterically, with her golden hair +streaming about her head, folding her round like a veil which reached +almost to her ankles, she came back to the chair at the dressing-table +and sat down. + +Slowly drawing the wonderful soft web of hair over her shoulders, she +began to weave it into one wide strand, which grew and grew in length +till it was like a great rope of spun gold. Inch by inch, foot by foot +it grew, until at last it lay coiled in her lap like a golden serpent, +with a kind of tension which gave it life, such as Medusa's hair must +have known as the serpent-life entered into it. There is--or was--in +Florence a statue of Medusa, seated, in her fingers a strand of her +hair, which is beginning to coil and bend and twist before her +horror-stricken eyes; and this statue flashed before Jasmine's eyes as +she looked at the loose ends of gold falling beyond the blue ribbon +with which she had tied the shining rope. + +With the mad laughter of a few moments before still upon her lips, she +held the flying threads in her hand, and so strained was her mind that +it would not have caused her surprise if they had wound round her +fingers or given forth forked tongues. She laughed again--a low and +discordant laugh it was now. + +"Such imaginings--I think I must be mad," she murmured. + +Then she leaned her elbows on the dressing-table and looked at herself +in the glass. + +"Am I not mad?" she asked herself again. Then there stole across her +face a strange, far-away look, bringing a fresh touch of beauty to it, +and flooding it for a moment with that imaginative look which had been +her charm as a girl, a look of far-seeing and wonder and strange +light. + +"I wonder--if I had had a mother!" she said, wistfully, her chin in +her hand. "If my mother had lived, what would I have been?" + +She reached out to a small table near, and took from it a miniature at +which she looked with painful longing. "My dear, my very dear, you +were so sweet, so good," she said. "Am I your daughter, your own +daughter--me? Ah, sweetheart mother, come back to me! For God's sake +come--now. Speak to me if you can. Are you so very far away? +Whisper--only whisper, and I shall hear. + +"Oh, she would, she would, if she could!" her voice wailed, softly. +"She would if she could, I know. I was her youngest child, her only +little girl. But there is no coming back. And maybe there is no going +forth; only a blackness at the last, when all stops--all stops, for +ever and ever and ever, amen! . . .Amen--so be it. Ah, I even can't +believe in that! I can't even believe in God and Heaven and the +hereafter. I am a pagan, with a pagan's heart and a pagan's ways." + +She shuddered again and closed her eyes for a moment. "Ruddy had a +glimpse, one glimpse, that day, the day that Ian came back. Ruddy said +to me that day, 'If you had lived a thousand years ago you would have +had a thousand lovers.' . . . And it is true--by all the gods of all +the worlds, it is true. Pleasure, beauty, is all I ever cared +for--pleasure, beauty, and the Jasmine-flower. And Ian--and Ian, yes, +Ian! I think I had soul enough for one true thing, even if I was not +true." + +She buried her face in her hands for a moment, as though to hide a +great burning. + +"But, oh, I wonder if I did ever love Ian, even! I wonder.... Not +then, not then when I deserted him and married Rudyard, but now--now? +Do--do I love him even now, as we were to-day with his arms round me, +or is it only beauty and pleasure and--me? . . . Are they really happy +who believe in God and live like--like her?" She gazed at her mother's +portrait again. "Yes, she was happy, but only for a moment, and then +she was gone--so soon. And I shall never see her, I who never saw her +with eyes that recall.... And if I could see her, would I? I am a +pagan--would I try to be like her, if I could? I never really prayed, +because I never truly felt there was a God that was not all space, and +that was all soul and understanding. And what is to come of it, or +what will become of me? . . . I can't go back, and going on is +madness. Yes, yes, it is madness, I know--madness and badness--and +dust at the end of it all. Beauty gone, pleasure gone.... I do not +even love pleasure now as I did. It has lost its flavour; and I do not +even love beauty as I did. How well I know it! I used to climb hills +to see a sunset; I used to walk miles to find the wood anemones and +the wild violets; I used to worship a pretty child . . . a pretty +child!" + +She shrank back in her chair and pondered darkly. "A pretty +child.... Other people's pretty children, and music and art and trees +and the sea, and the colours of the hills, and the eyes of wild +animals . . and a pretty child. I wonder, I wonder if--" + +But she got no farther with that thought. "I shall hate everything on +earth if it goes from me, the beauty of things; and I feel that it is +going. The freshness of sense has gone, somehow. I am not stirred as I +used to be, not by the same things. If I lose that sense I shall kill +myself. Perhaps that would be the easiest way now. Just the overdose +of--" + +She took a little phial from the drawer of the dressing-table. "Just +the tiny overdose and 'good-bye, my lover, good-bye.'" Again that hard +little laugh of bitterness broke from her. "Or that needle Mr. Mappin +had at Glencader. A thrust of the point, and in an instant gone, and +no one to know, no one to discover, no one to add blame to blame, to +pile shame upon shame. Just blackness--blackness all at once, and no +light or anything any more. The fruit all gone from the trees, the +garden all withered, the bower all ruined, the children all dead--the +pretty children all dead forever, the pretty children that never were +born, that never lived in Jasmine's garden." + +As there had come to Rudyard premonition of evil, so to-night, in the +hour of triumph, when, beyond peradventure, she had got for Ian +Stafford what would make his career great, what through him gave +England security in her hour of truth, there came now to her something +of the real significance of it all. + +She had got what she wanted. Her pride had been appeased, her vanity +satisfied, her intellect flattered, her skill approved, and Ian was +hers. But the cost? + +Words from Swinburne's threnody on Baudelaire came to her mind. How +often she had quoted them for their sheer pagan beauty! It was the +kind of beauty which most appealed to her, which responded to the +element of fatalism in her, the sense of doom always with her since +she was a child, in spite of her gaiety, her wit, and her native +eloquence. She had never been happy, she had never had a real +illusion, never aught save the passion of living, the desire to +conquer unrest: + +"And now, no sacred staff shall break in blossom, +No choral salutation lure to light +The spirit sick with perfume and sweet night, +And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. +There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar +Not all our songs, oh, friend, can make Death clear or make Life durable +But still with rose and ivy and wild vine, +And with wild song about this dust of thine, +At least I fill a place where white dreams dwell, +And wreathe an unseen shrine." + +"'And Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. . . . There is no +help for these things, none to mend and none to mar....'" A sob rose +in her throat. "Oh, the beauty of it, the beauty and the misery and +the despair of it!" she murmured. + +Slowly she wound and wound the coil of golden hair about her neck, +drawing it tighter, fold on fold, tighter and tighter. + +"This would be the easiest way--this," she whispered. "By my own hair! +Beauty would have its victim then. No one would kiss it any more, +because it killed a woman. . . . No one would kiss it any more." + +She felt the touch of Ian Stafford's lips upon it, she felt his face +buried in it. Her own face suffused, then Adrian Fellowes' white rose, +which Rudyard had laid upon her pillow, caught her eye where it lay on +the floor. With a cry as of a hurt animal she ran to her bed, crawled +into it, and huddled down in the darkness, shivering and afraid. + +Something had discovered her to herself for the first time. Was it her +own soul? Had her Other Self, waking from sleep in the eternal spaces, +bethought itself and come to whisper and warn and help? Or was it +Penalty, or Nemesis, or that Destiny which will have its toll for all +it gives of beauty, or pleasure, or pride, or place, or pageantry? + +"Love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom"-- + +The words kept ringing in her ears. They soothed her at last into a +sleep which brought no peace, no rest or repose. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +LANDRASSY'S LAST STROKE + + +Midnight--one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock. Big Ben boomed the +hours, and from St. James's Palace came the stroke of the quarters, +lighter, quicker, almost pensive in tone. From St. James's Street +below came no sounds at last. The clatter of the hoofs of horses had +ceased, the rumble of drays carrying their night freights, the shouts +of the newsboys making sensation out of rumours made in a newspaper +office, had died away. Peace came, and a silver moon gave forth a soft +light, which embalmed the old thoroughfare, and added a tenderness to +its workaday dignity. In only one window was there a light at three +o'clock. It was the window of Ian Stafford's sitting-room. + +He had not left the Foreign Office till nearly ten o'clock, then had +had a light supper at his club, had written letters there, and after a +long walk up and down the Mall had, with reluctant feet, gone to his +chambers. + +The work which for years he had striven to do for England had been +accomplished. The Great Understanding was complete. In the words of +the secretary of the American Embassy, "Mennaval had delivered the +goods," and an arrangement had been arrived at, completed this very +night, which would leave England free to face her coming trial in +South Africa without fear of trouble on the flank or in the rear. + +The key was turned in the lock, and that lock had been the original +device and design of Ian Stafford. He had done a great work for +civilization and humanity; he had made improbable, if not impossible, +a European war. The Kaiser knew it, Franz Joseph knew it, the Czar +knew it; the White House knew it, and its master nodded with +satisfaction, for John Bull was waking up--"getting a move on." +America might have her own family quarrel with John Bull, but when it +was John Bull versus the world, not even James G. Blaine would have +been prepared to see the old lion too deeply wounded. Even Landrassy, +ambassador of Slavonia, had smiled grimly when he met Ian Stafford on +the steps of the Moravian Embassy. He was artist enough to appreciate +a well-played game, and, in any case, he had had done all that mortal +man could in the way of intrigue and tact and device. He had worked +the international press as well as it had ever been worked; he had +distilled poison here and rosewater there; he had again and again +baffled the British Foreign Office, again and again cut the ground +from under Ian Stafford's feet; and if he could have staved off the +pact, the secret international pact, by one more day, he would have +gained the victory for himself, for his country, for the alliance +behind him. + +One day, but one day, and the world would never have heard of Ian +Stafford. England would then have approached her conflict with the cup +of trembling at her lips, and there would be a new disposition of +power in Europe, a new dominating force in the diplomacy and the +relations of the peoples of the world. It was Landrassy's own last +battle-field of wit and scheming, of intellect and ambition. If he +failed in this, his sun would set soon. He was too old to carry on +much longer. He could not afford to wait. He was at the end of his +career, and he had meant this victory to be the crown of his long +services to Slavonia and the world. + +But to him was opposed a man who was at the beginning of his career, +who needed this victory to give him such a start as few men get in +that field of retarded rewards, diplomacy. It had been a man at the +end of the journey, and a man at the beginning, measuring skill, +playing as desperate a game as was ever played. If Landrassy +won--Europe a red battle-field, England at bay; if Ian Stafford +won--Europe at peace, England secure. Ambition and patriotism +intermingled, and only He who made human nature knew how much was pure +patriotism and how much pure ambition. It was a great stake. On this +day of days to Stafford destiny hung shivering, each hour that passed +was throbbing with unparalleled anxiety, each minute of it was to be +the drum-beat of a funeral march or the note of a Te Deum. + +Not more uncertain was the roulette-wheel spinning in De Lancy +Scovel's house than the wheel of diplomacy which Ian Stafford had set +spinning. Rouge et noire--it was no more, no less. But Ian had won; +England had won. Black had been beaten. + +Landrassy bowed suavely to Ian as they met outside Mennaval's door in +the early evening of this day when the business was accomplished, the +former coming out, the latter going in. + +"Well, Stafford," Landrassy said in smooth tones and with a jerk of +the head backward, "the tables are deserted, the croupier is going +home. But perhaps you have not come to play?" + +Ian smiled lightly. "I've come to get my winnings--as you say," he +retorted. + +Landrassy seemed to meditate pensively. "Ah yes, ah yes, but I'm not +sure that Mennaval hasn't bolted with the bank and your winnings, +too!" + +His meaning was clear--and hateful. Before Ian had a chance to reply, +Landrassy added in a low, confidential voice, saturated with sardonic +suggestion, "To tell you the truth, I had ceased to reckon with women +in diplomacy. I thought it was dropped with the Second Empire; but you +have started a new dispensation--evidemment, evidemment. Still +Mennaval goes home with your winnings. Eh bien, we have to pay for our +game! Allons gai!" + +Before Ian could reply--and what was there to say to insult couched in +such highly diplomatic language?--Landrassy had stepped sedately away, +swinging his gold-headed cane and humming to himself. + +"Duelling had its merits," Ian said to himself, as soon as he had +recovered from the first effect of the soft, savage insolence. "There +is no way to deal with our Landrassys except to beat them, as I have +done, in the business of life." + +He tossed his head with a little pardonable pride, as it were, to +soothe his heart, and then went in to Mennaval. There, in the +arrangements to be made with Moravia he forgot the galling incident; +and for hours afterward it was set aside. When, however, he left his +club, his supper over, after scribbling letters which he put in his +pocket absent-mindedly, and having completed his work at the Foreign +Office, it came back to his mind with sudden and scorching force. + +Landrassy's insult to Jasmine rankled as nothing had ever rankled in +his mind before, not even that letter which she had written him so +long ago announcing her intended marriage to Byng. He was fresh from +the first triumph of his life: he ought to be singing with joy, +shouting to the four corners of the universe his pride, walking on +air, finding the world a good, kind place made especially for him--his +oyster to open, his nut which he had cracked; yet here he was fresh +from the applause of his chief, with a strange heaviness at his heart, +a gloom upon his mind. + +Victory in his great fight--and love; he had them both and so he said +to himself as he opened the door of his rooms and entered upon their +comfort and quiet. He had love, and he had success; and the one had +helped to give him the other, helped in a way which was wonderful, and +so brilliantly skilful and delicate. As he poured out a glass of +water, however, the thought stung him that the nature of the success +and its value depended on the nature of the love and its value. As the +love was, so was the success, no higher, no different, since the one, +in some deep way, begot the other. Yes, it was certain that the thing +could not have been done at this time without Jasmine, and if not at +this time, then the chances were a thousand to one that it never could +be done at any time; for Britain's enemies would be on her back while +she would have to fight in South Africa. The result of that would mean +a shattered, humiliated land, with a people in pawn to the will of a +rising power across the northern sea. That it had been prevented just +in the nick of time was due to Jasmine, his fate, the power that must +beat in his veins till the end of all things. + +Yet what was the end to be? To-day he had buried his face in her +wonderful cloud of hair and had kissed her; and with it, almost on the +instant, had come the end of his great struggle for England and +himself; and for that he was willing to pay any price that time and +Nemesis might demand--any price save one. + +As he thought of that one price his lips tightened, his brow clouded, +his eyes half closed with shame. + +Rudyard Byng was his friend, whose bread he had eaten, whom he had +known since they were boys at school. He remembered acutely Rudyard's +words to him that fateful night when he had dined with Jasmine +alone--"You will have much to talk about, to say to each other, such +old friends as you are." He recalled how Rudyard had left them, +trusting them, happy in the thought that Jasmine would have a pleasant +evening with the old friend who had first introduced him to her, and +that the old friend would enjoy his eager hospitality. Rudyard had +blown his friend's trumpet wherever men would listen to him; had +proclaimed Stafford as the coming man: and this was what he had done +to Rudyard! + +This was what he had done; but what did he propose to do? What of the +future? To go on in miserable intrigue, twisting the nature, making +demands upon life out of all those usual ways in which walk love and +companionship--paths that lead through gardens of poppies, maybe, but +finding grey wilderness at the end? Never, never the right to take the +loved one by the hand before all the world and say: "We two are one, +and the reckoning of the world must be made with both." Never to have +the right to stand together in pride before the wide-eyed many and +say: "See what you choose to see, say what you choose to say, do what +you choose to do, we do not care." The open sharing of worldly +success; the inner joys which the world may not see--these things +could not be for Jasmine and for him. + +Yet he loved her. Every fibre in his being thrilled to the thought of +her. But as his passion beat like wild music in his veins, a blindness +suddenly stole into his sight, and in deep agitation he got up, opened +the window, and looked out into the night. For long he stood gazing +into the quiet street, and watched a daughter of the night, with +dilatory steps and neglected mien, go up towards the more frequented +quarter of Piccadilly. Life was grim in so much of it, futile in more, +feeble at the best, foolish in the light of a single generation or a +single century or a thousand years. It was only reasonable in the vast +proportions of eternity. It had only little sips of happiness to give, +not long draughts of joy. Who drank deep, long draughts--who of all +the men and women he had ever known? Who had had the primrose path +without the rain of fire, the cinders beneath the feet, the gins and +the nets spread for them? + +Yet might it not be that here and there people were permanently happy? +And had things been different, might not he and Jasmine have been of +the radiant few? He desired her above all things; he was willing to +sacrifice all--all for her, if need be; and yet there was that which +he could not, would not face. All or nothing--all or nothing. If he +must drink of the cup of sorrow and passion mixed, then it would be +from the full cup. + +With a stifled exclamation he sat down and began to write. Again and +again he stopped to think, his face lined and worn and old; then he +wrote on and on. Ambition, hope, youth, the Foreign Office, the +chancelleries of Europe, the perils of impending war, were all +forgotten, or sunk into the dusky streams of subconsciousness. One +thought dominated him. He was playing the game that has baffled all +men, the game of eluding destiny; and, like all men, he must break his +heart in the playing. + +"Jasmine," he wrote, "this letter, this first real letter of love +which I have ever written you, will tell you how great that love +is. It will tell you, too, what it means to me, and what I see before +us. To-day I surrendered to you all of me that would be worth your +keeping, if it was so that you might take and keep it. When I kissed +you, I set the seal upon my eternal offering to you. You have given me +success. It is for that I thank you with all my soul, but it is not +for that I love you. Love flows from other fountains than +gratitude. It rises from the well which has its springs at the +beginning of the world, where those beings lived who loved before +there were any gods at all, or any faiths, or any truths save the +truth of being. + +"But it is because what I feel belongs to something in me deeper than +I have ever known that, since we parted a few hours ago, I see all in +a new light. You have brought to me what perhaps could only have come +as it did--through fire and cloud and storm. I did not will it so, +indeed, I did not wish it so, as you know; but it came in spite of +all. And I shall speak to you of it as to my own soul. I want no +illusions, no self-deception, no pretense to be added to my debt to +you. With wide-open eyes I want to look at it. I know that this love +of mine for you is my fate, the first and the last passion of my +soul. And to have known it with all its misery,--for misery there must +be; misery, Jasmine, there is--to have known it, to have felt it, the +great overwhelming thing, goes far to compensate for all the loss it +so terribly exposes. It has brought me, too, the fruit of life's +ambition. With the full revelation of all that I feel for you came +that which gives me place in the world, confers on me the right to +open doors which otherwise were closed to me. You have done this for +me, but what have I done for you? One thing at least is forced upon +me, which I must do now while I have the sight to see and the mind to +understand. + +"I cannot go on with things as they are. I cannot face Rudyard and +give myself to hourly deception. I think that yesterday, a month ago, +I could have done so, but not now. I cannot walk the path which will +be paved with things revolting to us both. My love for you, damnable +as it would seem in the world's eyes, prevents it. It is not small +enough to be sustained or made secure in its furfilment by the devices +of intrigue. And I know that if it is so with me, it must be a +thousand times so with you. Your beauty would fade and pass under the +stress and meanness of it; your heart would reproach me even when you +smiled; you would learn to hate me even when you were resting upon my +hungry heart. You would learn to loathe the day when you said, Let me +help you. Yet, Jasmine, I know that you are mine; that you were mine +long ago, even when you did not know, and were captured by opportunity +to do what, with me, you felt you could not do. You were captured by +it; but it has not proved what it promised. You have not made the best +of the power into which you came, and you could not do so, because the +spring from which all the enriching waters of married life flow was +dry. Poor Jasmine--poor illusion of a wild young heart which reached +out for the golden city of the mirage! + +"But now.... Two ways spread out, and only two, and one of these two I +must take--for your sake. There is the third way, but I will not take +it--for your sake and for my own. I will not walk in it ever. Already +my feet are burned by the fiery path, already I am choked by the smoke +and the ashes. No. I cannot atone for what has been, but I can try and +gather up the chances that are left. + +"You must come with me away--away, to start life afresh, somewhere, +somehow; or I must go alone on some enterprise from which I shall not +return. You cannot bear what is, but, together, having braved the +world, we could look into each other's eyes without shrinking, knowing +that we had been at least true to each other, true at the last to the +thing that binds us, taking what Fate gave without repining, because +we had faced all that the world could do against us. It would mean +that I should leave diplomacy forever, give up all that so far has +possessed me in the business of life; but I should not lament. I have +done the one big thing I wanted to do, I have cut a swath in the +field. I have made some principalities and powers reckon with me. It +may be I have done all I was meant to do in doing that--it may be. In +any case, the thing I did would stand as an accomplished work--it +would represent one definite and original thing; one piece of work in +design all my own, in accomplishment as much yours as mine.... To go +then--together--with only the one big violence to the conventions of +the world, and take the law into our own hands? Rudyard, who +understands Life's violence, would understand that; what he could +never understand would be perpetual artifice, unseemly secretiveness. +He himself would have been a great filibuster in the olden days; +he would have carried off the wives and daughters of the chiefs and +kings he conquered; but he would never have stolen into the secret +garden at night and filched with the hand of the sneak-thief--never. + +"To go with me--away, and start afresh. There will be always work to +do, always suffering humanity to be helped. We should help because we +would have suffered, we should try to set right the one great mistake +you made in not coming to me and so furfilling the old promise. To set +that error right, even though it be by wronging Rudyard by one great +stroke--that is better than hourly wronging him now with no surcease +of that wrong. No, no, this cannot go on. You could not have it so. I +seem to feel that you are writing to me now, telling me to begone +forever, saying that you had given me gifts--success and love; and now +to go and leave you in peace. + +"Peace, Jasmine, it is that we cry for, pray for, adjure the heavens +for in the end. And all this vast, passionate love of mine is the +strife of the soul for peace, for fruition. + +"That peace we may have in another way: that I should go forever, now, +before the terrible bond of habit has done its work, and bound us in +chains that never fall, that even remain when love is dead and gone, +binding the cold cadre to the living pain. To go now, with something +accomplished, and turn my back forever on the world, with one last +effort to do the impossible thing for some great cause, and fail and +be lost forever--do you not understand? Face it, Jasmine, and try to +see it in its true light.... I have a friend, John Caxton--you know +him. He is going to the Antarctic to find the futile thing, but the +necessary thing so far as the knowledge of the world is +concerned. With him, then, that long quiet and in the far white spaces +to find peace--forever. + +"You? . . . Ah, Jasmine, habit, the habit of enduring me, is not +fixed, and in my exit there would be the agony of the moment, and then +the comforting knowledge that I had done my best to set things +right. Perhaps it is the one way to set things right; the fairest to +you, the kindest, and that which has in it most love. The knowledge of +a great love ended--yours and mine--would help you to give what you +can give with fuller soul. And, maybe, to be happy with Rudyard at the +last! Maybe, to be happy with him, without this wonderful throbbing +pulse of being, but with quiet, and to get a measure of what is due to +you in the scheme of things. Destiny gives us in life so much and no +more: to some a great deal in a little time, to others a little over a +great deal of time, but never the full cup and the shining sky over +long years. One's share small it must be, but one's share! And it may +be, in what has come to-day, in the hour of my triumph, in the +business of life, in the one hour of revealing love, it may be I have +had my share.... And if that is so, then peace should be my goal, and +peace I can have yonder in the snows. No one would guess that it was +not accident, and I should feel sure that I had stopped in time to +save you from the worst. But it must be the one or the other. + +"The third way I cannot, will not, take, nor would you take it +willingly. It would sear your heart and spirit, it would spoil all +that makes you what you are. Jasmine, once for all I am your lover and +your friend. I give you love and I give you friendship--whatever +comes; always that, always friendship. Tempus fugit sed amicitia est. + +"In my veins is a river of fire, and my heart is wrenched with pain; +but in my soul is that which binds me to you, together or apart, in +life, in death.... Good-night.... Good-morrow. + +"Your Man, + +"IAN. + +"P.S.--I will come for your reply at eleven to-morrow. + +"IAN." + +He folded the letter slowly and placed it in an envelope which was +lying loose on the desk with the letters he had written at the +Trafalgar Club, and had forgotten to post. When he had put the letter +inside the envelope and stamped it, he saw that the envelope was one +carrying the mark of the Club. By accident he had brought it with the +letters written there. He hesitated a moment, then refrained from +opening the letter again, and presently went out into the night and +posted all his letters. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +TO-MORROW . . . PREPARE! + + +Krool did not sleep. What he read in a letter he had found in a +hallway, what he knew of those dark events in South Africa, now to +culminate in a bitter war, and what, with the mysterious psychic +instinct of race, he divined darkly and powerfully, all kept his eyes +unsleeping and his mind disordered. More than any one, he knew of the +inner story of the Baas' vrouw during the past week and years; also he +had knowledge of what was soon to empty out upon the groaning earth +the entrails of South Africa; but how he knew was not to be +discovered. Even Rudyard, who thought he read him like a book, only +lived on the outer boundaries of his character. Their alliance was +only the durable alliance of those who have seen Death at their door, +and together have driven him back. + +Barry Whalen had regarded Krool as a spy; all Britishers who came and +went in the path to Rudyard's door had their doubts or their dislike +of him; and to every servant of the household he was a dark and +isolated figure. He never interfered with the acts of his +fellow-servants, except in so far as those acts affected his master's +comfort; and he paid no attention to their words except where they +affected himself. + +"When you think it's a ghost, it's only Krool wanderin' w'ere he ain't +got no business," was the angry remark of the upper-housemaid, whom +his sudden appearance had startled in a dim passage one day. + +"Lor'! what a turn you give me, Mr. Krool, spookin' about where +there's no call for you to be," she had said to him, and below stairs +she had enlarged upon his enormities greatly. + +"And Mrs. Byng, she not like him better as we do," was the comment of +Lablanche, the lady's maid. "A snake in the grass--that is what Madame +think." + +Slowly the night passed for Krool. His disturbed brain was like some +dark wood through which flew songless birds with wings of night; +through which sped the furtive dwellers of the grass and the +earth-covert. The real and the imaginative crowded the dark +purlieus. He was the victim of his blood, his beginnings off there +beyond the Vaal, where the veld was swept by the lightning and the +storm, the home of wild dreams, and of a loneliness terrible and +strange, to which the man who once had tasted its awful pleasures +returned and returned again, until he was, at the last, part of its +loneliness, its woeful agitations and its reposeless quiet. + +It was not possible for him to think or be like pure white people, to +do as they did. He was a child of the kopje, the spruit, and the dun +veld, where men dwelt with weird beings which were not men--presences +that whispered, telling them of things to come, blowing the warnings +of Destiny across the waste, over thousands and thousands of +miles. Such as he always became apart and lonely because of this +companionship of silence and the unseen. More and more they withdrew +themselves, unwittingly and painfully, from the understanding and +companionship of the usual matter-of-fact, commonplace, sensible +people--the settler, the emigrant, and the British man. Sinister they +became, but with the helplessness of those in whom the under-spirit of +life has been working, estranging them, even against their will, from +the rest of the world. + +So Krool, estranged, lonely, even in the heart of friendly, pushing, +jostling London, still was haunted by presences which whispered to +him, not with the old clearness of bygone days, but with confused +utterances and clouded meaning; and yet sufficient in dark suggestion +for him to know that ill happenings were at hand, and that he would be +in the midst of them, an instrument of Fate. All night strange shapes +trooped past his clouded eyes, and more than once, in a half-dream, he +called out to his master to help him as he was helped long ago when +that master rescued him from death. + +Long before the rest of the house was stirring, Krool wandered hither +and thither through the luxurious rooms, vainly endeavouring to occupy +himself with his master's clothes, boots, and belongings. At last he +stole into Byng's room and, stooping, laid something on the floor; +then reclaiming the two cables which Rudyard had read, crumpled up, +and thrown away, he crept stealthily from the room. His face had a +sombre and forbidding pleasure as he read by the early morning light +the discarded messages with their thunderous warnings--"To-morrow +. . . Prepare!" + +He knew their meaning well enough. "To-morrow" was here, and it would +bring the challenge from Oom Paul to try the might of England against +the iron courage of those to whom the Vierkleur was the symbol of +sovereignty from sea to sea and the ruin of the Rooinek. + +"Prepare!" He knew vastly more than those responsible men in position +or in high office, who should know a thousand times as much more. He +knew so much that was useful--to Oom Paul; but what he knew he did not +himself convey, though it reached those who welcomed it eagerly and +grimly. All that he knew, another also near to the Baas also knew, and +knew it before Krool; and reaped the reward of knowing. + +Krool did not himself need to betray the Baas direct; and, with the +reasoning of the native in him, he found it possible to let another be +the means and the messenger of betrayal. So he soothed his conscience. + +A little time before they had all gone to Glencader, however, he had +discovered something concerning this agent of Paul Kruger in the heart +of the Outlander camp, whom he employed, which had roused in him the +worst passions of an outcast mind. Since then there had been no +trafficking with the traitor--the double traitor, whom he was now +plotting to destroy, not because he was a traitor to his country, but +because he was a traitor to the Baas. In his evil way, he loved his +master as a Caliban might love an Apollo. That his devotion took forms +abnormal and savage in their nature was due to his origin and his +blood. That he plotted to secure the betrayal of the Baas' country and +the Outlander interest, while he would have given his life for the +Baas, was but the twisted sense of a perverted soul. + +He had one obsession now--to destroy Adrian Fellowes, his agent for +Paul Kruger in the secret places of British policy and in the house of +the Partners, as it were. But how should it be done? What should be +the means? On the very day in which Oom Paul would send his ultimatum, +the means came to his hand. + +"Prepare!" the cable to the Baas had read. The Baas would be prepared +for the thunderbolt to be hurled from Pretoria; but he would have no +preparation for the thunderbolt which would fall at his feet this day +in this house, where white roses welcomed the visitor at the door-way +and the beauty of Titians and Botticellis and Rubens' and Goyas +greeted him in the luxuriant chambers. There would be no preparation +for that war which rages most violently at a fireside and in the human +heart. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE FURNACE DOOR + + +It was past nine o'clock when Rudyard wakened. It was nearly ten +before he turned to leave his room for breakfast. As he did so he +stooped and picked up an open letter lying on the floor near the door. + +His brain was dazed and still surging with the terrible thoughts which +had agonized him the night before. He was as in a dream, and was only +vaguely conscious of the fugitive letter. He was wondering whether he +would go at once to Jasmine or wait until he had finished +breakfast. Opening the door of his room, he saw the maid entering to +Jasmine with a gown over her arm. + +No, he would not go to her till she was alone, till she was dressed +and alone. Then he would tell her all, and take her in his arms, and +talk with her--talk as he had never talked before. Slowly, heavily, he +went to his study, where his breakfast was always eaten. As he sat +down he opened, with uninterested inquiry, the letter he had picked up +inside the door of his room. As he did so he vaguely wondered why +Krool had overlooked it as he passed in and out. Perhaps Krool had +dropped it. His eyes fell on the opening words. . . His face turned +ashen white. A harsh cry broke from him. + +At eleven o'clock to the minute Ian Stafford entered Byng's mansion +and was being taken to Jasmine's sitting-room, when Rudyard appeared +on the staircase, and with a peremptory gesture waved the servant +away. Ian was suddenly conscious of a terrible change in Rudyard's +appearance. His face was haggard and his warm colour had given place +to a strange blackish tinge which seemed to underlie the pallor--the +deathly look to be found in the faces of those stricken with a mortal +disease. All strength and power seemed to have gone from the face, +leaving it tragic with uncontrolled suffering. Panic emotion was +uppermost, while desperate and reckless purpose was in his eyes. The +balance was gone from the general character and his natural force was +like some great gun loose from its fastenings on the deck of a +sea-stricken ship. He was no longer the stalwart Outlander who had +done such great work in South Africa and had such power in political +London and in international finance. The demoralization which had +stealthily gone on for a number of years was now suddenly a debacle of +will and body. Of the superb physical coolness and intrepid mind with +which he had sprung upon the stage of Covent Garden Opera House to +rescue Al'mah nothing seemed left; or, if it did remain, it was +shocked out of its bearings. His eyes were almost glassy as he looked +at Ian Stafford, and animal-like hatred was the dominating note of his +face and carriage. + +"Come with me, Stafford: I want to speak to you," he said, +hoarsely. "You've arrived when I wanted you--at the exact time." + +"Yes, I said I would come at eleven," responded Stafford, +mechanically. "Jasmine expects me at eleven." + +"In here," Byng said, pointing to a little morning-room. + +As Stafford entered, he saw Krool's face, malign and sombre, show in a +doorway of the hall. Was he mistaken in thinking that Krool flashed a +look of secret triumph and yet of obscure warning? Warning? There was +trouble, strange and dreadful trouble, here; and the wrenching thought +had swept into his brain that he was the cause of it all, that he was +to be the spring and centre of dreadful happenings. + +He was conscious of something else purely objective as he entered the +room--of music, the music of a gay light opera being played in the +adjoining room, from which this little morning-room was separated only +by Indian bead-curtains. He saw idle sunlight play upon these beads, +as he sat down at the table to which Rudyard motioned him. He was also +subconsciously aware who it was that played the piano beyond there +with such pleasant skill. Many a time thereafter, in the days to come, +he would be awakened in the night by the sound of that music, a +love-song from the light opera "A Lady of London," which had just +caught the ears of the people in the street. + +Of one thing he was sure: the end of things had come--the end of all +things that life meant to him had come. Rudyard knew! Rudyard, sitting +there at the other side of the table and leaning toward him with a +face where, in control of all else, were hate and panic emotion--he +knew. + +The music in the next room was soft, persistent and searching. As Ian +waited for Rudyard to speak he was conscious that even the words of +the silly, futile love-song: + +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear +Never shall its lovely petals fade, +Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year +Happy as the song-birds in the glade." + +Through it all now came Rudyard's voice. + +"I have a letter here," the voice said, and he saw Rudyard slowly take +it from his pocket. "I want you to read it, and when you have read it, +I want you to tell me what you think of the man who wrote it." + +He threw a letter down on the table--a square white envelope with the +crest of the Trafalgar Club upon it. It lay face downward, waiting for +his hand. + +So it had come. His letter to Jasmine which told all--Rudyard had read +it. And here was the end of everything--the roses faded before they +had bloomed an hour. It was not for them to flourish "till the world's +last year." + +His hand reached out for the letter. With eyes almost blind he raised +it, and slowly and mechanically took the document of tragedy from the +envelope. Why should Rudyard insist on his reading it? It was a +devilish revenge, which he could not resent. But time--he must have +time; therefore he would do Rudyard's bidding, and read this thing he +had written, look at it with eyes in which Penalty was gathering its +mists. + +So this was the end of it all--friendship gone with the man before +him; shame come to the woman he loved; misery to every one; a +home-life shattered; and from the souls of three people peace banished +for evermore. + +He opened out the pages with a slowness that seemed almost apathy, +while the man opposite clinched his hands on the table spasmodically. +Still the music from the other room with cheap, flippant sensuousness +stole through the burdened air: + +"Singing, it will flourish till the world's last year--" + +He looked at the writing vaguely, blindly. Why should this be exacted +of him, this futile penalty? Then all at once his sight cleared; for +this handwriting was not his--this letter was not his; these wild, +passionate phrases--this terrible suggestiveness of meaning, these +references to the past, this appeal for further hours of love +together, this abjectly tender appeal to Jasmine that she would wear +one of his white roses when he saw her the next day--would she not see +him between eleven and twelve o'clock?--all these words were not his. + +They were written by the man who was playing the piano in the next +room; by the man who had come and gone in this house like one who had +the right to do so; who had, as it were, fed from Rudyard Byng's hand; +who lived on what Byng paid him; who had been trusted with the +innermost life of the household and the life and the business of the +master of it. + +The letter was signed, Adrian. + +His own face blanched like the face of the man before him. He had +braced himself to face the consequences of his own letter to the woman +he loved, and he was face to face with the consequences of another +man's letter to the same woman, to the woman who had two lovers. He +was face to face with Rudyard's tragedy, and with his own.... She, +Jasmine, to whom he had given all, for whom he had been ready to give +up all--career, fame, existence--was true to none, unfaithful to all, +caring for none, but pretending to care for all three--and for how +many others? He choked back a cry. + +"Well--well?" came the husband's voice across the table. "There's one +thing to do, and I mean to do it." He waved a hand towards the +music-room. "He's in the next room there. I mean to kill him--to kill +him--now. I wanted you to know why, to know all, you, Stafford, my old +friend and hers. And I'm going to do it now. Listen to him there!" + +His words came brokenly and scarce above a whisper, but they were +ghastly in their determination, in their loathing, their blind +fury. He was gone mad, all the animal in him alive, the brain tossing +on a sea of disorder. + +"Now!" he said, suddenly, and, rising, he pushed back his chair. "Give +that to me." + +He reached out his hand for the letter, but his confused senses were +suddenly arrested by the look in Ian Stafford's face, a look so +strange, so poignant, so insistent, that he paused. Words could not +have checked his blind haste like that look. In the interval which +followed, the music from the other room struck upon the ears of both, +with exasperating insistence: + +"Not like the roses shall our love be, dear--" + +Stafford made no motion to return the letter. He caught and held +Rudyard's eyes. + +"You ask me to tell you what I think of the man who wrote this +letter," he said, thickly and slowly, for he was like one paralyzed, +regaining his speech with blanching effort: "Byng, I think what you +think--all you think; but I would not do what you want to do." + +As he had read the letter the whole horror of the situation burst upon +him. Jasmine had deceived her husband when she turned to himself, and +that was to be understood--to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A +woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes +before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance +which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, +with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate +life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition +from maidenhood to wifehood, fateful beyond all transitions, yet +unmade, she might be mistaken once; as so many have been in the +revelations of first intimacy; but not twice, not the second time. It +was not possible to be mistaken in so vital a thing twice. This was +merely a wilful, miserable degeneracy. Rudyard had been +wronged--terribly wronged--by himself, by Jasmine; but he had loved +Jasmine since she was a child, before Rudyard came--in truth, he all +but possessed her when Rudyard came; and there was some explanation, +if no excuse, for that betrayal; but this other, it was incredible, it +was monstrous. It was incredible but yet it was true. Thoughts that +overturned all his past, that made a melee of his life, rushed and +whirled through his mind as he read the letter with assumed +deliberation when he saw what it was. He read slowly that he might +make up his mind how to act, what to say and do in this crisis. To +do--what? Jasmine had betrayed him long ago when she had thrown him +over for Rudyard, and now she had betrayed him again after she had +married Rudyard, and betrayed Rudyard, too; and for whom this second +betrayal? His heart seemed to shrink to nothingness. This business +dated far beyond yesterday. The letter furnished that sure evidence. + +What to do? Like lightning his mind was made up. What to do? Ah, but +one thing to do--only one thing to do--save her at any cost, somehow +save her! Whatever she was, whatever she had done, however she had +spoiled his life and destroyed forever his faith, yet he too had +betrayed this broken man before him, with the look in his eyes of an +animal at bay, ready to do the last irretrievable thing. Even as her +shameless treatment of himself smote him; lowered him to that dust +which is ground from the heels of merciless humanity--even as it +sickened his soul beyond recovery in this world, up from the lowest +depths of his being there came the indestructible thing. It was the +thing that never dies, the love that defies injury, shame, crime, +deceit, and desertion, and lives pityingly on, knowing all, enduring +all, desiring no touch, no communion, yet prevailing--the +indestructible thing. + +He knew now in a flash what he had to do. He must save her. He saw +that Rudyard was armed, and that the end might come at any +moment. There was in the wronged husband's eyes the wild, reckless, +unseeing thing which disregards consequences, which would rush blindly +on the throne of God itself to snatch its vengeance. He spoke again: +and just in time. + +"I think what you think, Byng, but I would not do what you want to +do. I would do something else." + +His voice was strangely quiet, but it had a sharp insistence which +caused Rudyard to turn back mechanically to the seat he had just +left. Stafford saw the instant's advantage which, if he did not +pursue, all would be lost. With a great effort he simulated intense +anger and indignation. + +"Sit down, Byng," he said, with a gesture of authority. He leaned over +the table, holding the other's eyes, the letter in one clinched +hand. "Kill him--," he said, and pointed to the other room, from which +came the maddening iteration of the jingling song--"you would kill him +for his hellish insolence, for this infamous attempt to lead your wife +astray, but what good will it do to kill him?" + +"Not him alone, but her too," came the savage, uncontrolled voice from +the uncontrolled savagery of the soul. + +Suddenly a great fear shot up in Stafford's heart. His breath came in +sharp, breaking gasps. Had he--had he killed Jasmine? + +"You have not--not her?" + +"No--not yet." The lips of the avenger suddenly ceased twitching, and +they shut with ominous certainty. + +An iron look came into Stafford's face. He had his chance now. One +word, one defense only! It would do all, or all would be lost--sunk in +a sea of tragedy. Diplomacy had taught him the gift of control of face +and gesture, of meaning in tone and word. He made an effort greater +than he had ever put forward in life. He affected an enormous and +scornful surprise. + +"You think--you dare to think that she--that Jasmine--" + +"Think, you say! The letter--that letter--" + +"This letter--this letter, Byng--are you a fool? This letter, this +preposterous thing from the universal philanderer, the effeminate +erotic! It is what it is, and it is no more. Jasmine--you know +her. Indiscreet--yes; always indiscreet in her way, in her own way, +and always daring. A coquette always. She has coquetted all her life; +she cannot help it. She doesn't even know it. She led him on from +sheer wilfulness. What did it matter to her that he was of no account! +She led him on, to be at her feet like the rest, like bigger and +better men--like us all. Was there ever a time when she did not want +to master us? She has coquetted since--ah, you do not know as I do, +her old friend! She has coquetted since she was a little +child. Coquetted, and no more. We have all been her slaves--yes, long +before you came--all of us. Look at Mennaval! She--" + +With a distracted gesture Byng interrupted. "The world believes the +worst. Last night, by accident, I heard at De Lancy Scovel's house +that she and Mennaval--and now this--!" + +But into the rage, the desperation in the wild eyes, was now creeping +an eager look--not of hope, but such a look as might be in eyes that +were striving to see through darkness, looking for a glimmer of day in +the black hush of morning before the dawn. It was pitiful to see the +strong man tossing on the flood of disordered understanding, a willing +castaway, yet stretching out a hand to be saved. + +"Oh, last night, Mennaval, you say, and to-day--this!" Stafford held +up the letter. "This means nothing against her, except indiscretion, +and indiscretion which would have been nothing if the man had not been +what he is. He is of the slime. He does not matter, except that he has +dared--!" + +"He has dared, by God--!" + +All Byng's rage came back, the lacerated pride, the offended manhood, +the self-esteem which had been spattered by the mud of slander, by the +cynical defense, or the pitying solicitude of his friends--of De Lancy +Scovel, Barry Whalen, Sobieski the Polish Jew, Fleming, Wolff, and the +rest. The pity of these for him--for Rudyard Byng, because the flower +in his garden, his Jasmine-flower, was swept by the blast of calumny! +He sprang from his chair with an ugly oath. + +But Stafford stepped in front of him. "Sit down, Byng, or damn +yourself forever. If she is innocent--and she is--do you think she +would ever live with you again, after you had dragged her name into +the dust of the criminal courts and through the reek of the ha'penny +press? Do you think Jasmine would ever forgive you for suspecting her? +If you want to drive her from you forever, then kill him, and go and +tell her that you suspect her. I know her--I have known her all her +life, long before you came. I care what becomes of her. She has many +who care what becomes of her--her father, her brother, many men, and +many women who have seen her grow up without a mother. They understand +her, they believe in her, because they have known her over all the +years. They know her better than you. Perhaps they care for her-- +perhaps any one of them cares for her far more than you do." + +Now there came a new look into the big, staring eyes. Byng was as one +fascinated; light was breaking in on his rage, his besmirched pride, +his vengeance; hope was stealing tremblingly into his face. + +"She was more to me than all the world--than twenty worlds. She--" + +He hesitated, then his voice broke and his body suddenly shook +violently, as tears rose in the far, deep wells of feeling and tried +to reach the fevered eyes. He leaned his head in his big, awkward +hands. + +Stafford saw the way of escape for Jasmine slowly open out, and went +on quickly. "You have neglected her "--Rudyard's head came up in angry +protest--"not wilfully; but you have neglected her. You have been too +easy. You should lead, not follow, where a woman is concerned. All +women are indiscreet, all are a little dishonourable on opportunity; +but not in the big way, only in the small, contemptible way, according +to our code. We men are dishonourable in the big way where they are +concerned. You have neglected her, Byng, because you have not said, +'This way, Jasmine. Come with me. I want you; and you must came, and +come now.' She wanted your society, wanted you all the time; but while +you did not have her on the leash she went playing--playing. That is +it, and that is all. And now, if you want to keep her, if you want her +to live on with you, I warn you not to tell her you know of the insult +this letter contains, nor ever say what would make her think you +suspected her. If you do, you will bid good-bye to her forever. She +has bold blood in her veins, rash blood. Her grandfather--" + +"I know--I know." The tone was credulous, understanding now. Hope +stole into the distorted face. + +"She would resent your suspicion. She, then, would do the mad thing, +not you. She would be as frenzied as you were a moment ago; and she +would not listen to reason. If you dared to hint outside in the world, +that you believed her guilty, there are some of her old friends who +would feel like doing to you what you want to do to that libertine in +there, to Al'mah's lover--" + +"Good God, Stafford--wait!" + +"I don't mean Barry Whalen, Fleming, De Lancy Scovel, and the +rest. They are not her old friends, and they weren't yours once--that +breed; but the others who are the best, of whom you come, over there +in Herefordshire, in Dorset, in Westmorland, where your and her people +lived, and mine. You have been too long among the Outlanders, +Byng. Come back, and bring Jasmine with you. And as for this letter--" + +Byng reached out his hand for it. + +"No, it contains an insult to your wife. If you get it into your +hands, you will read it again, and then you will do some foolish +thing, for you have lost grip of yourself. Here is the only place for +such stuff--an outburst of sensuality!" + +He threw the letter suddenly into the fire. Rudyard sprang to his feet +as though to reclaim it, but stood still bewildered, as he saw +Stafford push it farther into the coals. + +Silent, they watched shrivel such evidence as brings ruin upon men and +women in courts of law. + +"Leave the whole thing--leave Fellowes to me," Stafford said, after a +slight pause. "I will deal with him. He shall leave the country +to-night. I will see to that. He shall go for three years at least. Do +not see him. You will not contain yourself, and for your own chance of +happiness with the woman you love, you must do nothing, nothing at all +now." + +"He has keys, papers--" + +"I will see to that; I will see to everything. Now go, at once. There +is enough for you to do. The war, Oom Paul's war, will be on us to +day. Do you hear, Byng--to-day! And you have work to do for this your +native country and for South Africa, your adopted country. England and +the Transvaal will be at each other's throat before night. You have +work to do. Do it. You are needed. Go, and leave this wretched +business in my hands. I will deal with Fellowes--adequately." + +The rage had faded from Byng's fevered eyes, and now there was a +moisture in them, a look of incalculable relief. To believe in +Jasmine, that was everything to him. He had not seen her yet, not +since he left the white rose on her pillow last night--Adrian +Fellowes' tribute; and after he had read the letter, he had had no +wish to see her till he had had his will and done away with Fellowes +forever. Then he would see her--for the last time: and she should die, +too,--with himself. That had been his purpose. Now all was changed. He +would not see her now, not till Fellowes was gone forever. Then he +would come again, and say no word which would let her think he knew +what Fellowes had written. Yes, Stafford was right. She must not know, +and they must start again, begin life again together, a new +understanding in his heart, new purposes in their existence. In these +few minutes Stafford had taught him much, had showed him where he had +been wrong, had revealed to him Jasmine's nature as he never really +understood it. + +At the door, as Stafford helped him on with a light overcoat, he took +a revolver from his pocket. + +"That's the proof of what I meant to do," he said; "and this is proof +of what I mean to do," he added, as he handed over the revolver and +Stafford's fingers grasped it with a nervous force which he +misinterpreted. + +"Ah yes," he exclaimed, sadly, "you don't quite trust me yet--not +quite, Stafford; and I don't wonder; but it's all right.... You've +been a good, good friend to us both," he added. "I wish Jasmine might +know how good a friend you've been. But never mind. We'll pay the debt +sometime, somehow, she and I. When shall I see you again?" + +At that moment a clear voice rang out cheerily in the +distance. "Rudyard--where are you, Ruddy?" it called. + +A light broke over Byng's haggard face. "Not yet?" he asked Stafford. + +"No, not yet," was the reply, and Byng was pushed through the open +door into the street. + +"Ruddy--where are you, Ruddy?" sang the voice like a morning song. + +Then there was silence, save for the music in the room beyond the +little room where the two men had sat a few moments ago. + +The music was still poured forth, but the tune was changed. Now it was +"Pagliacci"--that wonderful passage where the injured husband pours +out his soul in agony. + +Stafford closed the doors of the little room where he and Byng had +sat, and stood an instant listening to the music. He shuddered as the +passionate notes swept over his senses. In this music was the note of +the character of the man who played--sensuous emotion, sensual +delight. There are men who by nature are as the daughters of the +night, primary prostitutes, with no minds, no moral sense; only a +sensuous organization which has a gift of shallow beauty, while the +life is never deep enough for tears nor high enough for real joy. + +In Stafford's pocket was the revolver which Byng had given him. He +took it out, and as he did so, a flush swept over his face, and every +nerve of his body tingled. + +"That way out?" he thought. "How easy--and how selfish.... If one's +life only concerned oneself.... But it's only partly one's own from +first to last." . . . Then his thoughts turned again to the man who +was playing "Pagliacci." "I have a greater right to do it than Byng, +and I'd have a greater joy in doing it; but whatever he is, it is not +all his fault." Again he shuddered. "No man makes love like that to a +woman unless she lets him, . . . until she lets him." Then he looked +at the fire where the cruel testimony had shrivelled into smoke. "If +it had been read to a jury . . . Ah, my God! How many he must have +written her like that ... How often...." + +With an effort he pulled himself together. "What does it matter now! +All things have come to an end for me. There is only one way. My +letter to her showed it. But this must be settled first. Then to see +her for the last time, to make her understand...." + +He went to the beaded curtain, raised it, and stepped into the flood +of warm sunlight. The voluptuous, agonizing music came in a wave over +him. Tragedy, poignant misery, rang through every note, swelled in a +stream which drowned the senses. This man-devil could play, Stafford +remarked, cynically, to himself. + +"A moment--Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +The music frayed into a discord and stopped. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE + + +There was that in Stafford's tone which made Fellowes turn with a +start. It was to this room that Fellowes had begged Jasmine to come +this morning, in the letter which Krool had so carefully placed for +his master to find, after having read it himself with minute +scrutiny. It was in this room they had met so often in those days when +Rudyard was in South Africa, and where music had been the medium of an +intimacy which had nothing for its warrant save eternal vanity and +curiosity, the evil genius of the race of women. Here it was that +Krool's antipathy to Jasmine and fierce hatred of Fellowes had been +nurtured. Krool had haunted the room, desiring the end of it all; but +he had been disarmed by a smiling kindness on Jasmine's part, which +shook his purpose again and again. + +It had all been a problem which Krool's furtive mind failed to +master. If he went to the Baas with his suspicions, the chance was +that he would be flayed with a sjambok and turned into the streets; if +he warned Jasmine, the same thing might happen, or worse. But fate had +at last played into his hands, on the very day that Oom Paul had +challenged destiny, when all things were ready for the ruin of the +hated English. + +Fate had sent him through the hallway between Jasmine's and Rudyard's +rooms in the moment when Jasmine had dropped Fellowes' letter; and he +had seen it fall. He knew not what it was, but it might be of +importance, for he had seen Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among +those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had +waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, +without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to +the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. + +He had left this fateful letter where Rudyard would see it when he +rose in the morning. All had worked out as he had planned, and now, +with his ear against the door which led from the music-room, he +strained to hear what passed between Stafford and Fellowes. + +"Well, what is it?" asked Fellowes, with an attempt to be casual, +though there was that in Stafford's face which gave him anxiety, he +knew not why. He had expected Jasmine, and, instead, here was +Stafford, who had been so much with her of late; who, with Mennaval, +had occupied so much of her time that she had scarcely spoken to him, +and, when she did so, it was with a detachment which excluded him from +intimate consideration. + +His face wore a mechanical smile, as his pale blue eyes met the dark +intensity of Stafford's. But slowly the peach-bloom of his cheeks +faded and his long, tapering fingers played nervously with the +leather-trimming of the piano-stool. + +"Anything I can do for you, Stafford?" he added, with attempted +nonchalance. + +"There is nothing you can do for me," was the meaning reply, "but +there is something you can do advantageously for yourself, if you will +think it worth while." + +"Most of us are ready to do ourselves good turns. What am I to do?" + +"You will wish to avoid it, and yet you will do yourself a good turn +in not avoiding it." + +"Is that the way you talk in diplomatic circles--cryptic, they call +it, don't they?" + +Stafford's chin hardened, and a look of repulsion and disdain crossed +over his face. + +"It is more cryptic, I confess, than the letter which will cause you +to do yourself a good turn." + +Now Fellowes' face turned white. "What letter?" he asked, in a sharp, +querulous voice. + +"The letter you wrote Mrs. Byng from the Trafalgar Club yesterday." + +Fellowes made a feint, an attempt at bravado. "What business is it of +yours, anyhow? What rights have you got in Mrs. Byng's letters?" + +"Only what I get from a higher authority." + +"Are you in sweet spiritual partnership with the Trinity?" + +"The higher authority I mean is Mr. Byng. Let us have no tricks with +words, you fool." + +Fellowes made an ineffective attempt at self-possession. + +"What the devil . . . why should I listen to you?" There was a peevish +stubbornness in the tone. + +"Why should you listen to me? Well, because I have saved your +life. That should be sufficient reason for you to listen." + +"Damnation--speak out, if you've got anything to say! I don't see what +you mean, and you are damned officious. Yes, that's it--damned +officious." The peevishness was becoming insolent recklessness. + +Slowly Stafford drew from his pocket the revolver Rudyard had given +him. As Fellowes caught sight of the glittering steel he fell back +against the piano-stool, making a clatter, his face livid. + +Stafford's lips curled with contempt. "Don't squirm so, Fellowes. I'm +not going to use it. But Mr. Byng had it, and he was going to use +it. He was on his way to do it when I appeared. I stopped him . . . I +will tell you how. I endeavoured to make him believe that she was +absolutely innocent, that you had only been an insufferably insolent, +presumptuous, and lecherous cad--which is true. I said that, though +you deserved shooting, it would only bring scandal to Rudyard Byng's +honourable wife, who had been insulted by the lover of Al'mah and the +would-be betrayer of an honest girl--of Jigger's sister.... Yes, you +may well start. I know of what stuff you are, how you had the soul and +body of one of the most credulous and wonderful women in the world in +your hands, and you went scavenging. From Al'mah to the flower-girl! +. . . I think I should like to kill you myself for what you tried to +do to Jigger's sister; and if it wasn't here"--he handled the little +steel weapon with an eager fondness--" I think I'd do it. You are a +pest." + +Cowed, shivering, abject, Fellowes nervously fell back. His body +crashed upon the keys of the piano, producing a hideous +discord. Startled, he sprang aside and with trembling hands made +gestures of appeal. + +"Don't--don't! Can't you see I'm willing! What is it you want me to +do? I'll do it. Put it away.... Oh, my God--Oh!" His bloodless lips +were drawn over his teeth in a grimace of terror. + +With an exclamation of contempt Stafford put the weapon back into his +pocket again. "Pull yourself together," he said. "Your life is safe +for the moment; but I can say no more than that. After I had proved +the lady's innocence--you understand, after I had proved the lady's +innocence to him--" + +"Yes, I understand," came the hoarse reply. + +"After that, I said I would deal with you; that he could not be +trusted to do so. I said that you would leave England within +twenty-four hours, and that you would not return within three +years. That was my pledge. You are prepared to fulfil it?" + +"To leave England! It is impossible--" + +"Perhaps to leave it permanently, and not by the English Channel, +either, might be worse," was the cold, savage reply. "Mr. Byng made +his terms." + +Fellowes shivered. "What am I to do out of England--but, yes, I'll go, +I'll go," he added, as he saw the look in Stafford's face and thought +of the revolver so near to Stafford's hand. + +"Yes, of course you will go," was the stern retort. "You will go, just +as I say." + +"What shall I do abroad?" wailed the weak voice. + +"What you have always done here, I suppose--live on others," was the +crushing reply. "The venue will be changed, but you won't change, not +you. If I were you, I'd try and not meet Jigger before you go. He +doesn't know quite what it is, but he knows enough to make him +reckless." + +Fellowes moved towards the door in a stumbling kind of way. "I have +some things up-stairs," he said. + +"They will be sent after you to your chambers. Give me the keys to the +desk in the secretary's room." + +"I'll go myself, and--" + +"You will leave this house at once, and everything will be sent after +you--everything. Have no fear. I will send them myself, and your +letters and private papers will not be read.... You feel you can rely +on me for that--eh?" + +"Yes . . . I'll go now . . . abroad . . . where?" + +"Where you please outside the United Kingdom." + +Fellowes passed heavily out through the other room, where his letter +had been read by Stafford, where his fate had been decided. He put on +his overcoat nervously and went to the outer door. + +Stafford came up to him again. "You understand, there must be no +attempt to communicate here.... You will observe this?" + +Fellowes nodded. "Yes, I will.... Good-night," he added, absently. + +"Good-day," answered Stafford, mechanically. + +The outer door shut, and Stafford turned again to the little room +where so much had happened which must change so many lives, bring so +many tears, divert so many streams of life. + +How still the house seemed now! It had lost all its charm and +homelikeness. He felt stifled. Yet there was the warm sun streaming +through the doorway of the music-room, making the beaded curtains +shine like gold. + +As he stood in the doorway of the little morning-room, looking in with +bitter reflection and dreading beyond words what now must come--his +meeting with Jasmine, the story he must tell her, and the exposure of +a truth so naked that his nature revolted from it, he heard a footstep +behind him. It was Krool. + +Stafford looked at the saturnine face and wondered how much he knew; +but there was no glimmer of revelation in Krool's impassive look. The +eyes were always painful in their deep animal-like glow, and they +seemed more than usually intense this morning; that was all. + +"Will you present my compliments to Mrs. Byng, and say--" + +Krool, with a gesture, stopped him. + +"Mrs. Byng is come now," he said, making a gesture towards the +staircase. Then he stole away towards the servants' quarters of the +house. His work had been well done, of its kind, and he could now +await consequences. + +Stafford turned to the staircase and saw--in blue, in the old +sentimental blue--Jasmine slowly descending, a strange look of +apprehension in her face. + +Immediately after calling out for Rudyard a little while before, she +had discovered the loss of Adrian Fellowes' letter. Hours before this +she had read and re-read Ian's letter, that document of pain and +purpose, of tragical, inglorious, fatal purpose. She was suddenly +conscious of an air of impending catastrophe about her now. Or was it +that the catastrophe had come? She had not asked for Adrian Fellowes' +letter, for if any servant had found it, and had not returned it, it +was useless asking; and if Rudyard had found it--if Rudyard had found +it . . . ! + +Where was Rudyard? Why had he not come to her, Why had he not eaten +the breakfast which still lay untouched on the table of his study? +Where was Rudyard? + +Ian's eyes looked straight into hers as she came down the staircase, +and there was that in them which paralyzed her. But she made an effort +to ignore the apprehension which filled her soul. + +"Good-morning. Am I so very late?" she said, gaily, to him, though +there was a hollow note in her voice. + +"You are just in time," he answered in an even tone which told +nothing. + +"Dear me, what a gloomy face! What has happened? What is it? There +seems to be a Cassandra atmosphere about the place--and so early in +the day, too." + +"It is full noon--and past," he said, with acute meaning, as her +daintily shod feet met the floor of the hallway and glided towards +him. How often he had admired that pretty flitting of her feet! + +As he looked at her he was conscious, with a new force, of the wonder +of that hair on a little head as queenly as ever was given to the +modern world. And her face, albeit pale, and with a strange +tremulousness in it now, was like that of some fairy dame painted by +Greuze. All last night's agony was gone from the rare blue eyes, whose +lashes drooped so ravishingly betimes, though that droop was not there +as she looked at Ian now. + +She beat a foot nervously on the floor. "What is it--why this +Euripidean air in my simple home? There's something wrong, I see. What +is it? Come, what is it, Ian?" + +Hesitatingly she laid a hand upon his arm, but there was no +loving-kindness in his look. The arms which yesterday--only +yesterday--had clasped her passionately and hungrily to his breast now +hung inert at his side. His eyes were strange and hard. + +"Will you come in here," he said, in an arid voice, and held wide the +door of the room where he and Rudyard had settled the first chapter of +the future and closed the book of the past. + +She entered with hesitating step. Then he shut the door with an +accentuated softness, and came to the table where he had sat with +Rudyard. Mechanically she took the seat which Rudyard had occupied, +and looked at him across the table with a dread conviction stealing +over her face, robbing it of every vestige of its heavenly colour, +giving her eyes a staring and solicitous look. + +"Well, what is it? Can't you speak and have it over?" she asked, with +desperate impatience. + +"Fellowes' letter to you--Rudyard found it," he said, abruptly. + +She fell back as though she had been struck, then recovered +herself. "You read it?" she gasped. + +"Rudyard made me read it. I came in when he was just about to kill +Fellowes." + +She gave a short, sharp cry, which with a spasm of determination her +fingers stopped. + +"Kill him--why?" she asked in a weak voice, looking down at her +trembling hands which lay clasped on the table before her. + +"The letter--Fellowes' letter to you." + +"I dropped it last night," she said, in a voice grown strangely +impersonal and colourless. "I dropped it in Rudyard's room, I +suppose." + +She seemed not to have any idea of excluding the terrible facts, but +to be speaking as it were to herself and of something not vital, +though her whole person was transformed into an agony which congealed +the lifeblood. + +Her voice sounded tuneless and ragged. "He read it--Rudyard read a +letter which was not addressed to him! He read a letter addressed to +me--he read my letter.... It gave me no chance." + +"No chance--?" + +A bitter indignation was added to the cheerless discord of her +tones. "Yes, I had a chance, a last chance--if he had not read the +letter. But now, there is no chance.... You read it, too. You read the +letter which was addressed to me. No matter what it was--my letter, +you read it." + +"Rudyard said to me in his terrible agitation, 'Read that letter, and +then tell me what you think of the man who wrote it.' . . . I thought +it was the letter I wrote to you, the letter I posted to you last +night. I thought it was my letter to you." + +Her eyes had a sudden absent look. It was as though she were speaking +in a trance. "I answered that letter--your letter. I answered it this +morning. Here is the answer . . . here." She laid a letter on the +table before him, then drew it back again into her lap. "Now it does +not matter. But it gives me no chance...." + +There was a world of despair and remorse in her voice. Her face was +wan and strained. "No chance, no chance," she whispered. + +"Rudyard did not kill him?" she asked, slowly and cheerlessly, after a +moment, as though repeating a lesson. "Why?" + +"I stopped him. I prevented him." + +"You prevented him--why?" Her eyes had a look of unutterable confusion +and trouble. "Why did you prevent it--you?" + +"That would have hurt you--the scandal, the grimy press, the world." + +Her voice was tuneless, and yet it had a strange, piteous +poignancy. "It would have hurt me--yes. Why did you not want to hurt +me?" + +He did not answer. His hands had gone into his pockets, as though to +steady their wild nervousness, and one had grasped the little weapon +of steel which Rudyard had given him. It produced some strange, +malignant effect on his mind. Everything seemed to stop in him, and he +was suddenly possessed by a spirit which carried him into that same +region where Rudyard had been. It was the region of the abnormal. In +it one moves in a dream, majestically unresponsive to all outward +things, numb, unconcerned, disregarding all except one's own agony, +which seems to neutralize the universe and reduce all life's problems +to one formula of solution. + +"What did you say to him that stopped him?" she asked in a whisper of +awed and dreadful interest, as, after an earthquake, a survivor would +speak in the stillness of dead and unburied millions. + +"I said the one thing to say," he answered after a moment, +involuntarily laying the pistol on the table before him--doing it, as +it were, without conscious knowledge. + +It fascinated Jasmine, the ugly, deadly little vehicle of +oblivion. Her eyes fastened on it, and for an instant stared at it +transfixed; then she recovered herself and spoke again. + +"What was the one thing to say?" she whispered. + +"That you were innocent--absolutely, that--" + +Suddenly she burst into wild laughter--shrill, acrid, cheerless, +hysterical, her face turned upward, her hands clasped under her chin, +her body shaking with what was not laughter, but the terrifying +agitation of a broken organism. + +He waited till she had recovered somewhat, and then he repeated his +words. + +"I said that you were innocent absolutely; that Fellowes' letter was +the insolence and madness of a voluptuary, that you had only been +wilful and indiscreet, and that--" + +In a low, mechanical tone from which was absent any agitation, he told +her all he had said to Rudyard, and what Rudyard had said to +him. Every word had been burned into his brain, and nearly every word +was now repeated, while she sat silent, looking at her hands clasped +on the table before her. When he came to the point where Rudyard went +from the house, leaving Stafford to deal with Fellowes, she burst +again into laughter, mocking, wilful, painful. + +"You were left to set things right, to be the lord high +executioner--you, Ian!" + +How strange his name sounded on her lips now--foreign, distant, +revealing the nature of the situation more vividly than all the words +which had been said, than all that had been done. + +"Rudyard did not think of killing you, I suppose," she went on, +presently, with a bitter motion of the lips, and a sardonic note +creeping into the voice. + +"No, I thought of that," he answered, quietly, "as you know." His eyes +sought the weapon on the table involuntarily. "That would have been +easy enough," he added. "I was not thinking of myself, or of Fellowes, +but only of you--and Rudyard." + +"Only of me--and Rudyard," she repeated with drooping eyes, which +suddenly became alive again with feeling and passion and +wildness. "Wasn't it rather late for that?" + +The words stung him beyond endurance. He rose and leaned across the +table towards her. + +"At least I recognized what I had done, what you had done, and I tried +to face it. I did not disguise it. My letter to you proves that. But +nevertheless I was true to you. I did not deceive you--ever. I loved +you--ah, I loved you as few women have been loved! . . . But you, you +might have made a mistake where Rudyard was concerned, made the +mistake once, but if you wronged him, you wronged me infinitely +more. I was ready to give up all, throw all my life, my career, to the +winds, and prove myself loyal to that which was more than all; or I +was willing to eliminate myself from the scene forever. I was willing +to pay the price--any price--just to stand by what was the biggest +thing in my life. But you were true to nothing--to nothing--to +nobody." + +"If one is untrue--once, why be true at all ever?" she said with an +aching laugh, through which tears ran, though none dropped from her +eyes. "If one is untrue to one, why not to a thousand?" + +Again a mocking laugh burst from her. "Don't you see? One kiss, a +wrong? Why not, then, a thousand kisses! The wrong came in the moment +that the one kiss was given. It is the one that kills, not the +thousand after." + +There came to her mind again--and now with what sardonic +force--Rudyard's words that day before they went to Glencader: "If you +had lived a thousand years ago you would have had a thousand lovers." + +"And so it is all understood between you and Rudyard," she added, +mechanically. "That is what you have arranged for me--that I go on +living as before with Rudyard, while I am not to know from him +anything has happened; but to accept what has been arranged for me, +and to be repentant and good and live in sackcloth. It has been +arranged, has it, that Rudyard is to believe in me?" + +"That has not been arranged." + +"It has been arranged that I am to live with him as before, and that +he is to pretend to love me as before, and--" + +"He does love you as before. He has never changed. He believed in you, +was so pitifully eager to believe in you even when the letter--" + +"Where is the letter?" + +He pointed to the fire. + +"Who put it in the fire?" she asked. "You?" + +He inclined his head. + +"Ah yes, always so clever! A burst of indignation at his daring to +suspect me even for an instant, and with a flourish into the fire, the +evidence. Here is yours--your letter. Would you like to put it into +the fire also?" she asked, and drew his letter from the folds of her +dress. + +"But, no, no, no--" She suddenly sprang to her feet, and her eyes had +a look of agonized agitation. "When I have learned every word by +heart, I will burn it myself--for your sake." Her voice grew softer, +something less discordant came into it. "You will never +understand. You could never understand me, or that letter of Adrian +Fellowes to me, and that he could dare to write me such a letter. You +could never understand it. But I understand you. I understand your +letter. It came while I was--while I was broken. It healed me, +Ian. Last night I wanted to kill myself. Never mind why. You would not +understand. You are too good to understand. All night I was in +torture, and then this letter of yours--it was a revelation. I did not +think that a man lived like you, so true, so kind, so mad. And so I +wrote you a letter, ah, a letter from my soul! and then came down to +this--the end of all. The end of everything--forever." + +"No, the beginning if you will have it so.... Rudyard loves you . . ." + +She gave a cry of agony. "For God's sake--oh, for God's sake, hush! +. . . You think that now I could . . ." + +"Begin again with new purpose." + +"Purpose! Oh, you fool! You fool! You fool--you who are so wise +sometimes! You want me to begin again with Rudyard: and you do not +want me to begin again--with you?" + +He was silent, and he looked her in the eyes steadily. + +"You do not want me to begin again with you, because you believe +me--because you believed the worst from that letter, from Adrian +Fellowes' letter.... You believed, yet you hypnotized Rudyard into not +believing. But did you, after all? Was it not that he loves me, and +that he wanted to be deceived, wanted to be forced to do what he has +done? I know him better than you. But you are right, he would have +spoken to me about it if you had not warned him." + +"Then begin again--" + +"You do not want me any more." The voice had an anguish like the cry +of the tragic music in "Elektra." "You do not want what you wanted +yesterday--for us together to face it all, Ian. You do not want it? +You hate me." + +His face was disturbed by emotion, and he did not speak for a moment. + +In that moment she became transformed. With a sudden tragic motion she +caught the pistol from the table and raised it, but he wrenched it +from her hand. + +"Do you think that would mend anything?" he asked, with a new pity in +his heart for her." That would only hurt those who have been hurt +enough already. Be a little magnanimous. Do not be selfish. Give +others a chance." + +"You were going to do it as an act of unselfishness," she moaned. +"You were going to die in order to mend it all. Did you think of me in +that? Did you think I would or could consent to that? You believed in +me, of course, when you wrote it. But did you think that was +magnanimous--when you had got a woman's love, then to kill yourself in +order to cure her? Oh, how little you know! . . . But you do not want +me now. You do not believe in me now. You abhor me. Yet if that letter +had not fallen into Rudyard's hands we might perhaps have now been on +our way to begin life again together. Does that look as though there +was some one else that mattered--that mattered?" + +He held himself together with all his power and will. "There is one +way, and only one way," he said, firmly. "Rudyard loves you. Begin +again with him." His voice became lower. "You know the emptiness of +your home. There is a way to make some recompense to him. You can pay +your debt. Give him what he wants so much. It would be a link. It +would bind you. A child . . ." + +"Oh, how you loathe me!" she said, shudderingly. "Yesterday--and now +. . . No, no, no," she added, " I will not, cannot live with +Rudyard. I cannot wrench myself from one world into another like +that. I will not live with him any more.... There--listen." + +Outside the newsboys were calling: + +"Extra speshul! Extra speshul! All about the war! War declared! Extra +speshul!" + +"War! That will separate many," she added. "It will separate Rudyard +and me.... No, no, there will be no more scandal.... But it is the way +of escape--the war." + +"The way of escape for us all, perhaps," he answered, with a light of +determination in his eyes. "Good-bye," he added, after a slight +pause. "There is nothing more to say." + +He turned to go, but he did not hold out his hand, nor even look at +her. + +"Tell me," she said, in a strange, cold tone, "tell me, did Adrian +Fellowes--did he protect me? Did he stand up for me? Did he defend +me?" + +"He was concerned only for himself," Ian answered, hesitatingly. + +Her face hardened. Pitiful, haggard lines had come into it in the last +half-hour, and they deepened still more. + +"He did not say one word to put me right?" + +Ian shook his head in negation. "What did you expect?" he said. + +She sank into a chair, and a strange cruelty came into her eyes, +something so hard that it looked grotesque in the beautiful setting of +her pain-worn, exquisite face. + +So utter was her dejection that he came back from the door and bent +over her. + +"Jasmine," he said, gently, "we have to start again, you and I--in +different paths. They will never meet. But at the end of the +road--peace. Peace the best thing of all. Let us try and find it, +Jasmine." + +"He did not try to protect me. He did not defend me," she kept saying +to herself, and was only half conscious of what Ian said to her. + +He touched her shoulder. "Nothing can set things right between you and +me, Jasmine," he added, unsteadily, "but there's Rudyard--you must +help him through. He heard scandal about Mennaval last night at De +Lancy Scovel's. He didn't believe it. It rests with you to give it all +the lie.... Good-bye." + +In a moment he was gone. As the door closed she sprang to her +feet. "Ian--Ian--come back," she cried. "Ian, one word--one word." + +But the door did not open again. For a moment she stood like one +transfixed, staring at the place whence he had vanished, then, with a +moan, she sank in a heap on the floor, and rocked to and fro like one +demented. + +Once the door opened quietly, and Krool's face showed, sinister and +furtive, but she did not see it, and the door closed again softly. + +At last the paroxysms passed, and a haggard face looked out into the +world of life and being with eyes which were drowned in misery. + +"He did not defend me--the coward!" she murmured; then she rose with a +sudden effort, swayed, steadied herself, and arranged her hair in the +mirror over the mantelpiece. "The low coward!" she said again. "But +before he leaves . . . before he leaves England . . . " + +As she turned to go from the room, Rudyard's portrait on the wall met +her eyes. "I can't go on, Rudyard," she said to it. "I know that now." + +Out in the streets, which Ian Stafford travelled with hasty steps, the +newsboys were calling: + +"War declared! All about the war!" + +"That is the way out for me," Stafford said, aloud, as he hastened +on. "That opens up the road.... I'm still an artillery officer." + +He directed his swift steps toward Pall Mall and the War Office. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +IN WHICH FELLOWES GOES A JOURNEY + + +Kruger's ultimatum, expected though it was, shook England as nothing +had done since the Indian mutiny, but the tremour of national +excitement presently gave way to a quiet, deep determination. + +An almost Oriental luxury had gone far to weaken the fibre of that +strong and opulent middle-class who had been the backbone of England, +the entrenched Philistines. The value of birth as a moral asset which +had a national duty and a national influence, and the value of money +which had a social responsibility and a communal use, were unrealized +by the many nouveaux riches who frequented the fashionable purlieus; +who gave vast parties where display and extravagance were the +principal feature; who ostentatiously offered large sums to public +objects. Men who had made their money where copper or gold or oil or +wool or silver or cattle or railways made commercial kings, supported +schemes for the public welfare brought them by fine ladies, largely +because the ladies were fine; and they gave substantial sums--upon +occasion--for these fine ladies' fine causes. Rich men, or reputed +rich men, whose wives never appeared, who were kept in secluded +quarters in Bloomsbury or Maida Vale, gave dinners at the Savoy or the +Carlton which the scrapings of the aristocracy attended; but these +gave no dinners in return. + +To get money to do things, no matter how,--or little matter how; to +be in the swim, and that swim all too rapidly washing out the real +people--that was the almost universal ambition. But still the real +people, however few or many, in the time of trouble came quietly +into the necessary and appointed places with the automatic +precision of the disciplined friend of the state and of humanity; +and behind them were folk of the humbler sort, the lower middle- +class, the labouring-man. Of these were the landpoor peer, with his +sense of responsibility cultivated by daily life and duty in his +county, on the one hand; the professional man of all professions, +the little merchant, the sailor, the clerk and artisan, the digger +and delver, on the other; and, in between, those people in the +shires who had not yet come to be material and gross, who had +old-fashioned ideas of the duty of the citizen and the Christian. +In the day of darkness these came and laid what they had at the +foot of the altar of sacrifice. + +This at least the war did: it served as a sieve to sift the people, +and it served as the solvent of many a life-problem. + +Ian Stafford was among the first to whom it offered "the way out," who +went to it for the solution of their own set problem. Suddenly, as he +stood with Jasmine in the little room where so many lives were tossed +into the crucible of Fate that morning, the newsboy's voice shouting, +"War declared!" had told him the path he must tread. + +He had astonished the War Office by his request to be sent to the +Front with his old arm, the artillery, and he was himself astonished +by the instant assent that was given. And now on this October day he +was on his way to do two things--to see whether Adrian Fellowes was +keeping his promise, and to visit Jigger and his sister. + +There had not been a week since the days at Glencader when he had not +gone to the sordid quarters in the Mile End Road to see Jigger, and to +hear from him how his sister was doing at the opera, until two days +before, when he had learned from Lou herself what she had suffered at +the hands of Adrian Fellowes. That problem would now be settled +forever; but there remained the question of Jigger, and that must be +settled, whatever the other grave problems facing him. Jigger must be +cared for, must be placed in a position where he could have his start +in life. Somehow Jigger was associated with all the movements of his +life now, and was taken as part of the problem. What to do? He thought +of it as he went eastward, and it did not seem easy to settle +it. Jigger himself, however, cut the Gordian knot. + +When he was told that Stafford was going to South Africa, and that it +was a question as to what he--Jigger--should now do, in what sphere +of life his abnormally "cute" mind must run, he answered, instantly. + +"I'm goin' wiv y'r gryce," he said. "That's it--stryght. I'm goin' +out there wiv you." + +Ian shook his head and smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not for you, +Jigger. No, think again." + +"Ain't there work in Souf Afriker--maybe not in the army itself, y'r +gryce? Couldn't I have me chanct out there? Lou's all right now, I +bet; an' I could go as easy as can be." + +"Yes, Lou will be all right now," remarked Stafford, with a reflective +irony. + +"I ain't got no stiddy job here, and there's work in Souf Afriker, +ain't they? Couldn't I get a job holdin' horses, or carryin' a flag, +or cleanin' the guns, or nippin' letters about--couldn't I, y'r gryce? +I'm only askin' to go wiv you, to work, same as ever I did before I +was run over. Ain't I goin' wiv you, y'r gryce?" + +With a sudden resolve Stafford laid a hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you +are going 'wiv' me, Jigger. You just are, horse, foot, and +artillery. There'll be a job somewhere. I'll get you something to do, +or--" + +"Or bust, y'r gryce?" + +So the problem lessened, and Ian's face cleared a little. If all the +difficulties perplexing his life would only clear like that! The babe +and the suckling had found the way so simple, so natural; and it was a +comforting way, for he had a deep and tender regard for this quaint, +clever waif who had drifted across his path. + +To-morrow he would come and fetch Jigger: and Jigger's face followed +him into the coming dusk, radiant and hopeful and full of life--of +life that mattered. Jigger would go out to "Souf Afriker" with all his +life before him, but he, Ian Stafford, would go with all his life +behind him, all mile-stones passed except one. + +So, brooding, he walked till he came to an underground station, and +there took a train to Charing Cross. Here he was only a little +distance away from the Embankment, where was to be found Adrian +Fellowes; and with bent head he made his way among the motley crowd in +front of the station, scarcely noticing any one, yet resenting the +jostle and the crush. Suddenly in the crowd in front of him he saw +Krool stealing along with a wide-awake hat well down over his +eyes. Presently the sinister figure was lost in the confusion. It did +not occur to him that perhaps Krool might be making for the same +destination as himself; but the sight of the man threw his mind into +an eddy of torturing thoughts. + +The flare of light, white and ghastly, at Charing Cross was shining on +a moving mass of people, so many of whom were ghastly also--derelicts +of humanity, ruins of womanhood, casuals, adventurers, scavengers of +life, prowlers who lived upon chance, upon cards, upon theft, upon +women, upon libertines who waited in these precincts for some foolish +and innocent woman whom they could entrap. Among them moved also the +thousand other good citizens bent upon catching trains or wending +their way home from work; but in the garish, cruel light, all, even +the good, looked evil in a way, and furtive and unstable. To-night, +the crowd were far more restless than usual, far more irritating in +their purposeless movements. People sauntered, jerked themselves +forward, moved in and out, as it were, intent on going everywhere and +nowhere; and the excitement possessing them, the agitation in the air, +made them seem still more exasperating, and bewildering. Newsboys with +shrill voices rasped the air with invitations to buy, and everywhere +eager, nervous hands held out their half-pennies for the flimsy +sensational rags. + +Presently a girl jostled Stafford, then apologized with an endearing +word which brought a sick sensation to his brain; but he only shook +his head gravely at her. After all, she had a hard trade and it led +nowhere--nowhere. + +"Coming home with me, darling?" she added in response to his +meditative look. Anything that was not actual rebuff was invitation to +her blunted sense. "Coming home with me--?" + +Home! A wave of black cynicism, of sardonic mirth passed through +Stafford's brain. Home--where the business of this poor wayfarer's +existence was carried on, where the shopkeeper sold her wares in the +inner sanctuary! Home.... He shook the girl's hand from his elbow and +hastened on. + +Yet why should he be angered with her, he said to himself. It was not +moral elevation which had made him rough with her, but only that word +Home she used.... The dire mockery of it burned his mind like a +corrosive acid. He had had no home since his father died years +ago,--his mother had died when he was very young--and his eldest +brother had taken possession of the family mansions, placing them in +the control of his foreign wife, who sat in his mother's chair and in +her place at table. + +He had wished so often in the past for a home of his own, where he +could gather round him young faces and lose himself in promoting the +interests of those for whom he had become forever responsible. He had +longed for the Englishman's castle, for his own little realm of +interest where he could be supreme; and now it was never to be. + +The idea gained in sacred importance as it receded forever from all +possibility. In far-off days it had been associated with a vision in +blue, with a face like a dresden-china shepherdess and hair like +Aphrodite's. Laughter and wit and raillery had been part of the +picture; and long evenings in the winter-time, when they two would +read the books they both loved, and maybe talk awhile of world events +in which his work had place; in which his gifts were found, shaping, +influencing, producing. The garden, the orchard--he loved +orchards--the hedges of flowering ivy and lilacs; and the fine grey +and chestnut horses driven by his hand or hers through country lanes; +the smell of the fallen leaves in the autumn evenings; or the sting of +the bracing January wind across the moors or where the woodcock +awaited its spoiler. All these had been in the vision. It was all over +now. He had seen an image, it had vanished, and he was in the desert +alone. + +A band was playing "The Banks o' Garry Owen," and the tramp of +marching men came to his ears. The crowd surged round him, pushed him, +forced him forward, carried him on, till the marching men came near, +were alongside of him--a battalion of Volunteers, going to the war to +see "Kruger's farmers bite the dust!"--a six months' excursion, as +they thought. Then the crowd, as it cheered jostled him against the +wall of the shops, and presently he found himself forced down +Buckingham Street. It was where he wished to go in order to reach +Adrian Fellowes' apartments. He did not notice, as he was practically +thrown into the street, that Krool was almost beside him. + +The street was not well lighted, and he looked neither to right nor +left. He was thinking hard of what he would say to Adrian Fellowes, +if, and when, he saw him. + +But not far behind him was a figure that stole along in the darker +shadows of the houses, keeping at some distance. The same figure +followed him furtively till he came into that part of the Embankment +where Adrian Fellowes' chambers were; then it fell behind a little, +for here the lights were brighter. It hung in the shadow of a door-way +and watched him as he approached the door of the big building where +Adrian Fellowes lived. + +Presently, as he came nearer, Stafford saw a hansom standing before +the door. Something made him pause for a moment, and when, in the +pause, the figure of a woman emerged from the entrance and hastily got +into the hansom, he drew back into the darkness of a doorway, as the +man did who was now shadowing him; and he waited till it turned round +and rolled swiftly away. Then he moved forward again. When not far +from the entrance, however, another cab--a four-wheeler--discharged +its occupant at a point nearer to the building than where he +waited. It was a woman. She paid the cabman, who touched his hat with +quick and grateful emphasis, and, wheeling his old crock round, +clattered away. The woman glanced along the empty street swiftly, and +then hurried to the doorway which opened to Adrian Fellowes' chambers. + +Instantly Stafford recognized her. It was Jasmine, dressed in black +and heavily veiled. He could not mistake the figure--there was none +other like it; or the turn of her head--there was only one such head +in all England. She entered the building quickly. + +There was nothing to do but wait until she came out again. No passion +stirred in him, no jealousy, no anger. It was all dead. He knew why +she had come; or he thought he knew. She would tell the man who had +said no word in defense of her, done nothing to protect her, who let +the worst be believed, without one protest of her innocence, what she +thought of him. She was foolish to go to him, but women do mad things, +and they must not be expected to do the obviously sensible thing when +the crisis of their lives has come. Stafford understood it all. + +One thing he was certain Jasmine did not know--the intimacy between +Fellowes and Al'mah. He himself had been tempted to speak of it in +their terrible interview that morning; but he had refrained. The +ignominy, the shame, the humiliation of that would have been beyond +her endurance. He understood; but he shrank at the thought of the +nature of the interview which she must have, at the thought of the +meeting at all. + +He would have some time to wait, no doubt, and he made himself easy in +the doorway, where his glance could command the entrance she had +used. He mechanically took out a cigar-case, but after looking at the +cigars for a moment put them away again with a sigh. Smoking would not +soothe him. He had passed beyond the artificial. + +His waiting suddenly ended. It seemed hardly three minutes after +Jasmine's entrance when she appeared in the doorway again, and, after +a hasty glance up and down the street, sped away as swiftly as she +could, and, at the corner, turned up sharply towards the Strand. Her +movements had been agitated, and, as she hurried on, she thrust her +head down into her muff as a woman would who faced a blinding rain. + +The interview had been indeed short. Perhaps Fellowes had already gone +abroad. He would soon find out. + +He mounted the deserted staircase quickly and knocked at Fellowes' +door. There was no reply. There was a light, however, and he knocked +again. Still there was no answer. He tried the handle of the door. It +turned, the door gave, and he entered. There was no sound. He knocked +at an inner door. There was no reply, yet a light showed in the +room. He turned the handle. Entering the room, he stood still and +looked round. It seemed empty, but there were signs of packing, of +things gathered together hastily. + +Then, with a strange sudden sense of a presence in the room, he looked +round again. There in a far corner of the large room was a couch, and +on it lay a figure--Adrian Fellowes, straight and still--and sleeping. + +Stafford went over. "Fellowes," he said, sharply. + +There was no reply. He leaned over and touched a shoulder. "Fellowes!" +he exclaimed again, but something in the touch made him look closely +at the face half turned to the wall. Then he knew. + +Adrian Fellowes was dead. + +Horror came upon Stafford, but no cry escaped him. He stooped once +more and closely looked at the body, but without touching it. There +was no sign of violence, no blood, no disfigurement, no distortion, +only a look of sleep--a pale, motionless sleep. + +But the body was warm yet. He realized that as his hand had touched +the shoulder. The man could only have been dead a little while. + +Only a little while: and in that little while Jasmine had left the +house with agitated footsteps. + +"He did not die by his own hand," Stafford said aloud. + +He rang the bell loudly. No one answered. He rang and rang again, and +then a lazy porter came. + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +"MORE WAS LOST AT MOHACKSFIELD" + + +Eastminster House was ablaze. A large dinner had been fixed for this +October evening, and only just before half-past eight Jasmine entered +the drawing-room to receive her guests. She had completely forgotten +the dinner till very late in the afternoon, when she observed +preparations for which she had given instructions the day before. She +was about to leave the house upon the mission which had drawn her +footsteps in the same direction as those of Ian Stafford, when the +butler came to her for information upon some details. These she gave +with an instant decision which was part of her equipment, and then, +when the butler had gone, she left the house on foot to take a cab at +the corner of Piccadilly. + +When she returned home, the tables in the dining-room were decorated, +the great rooms were already lighted, and the red carpet was being +laid down at the door. The footmen looked up with surprise as she came +up the steps, and their eyes followed her as she ascended the +staircase with marked deliberation. + +"Well, that's style for you," said the first footman. "Takin' an +airin' on shanks' hosses." + +"And a quarter of an hour left to put on the tirara," sniggered the +second footman. "The lot is asked for eight-thirty." + +"Swells, the bunch, windin' up with the brother of an +Emperor--'struth!" + +"I'll bet the Emperor's brother ain't above takin' a tip about shares +on the Rand, me boy." + +"I'll bet none of 'em ain't. That's why they come--not forgetting th' +grub and the fizz." + +"What price a title for the Byng Baas one of these days! They like +tips down there where the old Markis rumbles through his beard--and a +lot of hands to be greased. And grease it costs a lot, political +grease does. But what price a title--Sir Rudyard Byng, Bart., wot oh!" + +"Try another shelf higher up, and it's more like it. Wot a head for a +coronet 'ers! W'y--" + +But the voice of the butler recalled them from the fields of +imagination, and they went with lordly leisure upon the business of +the household. + +Socially this was to be the day of Jasmine's greatest triumph. One of +the British royal family was, with the member of another great +reigning family, honouring her table--though the ladies of neither +were to be present; and this had been a drop of chagrin in her +cup. She had been unaware of the gossip there had been of +late,--though it was unlikely the great ladies would have known of +it--and she would have been slow to believe what Ian had told her this +day, that men had talked lightly of her at De Lancy Scovel's +house. Her eyes had been shut; her wilful nature had not been +sensitive to the quality of the social air about her. People +came--almost "everybody" came--to her house, and would come, of +course, until there was some open scandal; until her husband +intervened. Yet everybody did not come. The royal princesses had not +found it convenient to come; and this may have meant nothing, or very +much indeed. To Jasmine, however, as she hastily robed herself for +dinner, her mind working with lightning swiftness, it did not matter +at all; if all the kings and queens of all the world had promised to +come and had not come, it would have meant nothing to her this night +of nights. + +In her eyes there was the look of one who has seen some horrible +thing, though she gave her orders with coherence and decision as +usual, and with great deftness she assisted her maid in the hasty +toilette. Her face was very pale, save for one or two hectic spots +which took the place of the nectarine bloom so seldom absent from her +cheeks, and in its place was a new, shining, strange look like a most +delicate film--the transfiguring kind of look which great joy or great +pain gives. + +Coming up the staircase from the street, she had seen Krool enter her +husband's room more hastily than usual, and had heard him greeted +sharply--something that sounded strange to her ears, for Rudyard was +uniformly kind to Krool. Never had Rudyard's voice sounded as it did +now. Of course it was her imagination, but it was like a voice which +came from some desolate place, distant, arid and alien. That was not +the voice in which he had wooed her on the day when they heard of +Jameson's Raid. That was not the voice which had spoken to her in +broken tones of love on the day Ian first dined with her after her +marriage--that fateful, desperate day. This was a voice which had a +cheerless, fretful note, a savage something in it. Presently they two +would meet, and she knew how it would be--an outward semblance, a +superficial amenity and confidence before their guests; the smile of +intimacy, when there was no intimacy, and never, never, could be +again; only acting, only make-believe, only the artifice of deceit. + +Yet when she was dressed--in pure white, with only a string of pearls, +the smallest she had, round her neck--she was like that white flower +which had been placed on her pillow last night. + +Turning to leave the bedroom she caught sight of her face and figure +again in the big mirror, and she seemed to herself like some other +woman. There was that strange, distant look of agony in her eyes, that +transfiguring look in the face; there was the figure somehow gone +slimmer in these few hours; and there was a frail appearance which did +not belong to her. + +As she was about to leave the room to descend the stairs, there came a +knock at the door. A bunch of white violets was handed in, with a +pencilled note in Rudyard's handwriting. + +White violets--white violets! + +The note read, "Wear these to-night, Jasmine." + +White violets--how strange that he should send them! These they send +for the young, the innocent, and the dead. Rudyard had sent them to +her--from how far away! He was there just across the hallway, and yet +he might have been in Bolivia, so far as their real life was +concerned. + +She was under no illusion. This day, and perhaps a few, a very few +others, must be lived under the same roof, in order that they could +separate without scandal; but things could never go on as in the +past. She had realized that the night before, when still that chance +of which she had spoken to Stafford was hers; when she had wound the +coil of her wonderful hair round her throat, and had imagined that +self-destruction which has tempted so many of more spiritual make than +herself. It was melodramatic, emotional, theatrical, maybe; but the +emotional, the theatrical, the egotistic mortal has his or her +tragedy, which is just as real as that which comes to those of more +spiritual vein, just as real as that which comes to the more classical +victim of fate. Jasmine had the deep defects of her qualities. Her +suffering was not the less acute because it found its way out with +impassioned demonstration. + +There was, however, no melodrama in the quiet trembling with which she +took the white violets, the symbol of love and death. She was sure +that Rudyard was not aware of their significance and meaning, but that +did not modify the effect upon her. Her trouble just now was too deep +for tears, too bitter for words, too terrible for aught save numb +endurance. Nothing seemed to matter in a sense, and yet the little +routine of life meant so much in its iron insistence. The habits of +convention are so powerful that life's great issues are often obscured +by them. Going to her final doom a woman would stop to give the last +careful touch to her hair--the mechanical obedience to long habit. It +is not vanity, not littleness, but habit; never shown with subtler +irony than in the case of Madame de Langrois, who, pacing the path to +her execution at Lille, stooped, picked up a pin from the ground, and +fastened it in her gown--the tyranny of habit. + +Outside her own room Jasmine paused for a moment and looked at the +closed door of Rudyard's room. Only a step--and yet she was kept apart +from him by a shadow so black, so overwhelming, that she could not +penetrate it. It smothered her sight. No, no, that little step could +not be taken; there was a gulf between them which could not be +bridged. + +There was nothing to say to Rudyard except what could be said upon the +surface, before all the world, as it were; things which must be said +through an atmosphere of artificial sounds, which would give no +response to the agonized cries of the sentient soul. She could make +believe before the world, but not alone with Rudyard. She shrank +within herself at the idea of being alone with him. + +As she went down-stairs a scene in a room on the Thames Embankment, +from which she had come a half hour ago, passed before her vision. It +was as though it had been imprinted on the film of her eye and must +stay there forever. + +When would the world know that Adrian Fellowes lay dead in the room on +the Embankment? And when they knew it, what would they say? They would +ask how he died--the world would ask how he died. The Law would ask +how he died. + +How had he died? Who killed him? Or did he die by his own hand? Had +Adrian Fellowes, the rank materialist, the bon viveur, the man-luxury, +the courage to kill himself by his own hand? If not, who killed him? +She shuddered. They might say that she killed him. + +She had seen no one on the staircase as she had gone up, but she had +dimly seen another figure outside in the terrace as she came out, and +there was the cabman who drove her to the place. That was all. + +Now, entering the great drawing-room of her own house she shuddered as +though from an icy chill. The scene there on the Embankment--her own +bitter anger, her frozen hatred; then the dead man with his face +turned to the wall; the stillness, the clock ticking, her own cold +voice speaking to him, calling; then the terrified scrutiny, the touch +of the wrist, the realization, the moment's awful horror, the silence +which grew more profound, the sudden paralysis of body and +will.... And then--music, strange, soft, mysterious music coming from +somewhere inside the room, music familiar and yet unnatural, a song +she had heard once before, a pathetic folk-song of eastern Europe, +"More Was Lost at Mohacksfield." It was a tale of love and loss and +tragedy and despair. + +Startled and overcome, she had swayed, and would have fallen, but that +with an effort of the will she had caught at the table and saved +herself. With the music still creeping in unutterable melancholy +through the room, she had fled, closing the door behind her very +softly as though not to disturb the sleeper. It had followed her down +the staircase and into the street, the weird, unnatural music. + +It was only when she had entered a cab in the Strand that she realized +exactly what the music was. She remembered that Fellowes had bought a +music-box which could be timed to play at will--even days ahead, and +he had evidently set the box to play at this hour. It did so, a +strange, grim commentary on the stark thing lying on the couch, +nerveless as though it had been dead a thousand years. It had ceased +to play before Stafford entered the room, but, strangely enough, it +began again as he said over the dead body, "He did not die by his own +hand." + +Standing before the fireplace in the drawing-room, awaiting the first +guest, Jasmine said to herself: "No, no, he had not the courage to +kill himself." + +Some one had killed him. Who was it? Who killed +him--Rudyard--Ian--who? But how? There was no sign of violence. That +much she had seen. He lay like one asleep. Who was it killed him? + +"Lady Tynemouth." + +Back to the world from purgatory again. The butler's voice broke the +spell, and Lady Tynemouth took her friend in her arms and kissed her. + +"So handsome you look, my darling--and all in white. White violets, +too. Dear, dear, how sweet, and oh, how triste! But I suppose it's +chic. Certainly, it is stunning. And so simple. Just the weeny, teeny +string of pearls, like a young under-secretary's wife, to show what +she might do if she had a fair chance. Oh, you clever, wonderful +Jasmine!" + +"My dressmaker says I have no real taste in colours, so I +compromised," was Jasmine's reply, with a really good imitation of a +smile. + +As she babbled on, Lady Tynemouth had been eyeing her friend with +swift inquiry, for she had never seen Jasmine look as she did +to-night, so ethereal, so tragically ethereal, with dark lines under +the eyes, the curious transparency of the skin, and the feverish +brightness and far-awayness of the look. She was about to say +something in comment, but other guests entered, and it was +impossible. She watched, however, from a little distance, while +talking gaily to other guests; she watched at the dinner-table, as +Jasmine, seated between her two royalties, talked with gaiety, with +pretty irony, with respectful badinage; and no one could be so daring +with such ceremonious respect at the same time as she. Yet through it +all Lady Tynemouth saw her glance many times with a strange, strained +inquiry at Rudyard, seated far away opposite her; at another big, +round table. + +"There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and +wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly +seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and +apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising. +Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed to herself, +and presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them. + +"What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng +doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval." + +"Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added, +with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself: +"Where is the great man--where's Stafford to-night?" + +"Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew +soft. "He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he +has gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi +Falls!" + +Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite +happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying +herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to +spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled +by her frank platonic affection. + +"Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion +after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still +might do. + +"The war--it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had +seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was +happening in this household. + +The other demurred. + +"But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He +didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed +upset too, so pale and anxious-looking." + +"I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is +anything," said Lady Tynemouth to herself. "I'll ask myself to stay +with her for a couple of days." + +Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, +and she was a friend in need to her friends. She loved Jasmine as much +as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at +Jasmine's face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an +undertone of misery: + +"She looks as if she needed a friend." + +After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, +and gave it an endearing pressure. "May I come to you for a few days, +Jasmine?" she asked. + +"I was going to ask if you would have me," answered Jasmine, with a +queer little smile. "Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, +and that's a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other +things together, isn't it?" + +She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from +Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be +arranged without scandal. Ian Stafford had said that things could go +on in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what +he knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold: but +that was impossible. Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was +that which she could not do. Twenty-four hours had accomplished a +complete revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of +things. Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of +Fellowes' death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be +temporary expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had +its great advantages. + +She could not bear to remain in Rudyard's house; and in his heart of +hearts Rudyard would wish the same, even if he believed her innocent; +but if she must stay for appearance' sake, then it would be good to +have Lady Tynemouth with her. Rudyard would be grateful for time to +get his balance again. This bunch of violets was the impulse of a big, +magnanimous nature; but it would be followed by the inevitable +reaction, which would be the real test and trial. + +Love and forgiveness--what had she to do with either! She did not wish +forgiveness because of Adrian Fellowes. No heart had been involved in +that episode. It had in one sense meant nothing to her. She loved +another man, and she did not wish forgiveness of him either. No, no, +the whole situation was impossible. She could not stay here. For his +own sake Rudyard would not, ought not, to wish her to stay. What might +the next few days bring forth? + +Who had killed Adrian Fellowes? He was not man enough to take his own +life--who had killed him? Was it her husband, after all? He had said +to Ian Stafford that he would do nothing, but, with the maggot of +revenge and jealousy in their brains, men could not be trusted from +one moment to another. + +The white violets? Even they might be only the impulse of the moment, +one of those acts of madness of jealous and revengeful people. Men had +kissed their wives and then killed them--fondled them, and then +strangled them. Rudyard might have made up his mind since morning to +kill Fellowes, and kill herself, also. Fellowes was gone, and now +might come her turn. White violets were the flowers of death, and the +first flowers he had ever given her were purple violets, the flowers +of life and love. + +If Rudyard had killed Adrian Fellowes, there would be an end to +everything. If he was suspected, and if the law stretched out its hand +of steel to clutch him--what an ignominious end to it all; what a mean +finish to life, to opportunity, to everything worth doing! + +And she would have been the cause of everything. + +The thought scorched her soul. + +Yet she talked on gaily to her guests until the men returned from +their cigars; as though Penalty and Nemesis were outside even the +range of her imagination; as though she could not hear the snap of the +handcuffs on Rudyard's--or Ian's--wrists. + +Before and after dinner only a few words had passed between her and +Rudyard, and that was with people round them. It was as though they +spoke through some neutralizing medium, in which all real personal +relation was lost. Now Rudyard came to her, however, and in a +matter-of-fact voice said: "I suppose Al'mah will be here. You haven't +heard to the contrary, I hope? These great singers are so whimsical." + +There was no time for Jasmine to answer, for through one of the far +entrances of the drawing-room Al'mah entered. Her manner was +composed--if possible more composed than usual, and she looked around +her calmly. At that moment a servant handed Byng a letter. It +contained only a few words, and it ran: + +"DEAR BYNG,--Fellowes is gone. I found him dead in his rooms. An +inquest will be held to-morrow. There are no signs of violence; +neither of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my +rooms after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours +ever, + +"IAN STAFFORD." + +Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over +his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his +pocket. She then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward +to greet her. + +On the instant Rudyard had made up his mind what to do. It was clear +that Al'mah did not know that Fellowes was dead, or she would not be +here; for he knew of their relations, though he had never told +Jasmine. Jasmine did not suspect the truth, or Al'mah would not be +where she was; and Fellowes would never have written to Jasmine the +letter for which he had paid with his life. + +Al'mah was gently appreciative of the welcome she received from both +Byng and Jasmine, and she prepared to sing. + +"Yes, I think I am in good voice," she said to Jasmine, +presently. Then Rudyard went, giving his wife's arm a little familiar +touch as he passed, and said: + +"Remember, we must have some patriotic things tonight. I'm sure Al'mah +will feel so, too. Something really patriotic and stirring. We shall +need it--yes we shall need cheering very badly before we've +done. We're not going to have a walk-over in South Africa. Cheering up +is what we want, and we must have it." + +Again he cast a queer, inquiring look at Al'mah, to which he got no +response, and to himself he said, grimly: "Well, it's better she +should not know it--here." + +His mind was in a maze. He moved as in a dream. He was pale, but he +had an air of determination. Once he staggered with dizziness, then he +righted himself and smiled at some one near. That some one winked at +his neighbour. + +"It's true, then, what we hear about him," the neighbour said, and +suggestively raised fingers to his mouth. + +Al'mah sang as perhaps she had seldom sung. There was in her voice an +abandon and tragic intensity, a wonderful resonance and power, which +captured her hearers as they had never been captured before. First she +sang a love-song, then a song of parting. Afterwards came a lyric of +country, which stirred her audience deeply. It was a challenge to +every patriot to play his part for home and country. It was an appeal +to the spirit of sacrifice; it was an inspiration and an +invocation. Men's eyes grew moist. + +And now another, a final song, a combination of all--of love, and loss +and parting and ruin, and war and patriotism and destiny. With the +first low notes of it Jasmine rose slowly from her seat, like one in a +dream, and stood staring blindly at Al'mah. The great voice swelled +out in a passion of agony, then sank away into a note of despair that +gripped the heart. + +"But more was lost at Mohacksfield--" + +Jasmine had stood transfixed while the first words were sung, then, as +the last line was reached, staring straight in front of her, as though +she saw again the body of Adrian Fellowes in the room by the river, +she gave a cry, which sounded half laughter and half torture, and fell +heavily on the polished floor. + +Rudyard ran forward and lifted her in his arms. Lady Tynemouth was +beside him in an instant. + +"Yes, that's right--you come," he said to her, and he carried the limp +body up-stairs, the white violets in her dress crushed against his +breast. + +"Poor child--the war, of course; it means so much to them." + +Thus, a kindly dowager, as she followed the Royalties down-stairs. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +ONE WHO CAME SEARCHING + + +"A lady to see you, sir." + +"A lady? What should we be doing with ladies here, Gleg?" + +"I'm sure I have no use for them, sir," replied Gleg, sourly. He was +in no good humour. That very morning he had been told that his master +was going to South Africa, and that he would not be needed there, but +that he should remain in England, drawing his usual pay. Instead of +receiving this statement with gratitude, Gleg had sniffed in a manner +which, in any one else, would have been impertinence; and he had not +even offered thanks. + +"Well, what do you think she wants? She looks respectable?" + +"I don't know about that, sir. It's her ladyship, sir." + +"It's what 'ladyship,' Gleg?" + +"Her ladyship, sir--Lady Tynemouth." + +Stafford looked at Gleg meditatively for a minute, and then said +quietly: + +"Let me see, you have been with me sixteen years, Gleg. You've +forgotten me often enough in that time, but you've never forgotten +yourself before. Come to me to-morrow at noon.... I shall allow you a +small pension. Show her ladyship in." + +Gone waxen in face, Gleg crept out of the room. + +"Seven-and-six a week, I suppose," he said to himself as he went down +the stairs. "Seven-and-six for a bit of bonhommy." + +With great consideration he brought Lady Tynemouth up, and shut the +door with that stillness which might be reverence, or something at its +antipodes. + +Lady Tynemouth smiled cheerily at Ian as she held out her hand. + +"Gleg disapproves of me very greatly. He thinks I am no better than I +ought to be." + +"I am sure you are," answered Stafford, drily. + +"Well, if you don't know, Ian, who does? I've put my head in the +lion's mouth before, just like this, and the lion hasn't snapped +once," she rejoined, settling herself cozily in a great, green +leather-chair. "Nobody would believe it; but there it is. The world +couldn't think that you could be so careless of your opportunities, or +that I would pay for the candle without burning it." + +"On the contrary, I think they would believe anything you told them." + +She laughed happily. "Wouldn't you like to call me Alice, 'same as +ever,' in the days of long ago? It would make me feel at home after +Gleg's icy welcome." + +He smiled, looked down at her with admiration, and quoted some lines +of Swinburne, alive with cynicism: + +"And the worst and the best of this is, +That neither is most to blame +If she has forgotten my kisses, +And I have forgotten her name." + +Lady Tynemouth made a plaintive gesture. "I should probably be able +to endure the bleak present, if there had been any kisses in the sunny +past," she rejoined, with mock pathos. "That's the worst of our +friendship, Ian. I'm quite sure the world thinks I'm one of your spent +flames, and there never was any fire, not so big as the point of a +needle, was there? It's that which hurts so now, little Ian +Stafford--not so much fire as would burn on the point of a needle." + +"'On the point of a needle,'" Ian repeated, half-abstractedly. He went +over to his writing-desk, and, opening a blotter, regarded it +meditatively for an instant. As he did so she tapped the floor +impatiently with her umbrella, and looked at him curiously, but with a +little quirk of humour at the corners of her mouth. + +"The point of a needle might carry enough fire to burn up a good +deal," he said, reflectively. Then he added, slowly: "Do you remember +Mr. Mappin and his poisoned needle at Glencader?" + +"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng +won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like +martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night +it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly +by--guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a +little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such +a wurra-wurra, as he called it." + +"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to +make a needle-point dipped in it deadly." + +"I don't believe it a bit, but--" + +Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress--she was +all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her +shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently--"for it's one of the +reasons why I'm here now--what happened at the inquest to-day? The +evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave +evidence, I suppose. Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've +never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You +don't mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, +just when you should look so well." + +"Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any +glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, +and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine +had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at +Mohacksfield." + +"Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they +say. It makes me so proud to be your friend--even your neglected, if +not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such +splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you +want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a +morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it +only the reaction after all you've done?" + +"No doubt it's the reaction," he replied. + +"I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching +him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine +affair--shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and +taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that +all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the +verdict?" + +"Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut +short, and sympathy with the relatives." + +"I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative +response. "But--well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart +stops beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!" + +"It sounded rather worse than silly," was Ian's comment. + +"Did--did they cut him up, to see if he'd taken morphia, or an +overdose of laudanum or veronal or something? I had a friend who died +of taking quantities of veronal while you were abroad so long--a South +American, she was." + +He nodded. "It was all quite in order. There were no signs of poison, +they said, but the heart had had a shock of some kind. There had been +what they called lesion, and all that kind of thing, and not +sufficient strength for recovery." + +"I suppose Mr. Mappin wasn't present?" she asked, curiously. "I know +it is silly in a way, but don't you remember how interested +Mr. Fellowes was in that needle? Was Mr. Mappin there?" + +"There was no reason why he should be there." + +"What witnesses were called?" + +"Myself and the porter of Fellowes' apartments, his banker, his +doctor--" + +"And Al'mah?" she asked, obliquely. + +He did not reply at once, but regarded her inquiringly. + +"You needn't be afraid to speak about Al'mah," she continued. "I saw +something queer at Glencader. Then I asked Tynie, and he told me +that--well, all about her and Adrian Fellowes. Was Al'mah there? Did +she give evidence?" + +"She was there to be called, if necessary," he responded, "but the +coroner was very good about it. After the autopsy the authorities said +evidence was unnecessary, and--" + +"You arranged that, probably?" + +"Yes; it was not difficult. They were so stupid--and so kind." + +She smoothed out the folds of her dress reflectively, then got up as +if with sudden determination, and came near to him. Her face was pale +now, and her eyes were greatly troubled. + +"Ian," she said, in a low voice, "I don't believe that Adrian Fellowes +died a natural death, and I don't believe that he killed himself. He +would not have that kind of courage, even in insanity. He could never +go insane. He could never care enough about anything to do +so. He--did--not--kill--himself. There, I am sure of it. And he did +not die a natural death, either." + +"Who killed him?" Ian asked, his face becoming more drawn, but his +eyes remaining steady and quiet. + +She put her hand to her eyes for a moment. "Oh, it all seems so +horrible! I've tried to shake it off, and not to think my thoughts, +and I came to you to get fresh confidence; but as soon as I saw your +face I knew I couldn't have it. I know you are upset too, perhaps not +by the same thoughts, but through the same people." + +"Tell me all you think or know. Be quite frank," he said, heavily. "I +will tell you why later. It is essential that you should be wholly +frank with me." + +"As I have always been. I can't be anything else. Anyhow, I owe you so +much that you have the right to ask me what you will.... There it is, +the fatal thing," she added. + +Her eyes were raised to the red umbrella which had nearly carried her +over into the cauldron of the Zambesi Falls. + +"No, it is the world that owes me a heavy debt," he responded, +gallantly. "I was merely selfish in saving you." + +Her eyes filled with tears, which she brushed away with a little +laugh. + +"Ah, how I wish it was that! I am just mean enough to want you to want +me, while I didn't want you. That's the woman, and that's all women, +and there's no getting away from it. But still I would rather you had +saved me than any one else who wasn't bound, like Tynie, to do so." + +"Well, it did seem absurd that you should risk so much to keep a +sixpenny umbrella," he rejoined, drily. + +"How we play on the surface while there's so much that is wearing our +hearts out underneath," she responded, wearily. "Listen, Ian, you know +what I mean. Whoever killed Adrian Fellowes, or didn't, I am sure that +Jasmine saw him dead. Three nights ago when she fainted and went ill +to bed, I stayed with her, slept in the same room, in the bed beside +hers. The opiate the doctor gave her was not strong enough, and two or +three times she half waked, and--and it was very painful. It made my +heart ache, for I knew it wasn't all dreams. I am sure she saw Adrian +Fellowes lying dead in his room.... Ian, it is awful, but for some +reason she hated him, and she saw him lying dead. If any one knows the +truth, you know. Jasmine cares for you--no, no, don't mind my saying +it. She didn't care a fig for Mennaval, or any of the others, but she +does care for you--cares for you. She oughtn't to, but she does, and +she should have married you long ago before Rudyard Byng came. Please +don't think I am interfering, Ian. I am not. You never had a better +friend than I am. But there's something ghastly wrong. Rudyard is +looking like a giant that's had blood-letting, and he never goes near +Jasmine, except when some one is with her. It's a bad sign when two +people must have some third person about to insulate their +self-consciousness and prevent those fatal moments when they have to +be just their own selves, and have it out." + +"You think there's been trouble between them?" His voice was quite +steady, his manner composed. + +"I don't think quite that. But there is trouble in that +palace. Rudyard is going to South Africa." + +"Well, that is not unnatural. I should expect him to do so. I am going +to South Africa also." + +For a moment she looked at him without speaking, and her face slowly +paled. "You are going to the Front--you?" + +"Yes--'Back to the army again, sergeant, back to the army again.' I +was a gunner, you know, and not a bad one, either, if I do say it." + +"You are going to throw up a great career to go to the Front? When you +have got your foot at the top of the ladder, you climb down?" Her +voice was choking a little. + +He made a little whimsical gesture. "There's another ladder to +climb. I'll have a try at it, and do my duty to my country, too. I'll +have a double-barrelled claim on her, if possible." + +"I know that you are going because you will not stay when Rudyard +goes," she rejoined, almost irritably. + +"What a quixotic idea! Really you are too impossible and +wrong-headed." + +He turned an earnest look upon her. "No, I give you my word, I am not +going because Rudyard is going. I didn't know he was going till you +told me. I got permission to go three hours after Kruger's message +came." + +"You are only feckless--only feckless, as the Scotch say," she +rejoined with testy sadness. "Well, since everybody is going, I am +going too. I am going with a hospital-ship." + +"Well, that would pay off a lot of old debts to the Almighty," he +replied, in kindly taunt. + +"I haven't been worse than most women, Ian," she replied. "Women +haven't been taught to do things, to pay off their debts. Men run up +bills and pay them off, and run them up again and again and pay them +off; but we, while we run up bills, our ways of paying them off are so +few, and so uninteresting." + +Suddenly she took from her pocket a letter. "Here is a letter for +you," she said. "It was lying on Jasmine's table the night she was +taken ill. I don't know why I did it, but I suppose I took it up so +that Rudyard should not see it; and then I didn't say anything to +Jasmine about it at once. She said nothing, either; but to-day I told +her I'd seen the letter addressed to you, and had posted it. I said it +to see how she would take it. She only nodded, and said nothing at +first. Then after a while she whispered, 'Thank you, my dear,' but in +such a queer tone. Ian, she meant you to have the letter, and here it +is." + +She put it into his hands. He remembered it. It was the letter which +Jasmine had laid on the table before him at that last interview when +the world stood still. After a moment's hesitation he put it in his +pocket. + +"If she wished me to have it--" he said in a low voice. + +"If not, why, then, did she write it? Didn't she say she was glad I +posted it?" + +A moment followed, in which neither spoke. Lady Tynemouth's eyes were +turned to the window; Stafford stood looking into the fire. + +"Tynie is sure to go to South Africa with his Yeomanry," she continued +at last. "He'll be back in England next week. I can be of use out +there, too. I suppose you think I'm useless because I've never had to +do anything, but you are quite wrong. It's in me. If I'd been driven +to work when I was a girl, if I'd been a labourer's daughter, I'd have +made hats--or cream-cheeses. I'm not really such a fool as you've +always thought me, Ian; at any rate, not in the way you've thought +me." + +His look was gentle, as he gazed into her eyes. "I've never thought +you anything but a very sensible and alluring woman, who is only +wilfully foolish at times," he said. "You do dangerous things." + +"But you never knew me to do a really wrong thing, and if you haven't, +no one has." + +Suddenly her face clouded and her lips trembled. "But I am a good +friend, and I love my friends. So it all hurts. Ian, I'm most +upset. There's something behind Adrian Fellowes' death that I don't +understand. I'm sure he didn't kill himself; but I'm also sure that +some one did kill him." Her eyes sought his with an effort and with +apprehension, but with persistency too. "I don't care what the jury +said--I know I'm right." + +"But it doesn't matter now," he answered, calmly. "He will be buried +to-morrow, and there's an end of it all. It will not even be the usual +nine days' wonder. I'd forget it, if I were you." + +"I can't easily forget it while you remember it," she rejoined, +meaningly. "I don't know why or how it affects you, but it does affect +you, and that's why I feel it; that's why it haunts me." + +Gleg appeared. "A gentleman to see you, sir," he said, and handed Ian +a card. + +"Where is he?" + +"In the dining-room, sir." + +"Very good. I will see him in a moment." + +When they were alone again, Lady Tynemouth held out her hand. "When do +you start for South Africa?" she asked. + +"In three days. I join my battery in Natal." + +"You will hear from me when I get to Durban," she said, with a shy, +inquiring glance. + +"You are really going?" + +"I mean to organize a hospital-ship and go." + +"Where will you get the money?" + +"From some social climber," she replied, cynically. His hand was on +the door-knob, and she laid her own on it gently. "You are ill, Ian," +she said. "I have never seen you look as you do now." + +"I shall be better before long," he answered. "I never saw you look so +well." + +"That's because I am going to do some work at last," she +rejoined. "Work at last. I'll blunder a bit, but I'll try a great +deal, and perhaps I'll do some good.... And I'll be there to nurse you +if you get fever or anything," she added, laughing nervously--"you and +Tynie." + +When she was gone he stood looking at the card in his hand, with his +mind seeing something far beyond. Presently he rang for Gleg. + +"Show Mr. Mappin in," he said. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +WHEREIN THE LOST IS FOUND + + +In a moment the great surgeon was seated, looking reflectively round +him. Soon, however, he said brusquely, "I hope your friend Jigger is +going on all right?" + +"Yes, yes, thanks to you." + +"No, no, Mr. Stafford, thanks to you and Mrs. Byng chiefly. It was +care and nursing that did it. If I could have hospitals like Glencader +and hospital nurses like Mrs. Byng and Al'mah and yourself, I'd have +few regrets at the end of the year. That was an exciting time at +Glencader." + +Stafford nodded, but said nothing. Presently, after some reference to +the disaster at the mine at Glencader and to Stafford's and Byng's +bravery, Mr. Mappin said. "I was shocked to hear of Mr. Fellowes' +death. I was out of town when it happened--a bad case at Leeds; but I +returned early this morning." He paused, inquiringly but Ian said +nothing, and he continued, "I have seen the body." + +"You were not at the inquest, I think," Ian remarked, casually. + +"No, I was not in time for that, but I got permission to view the +body." + +"And the verdict--you approve?" + +"Heart failure--yes." Mr. Mappin's lip curled. "Of course. But he had +no heart trouble. His heart wasn't even weak. His life showed that." + +"His life showed--?" Ian's eyebrows went up. + +"He was very much in society, and there's nothing more strenuous than +that. His heart was all right. Something made it fail, and I have been +considering what it was." + +"Are you suggesting that his death was not natural?" + +"Quite artificial, quite artificial, I should say." + +Ian took a cigarette, and lighted it slowly. "According to your +theory, he must have committed suicide. But how? Not by an effort of +the will, as they do in the East, I suppose?" + +Mr. Mappin sat up stiffly in his chair. "Do you remember my showing +you all at Glencader a needle which had on its point enough poison to +kill a man?" + +"And leave no trace--yes." + +"Do you remember that you all looked at it with interest, and that +Mr. Fellowes examined it more attentively than any one else?" + +"I remember." + +"Well, I was going to kill a collie with it next day." + +"A favourite collie grown old, rheumatic--yes, I remember." + +"Well, the experiment failed." + +"The collie wasn't killed by the poison?" + +"No, not by the poison, Mr. Stafford." + +"So your theory didn't work except on paper." + +"I think it worked, but not with the collie." + +There was a pause, while Stafford looked composedly at his visitor, +and then he said: "Why didn't it work with the collie?" + +"It never had its chance." + +"Some mistake, some hitch?" + +"No mistake, no hitch; but the wrong needle." + +"The wrong needle! I should not say that carelessness was a habit with +you." Stafford's voice was civil and sympathetic. + +"Confidence breeds carelessness," was Mr. Mappin's enigmatical retort. + +"You were over-confident then?" + +"Quite clearly so. I thought that Glencader was beyond reproach." + +There was a slight pause, and then Stafford, flicking away some +cigarette ashes, continued the catechism. "What particular form of +reproach do you apply to Glencader?" + +"Thieving." + +"That sounds reprehensible--and rude." + +"If you were not beyond reproach, it would be rude, Mr. Stafford." + +Stafford chafed at the rather superior air of the expert, whose habit +of bedside authority was apt to creep into his social conversation; +but, while he longed to give him a shrewd thrust, he forbore. It was +hard to tell how much he might have to do to prevent the man from +making mischief. The compliment had been smug, and smugness irritated +Stafford. + +"Well, thanks for your testimonial," he said, presently, and then he +determined to cut short the tardy revelation, and prick the bubble of +mystery which the great man was so slowly blowing. + +"I take it that you think some one at Glencader stole your needle, and +so saved your collie's life," he said. + +"That is what I mean," responded Mr. Mappin, a little discomposed that +his elaborate synthesis should be so sharply brought to an end. + +There was almost a grisly raillery in Stafford's reply. "Now, the +collie--were you sufficiently a fatalist to let him live, or did you +prepare another needle, or do it in the humdrum way?" + +"I let the collie live." + +"Hoping to find the needle again?" asked Stafford, with a smile. + +"Perhaps to hear of it again." + +"Hello, that is rather startling! And you have done so? + +"I think so. Yes, I may say that." + +"Now how do you suppose you lost that needle?" + +"It was taken from my pocket-case, and another substituted. + +"Returning good for evil. Could you not see the difference in the +needles?" + +"There is not, necessarily, difference in needles. The substitute was +the same size and shape, and I was not suspicious." + +"And what form does your suspicion take now?" + +The great man became rather portentously solemn--he himself would have +said "becomingly grave." "My conviction is that Mr. Fellowes took my +needle." + +Stafford fixed the other with his gaze. "And killed himself with it?" + +Mr. Mappin frowned. "Of that I cannot be sure, of course." + +"Could you not tell by examining the body?" + +"Not absolutely from a superficial examination." + +"You did not think a scientific examination necessary?" + +"Yes, perhaps; but the official inquest is over, the expert analysis +or examination is finished by the authorities, and the superficial +proofs, while convincing enough to me, are not complete and final; and +so, there you are." + +Stafford got and held his visitor's eyes, and with slow emphasis said: +"You think that Fellowes committed suicide with your needle?" + +"No, I didn't say that." + +"Then I fear my intelligence must be failing rapidly. You said--" + +"I said I was not sure that he killed himself. I am sure that he was +killed by my needle; but I am not sure that he killed himself. Motive +and all that kind of thing would come in there." + +"Ah--and all that kind of thing! Why should you discard motive for his +killing himself?" + +"I did not say I discarded motive, but I think Mr. Fellowes the last +man in the world likely to kill himself." + +"Why, then, do you think he stole the needle?" + +"Not to kill himself." + +Stafford turned his head away a little. "Come now; this is too +tall. You are going pretty far in suggesting that Fellowes took your +needle to kill some one else." + +"Perhaps. But motive might not be so far to seek." + +"What motive in this case?" Stafford's eyes narrowed a little with the +inquiry. + +"Well, a woman, perhaps." + +"You know of some one, who--" + +"No. I am only assuming from Mr. Fellowes' somewhat material nature +that there must be a woman or so." + +"Or so--why 'or so?'" Stafford pressed him into a corner. + +"There comes the motive--one too many, when one may be suspicious, or +jealous, or revengeful, or impossible." + +"Did you see any mark of the needle on the body?" + +"I think so. But that would not do more than suggest further delicate, +detailed, and final examination." + +"You have no trace of the needle itself?" + +"None. But surely that isn't strange. If he had killed himself, the +needle would probably have been found. If he did not kill himself, but +yet was killed by it, there is nothing strange in its not being +recovered." + +Stafford took on the gravity of a dry-as-dust judge. "I suppose that +to prove the case it would be necessary to produce the needle, as your +theory and your invention are rather new." + +"For complete proof the needle would be necessary, though not +indispensable." + +Stafford was silent for an instant, then he said: "You have had a look +for the little instrument of passage?" + +"I was rather late for that, I fear." + +"Still, by chance, the needle might have been picked up. However, it +would look foolish to advertise for a needle which had traces of atric +acid on it, wouldn't it?" + +Mr. Mappin looked at Stafford quite coolly, and then, ignoring the +question, said, deliberately: "You discovered the body, I hear. You +didn't by any chance find the needle, I suppose?" + +Stafford returned his look with a cool stare. "Not by any chance," he +said, enigmatically. + +He had suddenly decided on a line of action which would turn this +astute egoist from his half-indicated purpose. Whatever the means of +Fellowes' death, by whomsoever caused, or by no one, further inquiry +could only result in revelations hurtful to some one. As Mr. Mappin +had surmised, there was more than one woman,--there may have been a +dozen, of course--but chance might just pitch on the one whom +investigation would injure most. + +If this expert was quieted, and Fellowes was safely bestowed in his +grave, the tragic incident would be lost quickly in the general +excitement and agitation of the nation. The war-drum would drown any +small human cries of suspicion or outraged innocence. Suppose some one +did kill Adrian Fellowes? He deserved to die, and justice was +satisfied, even if the law was marauded. There were at least four +people who might have killed Fellowes without much remorse. There was +Rudyard, there was Jasmine, there was Lou the erstwhile +flower-girl--and himself. It was necessary that Mappin, however, +should be silenced, and sent about his business. + +Stafford suddenly came over to the table near to his visitor, and with +an assumed air of cold indignation, though with a little natural +irritability behind all, said "Mr. Mappin, I assume that you have not +gone elsewhere with your suspicions?" + +The other shook his head in negation. + +"Very well, I should strongly advise you, for your own reputation as +an expert and a man of science, not to attempt the rather cliche +occupation of trying to rival Sherlock Holmes. Your suspicions may +have some distant justification, but only a man of infinite skill, +tact, and knowledge, with an almost abnormal gift for tracing elusive +clues and, when finding them, making them fit in with fact--only a man +like yourself, a genius at the job, could get anything out of it. You +are not prepared to give the time, and you could only succeed in +causing pain and annoyance beyond calculation. Just imagine a Scotland +Yard detective with such a delicate business to do. We have no Hamards +here, no French geniuses who can reconstruct crimes by a kind of +special sense. Can you not see the average detective blundering about +with his ostentatious display of the obvious; his mind, which never +traced a motive in its existence, trying to elucidate a clue? Well, it +is the business of the Law to detect and punish crime. Let the Law do +it in its own way, find its own clues, solve the mysteries given it to +solve. Why should you complicate things? The official fellows could +never do what you could do, if you were a detective. They haven't the +brains or initiative or knowledge. And since you are not a detective, +and can't devote yourself to this most delicate problem, if there be +any problem at all, I would suggest--I imitate your own rudeness--that +you mind your own business." + +He smiled, and looked down at his visitor with inscrutable eyes. + +At the last words Mr. Mappin flushed and looked consequential; but +under the influence of a smile, so winning that many a chancellerie of +Europe had lost its irritation over some skilful diplomatic stroke +made by its possessor, he emerged from his atmosphere of offended +dignity and feebly returned the smile. + +"You are at once complimentary and scathing, Mr. Stafford," he said; +"but I do recognize the force of what you say. Scotland Yard is +beneath contempt. I know of cases--but I will not detain you with them +now. They bungle their work terribly at Scotland Yard. A detective +should be a man of imagination, of initiative, of deep knowledge of +human nature. In the presence of a mystery he should be ready to find +motives, to construct them and put them into play, as though they were +real--work till a clue was found. Then, if none is found, find another +motive and work on that. The French do it. They are marvels. Hamard is +a genius, as you say. He imagines, he constructs, he pursues, he +squeezes out every drop of juice in the orange.... You see, I agree +with you on the whole, but this tragedy disturbed me, and I thought +that I had a real clue. I still believe I have, but cui bono?" + +"Cui bono indeed, if it is bungled. If you could do it all yourself, +good. But that is impossible. The world wants your skill to save life, +not to destroy it. Fellowes is dead--does it matter so infinitely, +whether by his own hand or that of another?" + +"No, I frankly say I don't think it does matter infinitely. His type +is no addition to the happiness of the world." + +They looked at each other meaningly, and Mappin responded once again +to Stafford's winning smile. + +It pleased him prodigiously to feel Stafford lay a firm hand on his +arm and say: "Can you, perhaps, dine with me to-night at the +Travellers' Club? It makes life worth while to talk to men like you +who do really big things." + +"I shall be delighted to come for your own reasons," answered the +great man, beaming, and adjusting his cuffs carefully. + +"Good, good. It is capital to find you free." Again Stafford caught +the surgeon's arm with a friendly little grip. + +Suddenly, however, Mr. Mappin became aware that Stafford had turned +desperately white and worn. He had noticed this spent condition when +he first came in, but his eyes now rediscovered it. He regarded +Stafford with concern. + +"Mr. Stafford," he said, "I am sure you do not realize how much below +par you are.... You have been under great strain--I know, we all know, +how hard you have worked lately. Through you, England launches her +ship of war without fear of complications; but it has told on you +heavily. Nothing is got without paying for it. You need rest, and you +need change." + +"Quite so--rest and change. I am going to have both now," said +Stafford with a smile, which was forced and wan. + +"You need a tonic also, and you must allow me to give you one," was +the brusque professional response. + +With quick movement he went over to Stafford's writing-table, and +threw open the cover of the blotter. + +In a flash Stafford was beside him, and laid a hand upon the blotter, +saying with a smile, of the kind which had so far done its work-- + +"No, no, my friend, I will not take a tonic. It's only a good sleep I +want; and I'll get that to-night. But I give my word, if I'm not all +right to-morrow, if I don't sleep, I'll send to you and take your +tonic gladly." + +"You promise?" + +"I promise, my dear Mappin." + +The great man beamed again: and he really was solicitous for his +new-found friend. + +"Very well, very well--Stafford," he replied. "It shall be as you +say. Good-bye, or, rather, au revoir!" + +"A la bonne heure!" was the hearty response, as the door opened for +the great surgeon's exit. + +When the door was shut again, and Stafford was alone, he staggered +over to the writing-desk. Opening the blotter, he took something up +carefully and looked at it with a sardonic smile. + +"You did your work quite well," he said, reflectively. + +It was such a needle as he had seen at Glencader in Mr. Mappin's +hand. He had picked it up in Adrian Fellowes' room. + +"I wonder who used you," he said in a hard voice. "I wonder who used +you so well. Was it--was it Jasmine?" + +With a trembling gesture he sat down, put the needle in a drawer, +locked it, and turned round to the fire again. + +"Was it Jasmine?" he repeated, and he took from his pocket the letter +which Lady Tynemouth had given him. For a moment he looked at it +unopened--at the beautiful, smooth handwriting so familiar to his +eyes; then he slowly broke the seal, and took out the closely written +pages. + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +JASMINE'S LETTER + + +"Ian, oh, Ian, what strange and dreadful things you have written to +me!" Jasmine's letter ran--the letter which she told him she had +written on that morning when all was lost. "Do you realize what you +have said, and, saying it, have you thought of all it means to me? You +have tried to think of what is best, I know, but have you thought of +me? When I read your letter first, a flood of fire seemed to run +through my veins; then I became as though I had been dipped in ether, +and all the winds of an arctic sea were blowing over me. + +"To go with you now, far away from the world in which we live and in +which you work, to begin life again, as you say--how sweet and +terrible and glad it would be! But I know, oh, I know myself and I +know you! I am like one who has lived forever. I am not good, and I am +not foolish, I am only mad; and the madness in me urges me to that +visionary world where you and I could live and work and wander, and be +content with all that would be given us--joy, seeing, understanding, +revealing, doing. + +"But Ian, it is only a visionary world, that world of which you +speak. It does not exist. The overmastering love, the desire for you +that is in me, makes for me the picture as it is in your mind; but +down beneath all, the woman in me, the everlasting woman, is sure +there is no such world. + +"Listen, dear child--I call you that, for though I am only twenty-five +I seem as aged as the Sphinx, and, like the Sphinx that begets +mockery, so my soul, which seems to have looked out over unnumbered +centuries, mocks at this world which you would make for you and +me. Listen, Ian. It is not a real world, and I should not--and that is +the pitiful, miserable part of it--I should not make you happy, if I +were in that world with you. To my dire regret I know it. Suddenly you +have roused in me what I can honestly say I have never felt +before--strange, reckless, hungry feelings. I am like some young +dweller of the jungle which, cut off from its kind tries, with a +passion that eats and eats and eats away his very flesh to get back to +its kind, to his mate, to that other wild child of nature which waits +for the one appeasement of primeval desire. + +"Ian, I must tell you the whole truth about myself as I understand +it. I am a hopeless, painful contradiction; I have always been so. I +have always wanted to be good, but something has always driven me +where the flowers have a poisonous sweetness, where the heart grows +bad. I want to cry to you, Ian, to help me to be good; and yet +something drives me on to want to share with you the fruit which turns +to dust and ashes in the long end. And behind all that again, some +tiny little grain of honour in me says that I must not ask you to help +me; says that I ought never to look into your eyes again, never touch +your hand, nor see you any more; and from the little grain of honour +comes the solemn whisper, 'Do not ruin him; do not spoil his life.' + +"Your letter has torn my heart, so that it can never again be as it +was before, and because there is some big, noble thing in you, some +little, not ignoble thing is born in me. Ian, you could never know the +anguished desire I have to be with you always, but, if I keep sane at +all, I will not go--no, I will not go with you, unless the madness +carries me away. It would kill you. I know, because I have lived so +many thousands of years. My spirit and my body might be satisfied, the +glory in having you all my own would be so great; but there would be +no joy for you. To men like you, work is as the breath of life. You +must always be fighting for something, always climbing higher, because +you see some big thing to do which is so far above you. + +"Yes, men like you get their chance sooner or later, because you work, +and are ready to take the gifts of Fate when they appear and before +they pass. You will be always for climbing, if some woman does not +drag you back. That woman may be a wife, or it may be a loving and +living ghost of a wife like me. Ian, I could not bear to see what +would come at last--the disappointment in your face the look of hope +gone from your eyes; your struggle to climb, and the struggle of no +avail. Sisyphus had never such a task as you would have on the hill of +life, if I left all behind here and went with you. You would try to +hide it; but I would see you growing older hourly before my eyes. You +would smile--I wonder if you know what sort of wonderful, alluring +thing your smile is, Ian?--and that smile would drive me to kill +myself, and so hurt you still more. And so it is always an everlasting +circle of penalty and pain when you take the laws of life you get in +the mountains in your hands and break them in pieces on the rocks in +the valleys, and make new individual laws out of harmony with the +general necessity. + +"Isn't it strange, Ian, that I who can do wrong so easily still know +so well and value so well what is right? It is my mother in me and my +grandfather in me, both of them fighting for possession. Let me empty +out my heart before you, because I know--I do not know why, but I do +know, as I write--that some dark cloud lowers, gathers round us, in +which we shall be lost, shall miss the touch of hand and never see +each other's face again. I know it, oh so surely! I did not really +love you years ago, before I married Rudyard; I did not love you when +I married him; I did not love him, I could not really love any one. My +heart was broken up in a thousand pieces to give away in little bits +to all who came. But I cared for you more than I cared for any one +else--so much more; because you were so able and powerful, and were +meant to do such big things; and I had just enough intelligence to +want to understand you; to feel what you were thinking, to grasp its +meaning, however dimly. Yet I have no real intellect. I am only quick +and rather clever--sharp, as Jigger would say, and with some cunning, +too. I have made so many people believe that I am brilliant. When I +think and talk and write, I only give out in a new light what others +like you have taught me; give out a loaf where you gave me a crumb; +blow a drop of water into a bushel of bubbles. No, I did not love you, +in the big way, in those old days, and maybe it is not love I feel for +you now; but it is a great and wonderful thing, so different from the +feeling I once had. It is very powerful, and it is also very cruel, +because it smothers me in one moment, and in the next it makes me want +to fly to you, heedless of consequences. + +"And what might those consequences be, Ian, and shall I let you face +them? The real world, your world, England, Europe, would have no more +use for all your skill and knowledge and power, because there would be +a woman in the way. People who would want to be your helpers, and to +follow you, would turn away when they saw you coming; or else they +would say the superficial things which are worse than blows in the +face to a man who wants to feel that men look to him to help solve the +problems perplexing the world. While it may not be love I feel for +you, whatever it is, it makes me a little just and unselfish now. I +will not--unless a spring-time madness drives me to it to-day--I will +not go with you. + +"As for the other solution you offer, deceiving the world as to your +purposes, to go far away upon some wild mission, and to die! + +"Ah, no, you must not cheat the world so; you must not cheat yourself +so! And how cruel it would be to me! Whatever I deserve--and in +leaving you to marry Rudyard I deserved heavy punishment--still I do +not deserve the torture which would follow me to the last day of my +life if, because of me, you sacrificed that which is not yours alone, +but which belongs to all the world. I loathe myself when I think of +the old wrong that I did you; but no leper woman could look upon +herself with such horror as I should upon myself, if, for the new +wrong I have done you, you were to take your own life. + +"These are so many words, and perhaps they will not read to you as +real. That is perhaps because I am only shallow at the best; am only, +as you once called me, 'a little burst of eloquence.' But even I can +suffer, and I believe that even I can love. You say you cannot go on +as things are; that I must go with you or you must die; and yet you do +not wish me to go with you. You have said that, too. But do you not +wonder what would become of me, if either of these alternatives is +followed? A little while ago I could deceive Rudyard, and put myself +in pretty clothes with a smile, and enjoy my breakfast with him and +look in his face boldly, and enjoy the clothes, and the world and the +gay things that are in it, perhaps because I had no real moral +sense. Isn't it strange that out of the thing which the world would +condemn as most immoral, as the very degradation of the heart and soul +and body, there should spring up a new sense that is moral--perhaps +the first true glimmering of it? Oh, dear love of my life, comrade of +my soul, something has come to me which I never had before, and for +that, whatever comes, my lifelong gratitude must be yours! What I now +feel could never have come except through fire and tears, as you +yourself say, and I know so well that the fire is at my feet, and the +tears--I wept them all last night, when I too wanted to die. + +"You are coming at eleven to-day, Ian--at eleven. It is now eight. I +will try and send this letter to reach you before you leave your +rooms. If not, I will give it to you when you come--at eleven. Why did +you not say noon--noon--twelve of the clock? The end and the +beginning! Why did you not say noon, Ian? The light is at its zenith +at noon, at twelve; and the world is dark at twelve--at +midnight. Twelve at noon; twelve at night; the light and the +dark--which will it be for us, Ian? Night or noon? I wonder, oh, I +wonder if, when I see you I shall have the strength to say, 'Yes, go, +and come again no more.' Or whether, in spite of everything, I shall +wildly say, 'Let us go away together.' Such is the kind of woman that +I am. And you--dear lover, tell me truly what kind of man are you? + +"Your JASMINE." + +He read the letter slowly, and he stopped again and again as though to +steady himself. His face became strained and white, and once he poured +brandy and drank it off as though it were water. When he had finished +the letter he went heavily over to the fire and dropped it in. He +watched it burn, until only the flimsy carbon was left. + +"If I had not gone till noon," he said aloud, in a nerveless +voice--"if I had not gone till noon . . . Fellowes--did she--or was it +Byng?" + +He was so occupied with his thoughts that he was not at first +conscious that some one was knocking. + +"Come in," he called out at last. + +The door opened and Rudyard Byng entered. + +"I am going to South Africa, Stafford," he said, heavily. "I hear that +you are going, too; and I have come to see whether we cannot go out +together." + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +KROOL + + +"A message from Mr. Byng to say that he may be a little late, but he +says will you go on without him? He will come as soon as possible." + +The footman, having delivered himself, turned to withdraw, but Barry +Whalen called him back, saying, "Is Mr. Krool in the house?" + +The footman replied in the affirmative. "Did you wish to see him, +sir?" he asked. + +"Not at present. A little later perhaps," answered Barry, with a +glance round the group, who eyed him curiously. + +At a word the footman withdrew. As the door closed, little black, oily +Sobieski dit Melville said with an attempt at a joke, "Is 'Mr.' Krool +to be called into consultation?" + +"Don't be so damned funny, Melville," answered Barry. "I didn't ask +the question for nothing." + +"These aren't days when anybody guesses much," remarked Fleming. "And +I'd like to know from Mr. Kruger, who knows a lot of things, and +doesn't gas, whether he means the mines to be safe." + +They all looked inquiringly at Wallstein, who in the storms which +rocked them all kept his nerve and his countenance with a power almost +benign. His large, limpid eye looked little like that belonging to an +eagle of finance, as he had been called. + +"It looked for a while as though they'd be left alone," said +Wallstein, leaning heavily on the table," but I'm not so sure now." He +glanced at Barry Whalen significantly, and the latter surveyed the +group enigmatically. + +"There's something evidently waiting to be said," remarked Wolff, the +silent Partner in more senses than one. "What's the use of waiting?" + +Two or three of those present looked at Ian Stafford, who, standing by +the window, seemed oblivious of them all. Byng had requested him to be +present, with a view to asking his advice concerning some +international aspect of the situation, and especially in regard to +Holland and Germany. The group had welcomed the suggestion eagerly, +for on this side of the question they were not so well equipped as on +others. But when it came to the discussion of inner local policy there +seemed hesitation in speaking freely before him. Wallstein, however, +gave a reassuring nod and said, meaningly: + +"We took up careful strategical positions, but our camp has been +overlooked from a kopje higher than ours." + +"We have been the victims of treachery for years," burst out Fleming, +with anger. "Nearly everything we've done here, nearly everything the +Government has done here, has been known to Kruger--ever since the +Raid." + +"I think it could have been stopped," said the once Sobieski, with an +ugly grimace, and an attempt at an accent which would suit his new +name. "Byng's to blame. We ought to have put down our feet from the +start. We're Byng-ridden." + +"Keep a civil tongue, Israel," snarled Barry Whalen. "You know nothing +about it, and that is the state in which you most shine--in your +natural state of ignorance, like the heathen in his blindness. But +before Byng comes I'd better give you all some information I've got." + +"Isn't it for Byng to hear?" asked Fleming. + +"Very much so; but it's for you all to decide what's to be +done. Perhaps Mr. Stafford can help us in the matter, as he has been +with Byng very lately." Wallstein looked inquiringly towards Stafford. + +The group nodded appreciatively, and Stafford came forward to the +table, but without seating himself. "Certainly you may command me," he +said. "What is the mystery?" + +In short and abrupt sentences Barry Whalen, with an occasional +interjection and explanation from Wallstein, told of the years of +leakage in regard to their plans, of moves circumvented by information +which could only have been got by treacherous means either in South +Africa or in London. + +"We didn't know for sure which it was," said Barry, "but the proof has +come at last. One of Kruger's understrappers from Holland was +successfully tapped, and we've got proof that the trouble was here in +London, here in this house where we sit--Byng's home." + +There was a stark silence, in which more than one nodded +significantly, and looked round furtively to see how the others took +the news. + +"Here is absolute proof. There were two in it here--Adrian Fellowes +and Krool." + +"Adrian Fellowes!" + +It was Ian Stafford's voice, insistent and inquiring. + +"Here is the proof, as I say." Barry Whalen leaned forward and pushed +a paper over on the table, to which were attached two or three smaller +papers and some cablegrams. "Look at them. Take a good look at them +and see how we've been done--done brown. The hand that dipped in the +same dish, as it were, has handed out misfortune to us by the +bucketful. We've been carted in the house of a friend." + +The group, all standing, leaned over, as Barry Whalen showed them the +papers, one by one, then passed them round for examination. + +"It's deadly," said Fleming. "Men have had their throats cut or been +hanged for less. I wouldn't mind a hand in it myself." + +"We warned Byng years ago," interposed Barry, "but it was no use. And +we've paid for it par and premium." + +"What can be done to Krool?" asked Fleming. + +"Nothing particular--here," said Barry Whalen, ominously. + +"Let's have the dog in," urged one of the group. + +"Without Byng's permission?" interjected Wallstein. + +There was a silence. The last time any of them, except Wallstein, had +seen Byng, was on the evening when he had overheard the slanders +concerning Jasmine, and none had pleasant anticipation of this meeting +with him now. They recalled his departure when Barry Whalen had said, +"God, how he hates us." He was not likely to hate them less, when they +proved that Fellowes and Krool had betrayed him and them all. They had +a wholesome fear of him in more senses than one, because, during the +past few years, while Wallstein's health was bad, Byng's position had +become more powerful financially, and he could ruin any one of them, +if he chose. A man like Byng in "going large" might do the Samson +business. Besides, he had grown strangely uncertain in his temper of +late, and, as Barry Whalen had said, "It isn't good to trouble a +wounded bull in the ring." + +They had him on the hip in one way through the exposure of Krool, but +they were all more or less dependent on his financial movements. They +were all enraged at Byng because he had disregarded all warnings +regarding Krool; but what could they do? Instinctively they turned now +to Stafford, whose reputation for brains and diplomacy was so great +and whose friendship with Byng was so close. + +Stafford had come to-day for two reasons: to do what he could to help +Byng--for the last time; and to say to Byng that they could not travel +together to South Africa. To make the long journey with him was beyond +his endurance. He must put the world between Rudyard and himself; he +must efface all companionship. With this last act, begotten of the +blind confidence Rudyard had in him, their intercourse must cease +forever. This would be easy enough in South Africa. Once at the Front, +it was as sure as anything on earth that they would never meet +again. It was torture to meet him, and the day of the inquest, when +Byng had come to his rooms after his interview with Lady Tynemouth and +Mr. Mappin, he had been tried beyond endurance. + +"Shall we have Krool in without Byng's permission? Is it wise?" asked +Wallstein again. He looked at Stafford, and Stafford instantly +replied: + +"It would be well to see Krool, I think. Your action could then be +decided by Krool's attitude and what he says." + +Barry Whalen rang the bell, and the footman came. After a brief +waiting Krool entered the room with irritating deliberation and closed +the door behind him. + +He looked at no one, but stood contemplating space with a composure +which made Barry Whalen almost jump from his seat in rage. + +"Come a little closer," said Wallstein in a soothing voice, but so +Wallstein would have spoken to a man he was about to disembowel. + +Krool came nearer, and now he looked round at them all slowly and +inquiringly. As no one spoke for a moment he shrugged his shoulders. + +"If you shrug your shoulders again, damn you, I'll sjambok you here as +Kruger did at Vleifontein," said Barry Whalen in a low, angry +voice. "You've been too long without the sjambok." + +"This is not the Vaal, it is Englan'," answered Krool, huskily. "The +Law--here!" + +"Zo you stink ze law of England would help you--eh?" asked Sobieski, +with a cruel leer, relapsing into his natural vernacular. + +"I mean what I say, Krool," interposed Barry Whalen, fiercely, +motioning Sobieski to silence. "I will sjambok you till you can't +move, here in England, here in this house, if you shrug your shoulders +again, or lift an eyebrow, or do one damned impudent thing." + +He got up and rang a bell. A footman appeared. "There is a +rhinoceros-hide whip, on the wall of Mr. Byng's study. Bring it here," +he said, quietly, but with suppressed passion. + +"Don't be crazy, Whalen," said Wallstein, but with no great force, for +he would richly have enjoyed seeing the spy and traitor under the +whip. Stafford regarded the scene with detached, yet deep and +melancholy interest. + +While they waited, Krool seemed to shrink a little; but as he watched +like some animal at bay, Stafford noticed that his face became +venomous and paler, and some sinister intention showed in his eyes. + +The whip was brought and laid upon the table beside Barry Whalen, and +the footman disappeared, looking curiously at the group and at Krool. + +Barry Whalen's fingers closed on the whip, and now a look of fear +crept over Krool's face. If there was one thing calculated to stir +with fear the Hottentot blood in him, it was the sight of the +sjambok. He had native tendencies and predispositions out of +proportion to the native blood in him--maybe because he had ever been +treated more like a native than a white man by his Boer masters in the +past. + +As Stafford viewed the scene, it suddenly came home to him how strange +was this occurrence in Park Lane. It was medieval, it belonged to some +land unslaked of barbarism. He realized all at once how little these +men around him represented the land in which they were living, and how +much they were part of the far-off land which was now in the throes of +war. + +To these men this was in one sense an alien country. Through the +dulled noises of London there came to their ears the click of the +wheels of a cape-wagon, the crack of the Kaffir's whip, the creak of +the disselboom. They followed the spoor of a company of elephants in +the East country, they watched through the November mist the blesbok +flying across the veld, a herd of quaggas taking cover with the +rheebok, or a cloud of locusts sailing out of the sun to devastate the +green lands. Through the smoky smell of London there came to them the +scent of the wattle, the stinging odour of ten thousand cattle, the +reek of a native kraal, the sharp sweetness of orange groves, the +aromatic air of the karoo, laden with the breath of a thousand wild +herbs. Through the drizzle of the autumn rain they heard the wild +thunderbolt tear the trees from earthly moorings. In their eyes was +the livid lightning that searched in spasms of anger for its prey, +while there swept over the brown, aching veld the flood which filled +the spruits, which made the rivers seas, and ploughed fresh channels +through the soil. The luxury of this room, with its shining mahogany +tables, its tapestried walls, its rare fireplace and massive +overmantel brought from Italy, its exquisite stained-glass windows, +was only part of a play they were acting; it was not their real life. + +And now there was not one of them that saw anything incongruous in the +whip of rhinoceros-hide lying on the table, or clinched in Barry +Whalen's hand. On the contrary, it gave them a sense of supreme +naturalness. They had lived in a land where the sjambok was the symbol +of progress. It represented the forward movement of civilization in +the wilderness. It was the vierkleur of the pioneer, without which the +long train of capewagons, with the oxen in longer coils of effort, +would never have advanced; without which the Kaffir and the Hottentot +would have sacrificed every act of civilization. It prevented crime, +it punished crime, it took the place of the bowie-knife and the +derringer of that other civilization beyond the Mississippi; it was +the lock to the door in the wild places, the open sesame to the +territories where native chiefs ruled communal tribes by playing +tyrant to the commune. It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of +barbarism. It was the sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate +human flesh, it secured order where there was no law, and it did the +work of prison and penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority in the +wilderness. + +It was race. + +Stafford was the only man present who saw anything incongruous in the +scene, and yet his travels in the East his year in Persia, Tibet and +Afghanistan, had made him understand things not revealed to the wise +and prudent of European domains. With Krool before them, who was of +the veld and the karoo, whose natural habitat was but a cross between +a krall and the stoep of a dopper's home, these men were instantly +transported to the land where their hearts were in spite of all, +though the flesh-pots of the West End of London had turned them into +by-paths for a while. The skin had been scratched by Krool's insolence +and the knowledge of his treachery, and the Tartar showed--the sjambok +his scimitar. + +In spite of himself, Stafford was affected by it all. He +understood. This was not London; the scene had shifted to +Potchefstroom or Middleburg, and Krool was transformed too. The +sjambok had, like a wizard's wand, as it were, lifted him away from +England to spaces where he watched from the grey rock of a kopje for +the glint of an assegai or the red of a Rooinek's tunic: and he had +done both in his day. + +"We've got you at last, Krool," said Wallstein. "We have been some +time at it, but it's a long lane that has no turning, and we have +you--" + +"Like that--like that, jackal!" interjected Barry Whalen, opening and +shutting his lean fingers with a gesture of savage possession. + +"What?" asked Krool, with a malevolent thrust forward of his +head. "What?" + +"You betrayed us to Kruger," answered Wallstein, holding the +papers. "We have here the proof at last." + +"You betrayed England and her secrets, and yet you think that the +English law would protect you against this," said Barry Whalen, +harshly, handling the sjambok. + +"What I betray?" Krool asked again. "What I tell?" + +With great deliberation Wallstein explained. + +"Where proof?" Krool asked, doggedly. + +"We have just enough to hang you," said Wallstein, grimly, and lifted +and showed the papers Barry Whalen had brought. + +An insolent smile crossed Krool's face. + +"You find out too late. That Fellowes is dead. So much you get, but +the work is done. It not matter now. It is all done--altogether. Oom +Paul speaks now, and everything is his--from the Cape to the Zambesi, +everything his. It is too late. What can to do?" Suddenly ferocity +showed in his face. "It come at last. It is the end of the English +both sides the Vaal. They will go down like wild hogs into the sea +with Joubert and Botha behind them. It is the day of Oom Paul and +Christ. The God of Israel gives to his own the tents of the Rooineks." + +In spite of the fierce passion of the man, who had suddenly disclosed +a side of his nature hitherto hidden--the savage piety of the copper +Boer impregnated with stereotyped missionary phrasing, Ian Stafford +almost laughed outright. In the presence of Jews like Sobieski it +seemed so droll that this half-caste should talk about the God of +Israel, and link Oom Paul's name with that of Christ the great +liberator as partners in triumph. + +In all the years Krool had been in England he had never been inside a +place of worship or given any sign of that fanaticism which, all at +once, he made manifest. He had seemed a pagan to all of his class, had +acted as a pagan. + +Barry Whalen, as well as Ian Stafford, saw the humour of the +situation, while they were both confounded by the courageous malice of +the traitor. It came to Barry's mind at the moment, as it came to Ian +Stafford's, that Krool had some card to play which would, to his mind, +serve him well; and, by instinct, both found the right clue. Barry's +anger became uneasiness, and Stafford's interest turned to anxiety. + +There was an instant's pause after Krool's words, and then Wolff the +silent, gone wild, caught the sjambok from the hands of Barry +Whalen. He made a movement towards Krool, who again suddenly shrank, +as he would not have shrunk from a weapon of steel. + +"Wait a minute," cried Fleming, seizing the arm of his friend. "One +minute. There's something more." Turning to Wallstein, he said, "If +Krool consents to leave England at once for South Africa, let him +go. Is it agreed? He must either be dealt with adequately, or get +out. Is it agreed?" + +"I do what I like," said Krool, with a snarl, in which his teeth +showed glassily against his drawn lips. "No one make me do what I not +want." + +"The Baas--you have forgotten him," said Wallstein. + +A look combined of cunning, fear and servility crossed Krool's face, +but he said, morosely: + +"The Baas--I will do what I like." + +There was a singular defiance and meaning in his tone, and the moment +seemed critical, for Barry Whalen's face was distorted with +fury. Stafford suddenly stooped and whispered a word in Wallstein's +ear, and then said: + +"Gentlemen, if you will allow me, I should like a few words with Krool +before Mr. Byng comes. I think perhaps Krool will see the best course +to pursue when we have talked together. In one sense it is none of my +business, in another sense it is everybody's business. A few minutes, +if you please, gentlemen." There was something almost authoritative in +his tone. + +"For Byng's sake--his wife--you understand," was all Stafford had said +under his breath, but it was an illumination to Wallstein, who +whispered to Stafford. + +"Yes, that's it. Krool holds some card, and he'll play it now." + +By his glance and by his word of assent, Wallstein set the cue for the +rest, and they all got up and went slowly into the other room. Barry +Whalen was about to take the sjambok, but Stafford laid his hand upon +it, and Barry and he exchanged a look of understanding. + +"Stafford's a little bit of us in a way," said Barry in a whisper to +Wallstein as they left the room. "He knows, too, what a sjambok's +worth in Krool's eyes." + +When the two were left alone, Stafford slowly seated himself, and his +fingers played idly with the sjambok. + +"You say you will do what you like, in spite of the Baas?" he asked, +in a low, even tone. + +"If the Baas hurt me, I will hurt. If anybody hurt me, I will hurt." + +"You will hurt the Baas, eh? I thought he saved your life on the +Limpopo." + +A flush stole across Krool's face, and when it passed again he was +paler than before. "I have save the Baas," he answered, sullenly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +With a powerful effort, Stafford controlled himself. He dreaded what +was now to be said, but he felt inevitably what it was. + +"How--from me?" + +"If that Fellowes' letter come into his hands first, yours would not +matter. She would not go with you." + +Stafford had far greater difficulty in staying his hand than had Barry +Whalen, for the sjambok seemed the only reply to the dark +suggestion. He realized how, like the ostrich, he had thrust his head +into the sand, imagining that no one knew what was between himself and +Jasmine. Yet here was one who knew, here was one who had, for whatever +purpose, precipitated a crisis with Fellowes to prevent a crisis with +himself. + +Suddenly Stafford thought of an awful possibility. He fastened the +gloomy eyes of the man before him, that he might be able to see any +stir of emotion, and said: "It did not come out as you expected?" + +"Altogether--yes." + +"You wished to part Mr. and Mrs. Byng. That did not happen." + +"The Baas is going to South Africa." + +"And Mr. Fellowes?" + +"He went like I expec'." + +"He died--heart failure, eh?" + +A look of contempt, malevolence, and secret reflection came into +Krool's face. "He was kill," he said. + +"Who killed him?" + +Krool was about to shrug his shoulders, but his glance fell on the +sjambok, and he made an ugly gesture with his lean fingers. "There was +yourself. He had hurt you--you went to him.... Good! There was the +Baas, he went to him. The dead man had hurt him.... Good!" + +Stafford interrupted him by an exclamation. "What's that you say--the +Baas went to Mr. Fellowes?" + +"As I tell the vrouw, Mrs. Byng, when she say me go from the house +to-day--I say I will go when the Baas send me." + +"The Baas went to Mr. Fellowes--when?" + +"Two hours before you go, and one hour before the vrouw, she go." + +Like some animal looking out of a jungle, so Krool's eyes glowed from +beneath his heavy eyebrows, as he drawled out the words. + +"The Baas went--you saw him?" + +"With my own eyes." + +"How long was he there?" + +"Ten minutes." + +"Mrs. Byng--you saw her go in?" + +"And also come out." + +"And me--you followed me--you saw me, also?" + +"I saw all that come, all that go in to him." + +With a swift mind Stafford saw his advantage--the one chance, the one +card he could play, the one move he could make in checkmate, if, and +when, necessary. "So you saw all that came and went. And you came and +went yourself!" + +His eyes were hard and bright as he held Krool's, and there was a +sinister smile on his lips. + +"You know I come and go--you say me that?" said Krool, with a sudden +look of vague fear and surprise. He had not foreseen this. + +"You accuse yourself. You saw this person and that go out, and you +think to hold them in your dirty clutches; but you had more reason +than any for killing Mr. Fellowes." + +"What?" asked Krool, furtively. + +"You hated him because he was a traitor like yourself. You hated him +because he had hurt the Baas." + +"That is true altogether, but--" + +"You need not explain. If any one killed Mr. Fellowes, why not you? +You came and went from his rooms, too." + +Krool's face was now yellowish pale. "Not me . . . it was not me." + +"You would run a worse chance than any one. Your character would damn +you--a partner with him in crime. What jury in the world but would +convict you on your own evidence? Besides, you knew--" + +He paused to deliver a blow on the barest chance. It was an insidious +challenge which, if it failed, might do more harm to others, might do +great harm, but he plunged. "You knew about the needle." + +Krool was cowed and silent. On a venture Stafford had struck straight +home. + +"You knew that Mr. Fellowes had stolen the needle from Mr. Mappin at +Glencader," he added. + +"How you know that?" asked Krool, in a husky, ragged voice. + +"I saw him steal it--and you?" + +"No. He tell me." + +"What did he mean to do with it?" + +A look came into Krool's eyes, malevolent and barbaric. + +"Not to kill himself," he reflected. "There is always some one a man +or a woman want kill." + +There was a hideous commonplaceness in the tone which struck a chill +to Stafford's heart. + +"No doubt there is always some one you want to kill. Now listen, +Krool. You think you've got a hold over me--over Mrs. Byng. You +threaten. Well, I have passed through the fire of the coroner's +inquest. I have nothing to fear. You have. I saw you in the street as +you watched. You came behind me--" + +He remembered now the footsteps that paused when he did, the figure +behind his in the dark, as he watched for Jasmine to come out from +Fellowes' rooms, and he determined to plunge once more. + +"I recognized you, and I saw you in the Strand just before that. I did +not speak at the inquest, because I wanted no scandal. If I had +spoken, you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances +were worse than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends +in there, or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are +the vile scum of the earth,"--he determined to take a strong line now, +since he had made a powerful impression on the creature before +him--"and you will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved +your life. Bad as you are, the Baas is your Baas for ever and ever, +and what he wants to do with you he will do. When his eyes look into +yours, you will think the lightning speaks. You are his slave. If he +hates you, you will die; if he curses you, you will wither." + +He played upon the superstitious element, the native strain again. It +was deeper in Krool than anything else. + +"Do you think you can defy them?" Stafford went on, jerking a finger +towards the other room. "They are from the veld. They will have you as +sure as the crack of a whip. This is England, but they are from the +veld. On the veld you know what they would do to you. If you speak +against the Baas, it is bad for you; if you speak against the Baas' +vrouw it will be ten times worse. Do you hear?" + +There was a strange silence, in which Stafford could feel Krool's soul +struggling in the dark, as it were--a struggle as of black spirits in +the grey dawn. + +"I wait the Baas speak," Krool said at last, with a shiver. + +There was no time for Stafford to answer. Wallstein entered the room +hurriedly. "Byng has come. He has been told about him," he said in +French to Stafford, and jerking his head towards Krool. + +Stafford rose. "It's all right," he answered in the same language. "I +think things will be safe now. He has a wholesome fear of the Baas." + +He turned to Krool. "If you say to the Baas what you have said to me +about Mr. Fellowes or about the Baas's vrouw, you will have a bad +time. You will think that wild hawks are picking out your vitals. If +you have sense, you will do what I tell you." + +Krool's eyes were on the door through which Wallstein had come. His +gaze was fixed and tortured. Stafford had suddenly roused in him some +strange superstitious element. He was like a creature of a lower order +awaiting the approach of the controlling power. It was, however, the +door behind him which opened, and he gave a start of surprise and +terror. He knew who it was. He did not turn round, but his head bent +forward, as though he would take a blow from behind, and his eyes +almost closed. Stafford saw with a curious meticulousness the long +eyelashes touch the grey cheek. + +"There's no fight in him now," he said to Byng in French. "He was +getting nasty, but I've got him in order. He knows too much. Remember +that, Byng." + +Byng's look was as that of a man who had passed through some chamber +of torture, but the flabbiness had gone suddenly from his face, and +even from his figure, though heavy lines had gathered round the mouth +and scarred the forehead. He looked worn and much thinner, but there +was a look in his eyes which Stafford had never seen there--a new look +of deeper seeing, of revelation, of realization. With all his ability +and force, Byng had been always much of a boy, so little at one with +the hidden things--the springs of human conduct, the contradictions of +human nature, the worst in the best of us, the forces that emerge +without warning in all human beings, to send them on untoward courses +and at sharp tangents to all the habits of their existence and their +character. In a real sense he had been very primitive, very objective +in all he thought and said and did. With imagination, and a sensitive +organization out of keeping with his immense physique, it was still +only a visualizing sense which he had, only a thing that belongs to +races such as those of which Krool had come. + +A few days of continuous suffering begotten by a cataclysm, which had +rent asunder walls of life enclosing vistas he had never before seen; +these had transformed him. Pain had given him dignity of a savage +kind, a grim quiet which belonged to conflict and betokened grimmer +purpose. In the eyes was the darkness of the well of despair; but at +his lips was iron resolution. + +In reply to Stafford he said quietly: "All right, I understand. I know +how to deal with Krool." + +As Stafford withdrew, Byng came slowly down the room till he stood at +the end of the table opposite to Krool. + +Standing there, he looked at the Boer with hard eyes. + +"I know all, Krool," he said. "You sold me and my country--you tried +to sell me and my country to Oom Paul. You dog, that I snatched from +the tiger death, not once but twice." + +"It is no good. I am a Hottentot. I am for the Boer, for Oom Paul. I +would have die for you, but--" + +"But when the chance came to betray the thing I cared for more than I +would twenty lives--my country--you tried to sell me and all who +worked with me." + +"It would be same to you if the English go from the Vaal," said the +half-caste, huskily, not looking into the eyes fixed on him. "But it +matter to me that the Boer keep all for himself what he got for +himself. I am half Boer. That is why." + +"You defend it--tell me, you defend it?" + +There was that in the voice, some terrible thing, which drew Krool's +eyes in spite of himself, and he met a look of fire and wrath. + +"I tell why. If it was bad, it was bad. But I tell why, that is +all. If it is not good, it is bad, and hell is for the bad; but I tell +why." + +"You got money from Oom Paul for the man--Fellowes?" It was hard for +him to utter the name. + +Krool nodded. + +"Every year--much?" + +Again Krool nodded. + +"And for yourself--how much?" + +"Nothing for myself; no money, Baas." + +"Only Oom Paul's love!" + +Krool nodded again. + +"But Oom Paul flayed you at Vleifontein; tied you up and skinned you +with a sjambok.... That didn't matter, eh? And you went on loving +him. I never touched you in all the years. I gave you your life +twice. I gave you good money. I kept you in luxury--you that fed in +the cattle-kraal; you that had mealies to eat and a shred of biltong +when you could steal it; you that ate a steinbok raw on the Vaal, you +were so wild for meat . . . I took you out of that, and gave you +this." + +He waved an arm round the room, and went on: "You come in and go out +of my room, you sleep in the same cart with me, you eat out of the +same dish on trek, and yet you do the Judas trick. Slim--god of gods, +how slim! You are the snake that crawls in the slime. It's the native +in you, I suppose.... But see, I mean to do to you as Oom Paul +did. It's the only thing you understand. It's the way to make you +straight and true, my sweet Krool." + +Still keeping his eyes fixed on Krool's eyes, his hand reached out and +slowly took the sjambok from the table. He ran the cruel thing through +his fingers as does a prison expert the cat-o'-nine-tails before +laying on the lashes of penalty. Into Krool's eyes a terror crept +which never had been there in the old days on the veld when Oom Paul +had flayed him. This was not the veld, and he was no longer the +veld-dweller with skin like the rhinoceros, all leather and bone and +endurance. And this was not Oom Paul, but one whom he had betrayed, +whose wife he had sought to ruin, whose subordinate he had turned into +a traitor. Oom Paul had been a mere savage master; but here was a +master whose very tongue could excoriate him like Oom Paul's sjambok; +whom, at bottom, he loved in his way as he had never loved anything; +whom he had betrayed, not realizing the hideous nature of his deed; +having argued that it was against England his treachery was directed, +and that was a virtue in his eyes; not seeing what direct injury could +come to Byng through it. He had not seen, he had not understood, he +was still uncivilized; he had only in his veins the morality of the +native, and he had tried to ruin his master's wife for his master's +sake; and when he had finished with Fellowes as a traitor, he was +ready to ruin his confederate--to kill him--perhaps did kill him! + +"It's the only way to deal with you, Hottentot dog!" + +The look in Krool's eyes only increased Byng's lust of +punishment. What else was there to do? Without terrible scandal there +was no other way to punish the traitor, but if there had been another +way he would still have done this. This Krool understood; behind every +command the Baas had ever given him this thing lay--the sjambok, the +natural engine of authority. + +Suddenly Byng said with a voice of almost guttural anger: "You dropped +that letter on my bedroom floor--that letter, you understand? +. . . Speak." + +"I did it, Baas." + +Byng was transformed. Slowly he laid down the sjambok, and as slowly +took off his coat, his eyes meanwhile fastening those of the wretched +man before him. Then he took up the sjambok again. + +"You know what I am going to do with you?" + +"Yes, Baas." + +It never occurred to Byng that Krool would resist; it did not occur to +Krool that he could resist. Byng was the Baas, who at that moment was +the Power immeasurable. There was only one thing to do--to obey. + +"You were told to leave my house by Mrs. Byng, and you did not go." + +"She was not my Baas." + +"You would have done her harm, if you could?" + +"So, Baas." + +With a low cry Byng ran forward, the sjambok swung through the air, +and the terrible whip descended on the crouching half-caste. + +Krool gave one cry and fell back a little, but he made no attempt to +resist. + +Suddenly Byng went to a window and threw it open. + +"You can jump from there or take the sjambok. Which?" he said with a +passion not that of a man wholly sane. "Which?" + +Krool's wild, sullen, trembling look sought the window, but he had no +heart for that enterprise--thirty feet to the pavement below. + +"The sjambok, Baas," he said. + +Once again Byng moved forward on him, and once again Krool's cry rang +out, but not so loud. It was like that of an animal in torture. + +In the next room, Wallstein and Stafford and the others heard it, and +understood. Whispering together they listened, and Stafford shrank +away to the far side of the room; but more than one face showed +pleasure in the sound of the whip and the moaning. + +It went on and on. + +Barry Whalen, however, was possessed of a kind of fear, and presently +his face became troubled. This punishment was terrible. Byng might +kill the man, and all would be as bad as could be. Stafford came to +him. + +"You had better go in," he said. "We ought to intervene. If you don't, +I will. Listen...." + +It was a strange sound to hear in this heart of civilization. It +belonged to the barbaric places of the earth, where there was no law, +where every pioneer was his own cadi. + +With set face Barry Whalen entered the room. Byng paused for an +instant and looked at him with burning, glazed eyes that scarcely +realized him. + +"Open that door," he said, presently, and Barry Whalen opened the door +which led into the big hall. + +"Open all down to the street," Byng said, and Barry Whalen went +forward quickly. + +Like some wild beast Krool crouched and stumbled and moaned as he ran +down the staircase, through the outer hall, while a servant with +scared face saw Byng rain savage blows upon the hated figure. + +On the pavement outside the house, Krool staggered, stumbled, and fell +down; but he slowly gathered himself up, and turned to the doorway, +where Byng stood panting with the sjambok in his hand. + +"Baas!--Baas!" Krool said with livid face, and then he crept painfully +away along the street wall. + +A policeman crossed the road with a questioning frown and the apparent +purpose of causing trouble, but Barry Whalen whispered in his ear, and +told him to call that evening and he would hear all about +it. Meanwhile a five-pound note in a quick palm was a guarantee of +good faith. + +Presently a half-dozen people began to gather near the door, but the +benevolent policeman moved them on. + +At the top of the staircase Jasmine met her husband. She shivered as +he came up towards her. + +"Will you come to me when you have finished your business?" she said, +and she took the sjambok gently from his hand. + +He scarcely realized her. He was in a dream; but he smiled at her, and +nodded, and passed on to where the others awaited him. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +"THE BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM" + + +Slowly Jasmine returned to her boudoir. Laying the sjambok on the +table among the books in delicate bindings and the bowls of flowers, +she stood and looked at it with confused senses for a long time. At +last a wan smile stole to her lips, but it did not reach her +eyes. They remained absorbed and searching, and were made painfully +sad by the wide, dark lines under them. Her fair skin was fairer than +ever, but it was delicately faded, giving her a look of pensiveness, +while yet there was that in her carriage and at her mouth which +suggested strength and will and new forces at work in her. She carried +her head, weighted by its splendour of golden hair, as an Eastern +woman carries a goulah of water. There was something pathetic yet +self-reliant in the whole figure. The passion slumbering in the eyes, +however, might at any moment burst forth in some wild relinquishment +of control and self-restraint. + +"He did what I should have liked to do," she said aloud. "We are not +so different, after all. He is primitive at bottom, and so am I. He +gets carried away by his emotions, and so do I." + +She took up the whip, examined it, felt its weight, and drew it with a +swift jerk through the air. + +"I did not even shrink when Krool came stumbling down the stairs, with +this cutting his flesh," she said to herself. "Somehow it all seemed +natural and right. What has come to me? Are all my finer senses dead? +Am I just one of the crude human things who lived a million years ago, +and who lives again as crude as those; with only the outer things +changed? Then I wore the skins of wild animals, and now I do the same, +just the same; with what we call more taste perhaps, because we have +ceased to see the beauty in the natural thing." + +She touched the little band of grey fur at the sleeve of her clinging +velvet gown. "Just a little distance away--that is all." + +Suddenly a light flashed up in her eyes, and her face flushed as +though some one had angered her. She seized the whip again. "Yes, I +could have seen him whipped to death before my eyes--the coward, the +abject coward. He did not speak for me; he did not defend me; he did +not deny. He let Ian think--death was too kind to him. How dared he +hurt me so! . . . Death is so easy a way out, but he would not have +taken it. No, no, no, it was not suicide; some one killed him. He +could never have taken his own life--never. He had not the +courage.... No; he died of poison or was strangled. Who did it? Who +did it? Was it Rudyard? Was it. . . ? Oh, it wears me out--thinking, +thinking, thinking!" + +She sat down and buried her face in her hands. "I am doomed--doomed," +she moaned. "I was doomed from the start. It must always have been so, +whatever I did. I would do it again, whatever I did; I know I would do +it again, being what I was. It was in my veins, in my blood from the +start, from the very first days of my life." + +All at once there flashed through her mind again, as on that night so +many centuries ago, when she had slept the last sleep of her life as +it was, Swinburne's lines on Baudelaire: + +"There is no help for these things, none to mend and none to mar; Not +all our songs, oh, friend, can make death clear Or make life +durable...." + +"'There is no help for these things,'" she repeated with a sigh which +seemed to tear her heart in twain. "All gone--all. What is there left +to do? If death could make it better for any one, how easy! But +everything would be known--somehow the world would know, and every one +would suffer more. Not now--no, not now. I must live on, but not +here. I must go away. I must find a place to go where Rudyard will not +come. There is no place so far but it is not far enough. I am +twenty-five, and all is over--all is done for me. I have nothing that +I want to keep, there is nothing that I want to do except to go--to go +and to be alone. Alone, always alone now. It is either that, or be +Jezebel, or--" + +The door opened, and the servant brought a card to her. "His +Excellency, the Moravian ambassador," the footman said. + +"Monsieur Mennaval?" she asked, mechanically, as though scarcely +realizing what he had said. + +"Yes, ma'am, Mr. Mennaval." + +"Please say I am indisposed, and am sorry I cannot receive him +to-day," she said. + +"Very good, ma'am." The footman turned to go, then came back. + +"Shall I tell the maid you want her?" he asked, respectfully. + +"No, why should you?" she asked. + +"I thought you looked a bit queer, ma'am," he responded, hastily. "I +beg your pardon, ma'am." + +She rewarded him with a smile. "Thank you, James, I think I should +like her after all. Ask her to come at once." + +When he had gone she leaned back and shut her eyes. For a moment she +was perfectly motionless, then she sat up again and looked at the card +in her hand. + +"M. Mennaval--M. Mennaval," she said, with a note so cynical that it +betrayed more than her previous emotion, to such a point of despair +her mind had come. + +M. Mennaval had played his part, had done his service, had called out +from her every resource of coquetry and lure; and with wonderful art +she had cajoled him till he had yielded to influence, and Ian had +turned the key in the international lock. M. Mennaval had been used +with great skill to help the man who was now gone from her forever, +whom perhaps she would never see again; and who wanted never to see +her again, never in all time or space. M. Mennaval had played his game +for his own desire, and he had lost; but what had she gained where +M. Mennaval had lost? She had gained that which now Ian despised, +which he would willingly, so far as she was concerned, reject with +contempt.... And yet, and yet, while Ian lived he must still be +grateful to her that, by whatever means, she had helped him to do what +meant so much to England. Yes, he could not wholly dismiss her from +his mind; he must still say, "This she did for me--this thing, in +itself not commendable, she did for me; and I took it for my country." + +Her eyes were open, and her garden had been invaded by those +revolutionaries of life and time, Nemesis, Penalty, Remorse. They +marauded every sacred and secret corner of her mind and soul. They +came with whips to scourge her. Nothing was private to her inner self +now. Everything was arrayed against her. All life doubled backwards on +her, blocking her path. + +M. Mennaval--what did she care for him! Yet here he was at her door +asking payment for the merchandise he had sold to her: his judgment, +his reputation as a diplomatist, his freedom, the respect of the +world--for how could the world respect a man at whom it laughed, a man +who had hoped to be given the key to a secret door in a secret garden! + +As Jasmine sat looking at the card, the footman entered again with a +note. + +"His Excellency's compliments," he said, and withdrew. + +She opened the letter hesitatingly, held it in her hand for a moment +without reading it, then, with an impulsive effort, did so. When she +had finished, she gave a cry of anger and struck her tiny clinched +hand upon her knee. + +The note ran: + +"Chere amie, you have so much indisposition in these days. It is all +too vexing to your friends. The world will be surprised, if you allow +a migraine to come between us. Indeed, it will be shocked. The world +understands always so imperfectly, and I have no gift of +explanation. Of course, I know the war has upset many, but I thought +you could not be upset so easily--no, it cannot be the war; so I must +try and think what it is. If I cannot think by tomorrow at five +o'clock, I will call again to ask you. Perhaps the migraine will be +better. But, if you will that migraine to be far away, it will fly, +and then I shall be near. Is it not so? You will tell me to-morrow at +five, will you not, belle amie? + +"A toi, M. M." + +The words scorched her eyes. They angered her, scourged her. One of +life's Revolutionaries was insolently ravaging the secret place where +her pride dwelt. Pride--what pride had she now? Where was the room for +pride or vanity? . . . And all the time she saw the face of a dead man +down by the river--a face now beneath the sod. It flashed before her +eyes at moments when she least could bear it, to agitate her soul. + +M. Mennaval--how dare he write to her so! "Chere amie" and "A +toi"--how strange the words looked now, how repulsive and strange! It +did not seem possible that once before he had written such words to +her. But never before had these epithets or others been accompanied by +such meaning as his other words conveyed. + +"I will not see him to-morrow. I will not see him ever again, if I can +help it," she said bitterly, and trembling with agitation. "I shall go +where I shall not be found. I will go to-night." + +The door opened. Her maid entered. "You wanted me, madame?" asked the +girl, in some excitement and very pale. + +"Yes, what is the matter? Why so agitated?" Jasmine asked. + +The maid's eyes were on the sjambok. She pointed to it. "It was that, +madame. We are all agitated. It was terrible. One had never seen +anything like that before in one's life, madame--never. It was like +the days--yes, of slavery. It was like the galleys of Toulon in the +old days. It was--" + +"There, don't be so eloquent, Lablanche. What do you know of the +galleys of Toulon or the days of slavery?" + +"Madame, I have heard, I have read, I--" + +"Yes, but did you love Krool so?" + +The girl straightened herself with dramatic indignation. "Madame, that +man, that creature, that toad--!" + +"Then why so exercised? Were you so pained at his punishment? Were all +the household so pained?" + +"Every one hated him, madame," said the girl, with energy. + +"Then let me hear no more of this impudent nonsense," Jasmine said, +with decision. + +"Oh, madame, to speak to me like this!" Tears were ready to do needful +service. + +"Do you wish to remain with me, Lablanche?" + +"Ah, madame, but yes--" + +"Then my head aches, and I don't want you to make it worse.... And, +see, Lablanche, there is that grey walking-suit; also the mauve +dressing-gown, made by Loison; take them, if you can make them fit +you; and be good." + +"Madame, how kind--ah, no one is like you, madame--!" + +"Well, we shall see about that quite soon. Put out at once every gown +of mine for me to see, and have trunks ready to pack immediately; but +only three trunks, not more." + +"Madame is going away?" + +"Do as I say, Lablanche. We go to-night. The grey gown and the mauve +dressing-gown that Loison made, you will look well in them. Quick, +now, please." + +In a flutter Lablanche left the room, her eyes gleaming. + +She had had her mind on the grey suit for some time, but the mauve +dressing-gown as well--it was too good to be true. + +She almost ran into Lady Tynemouth's arms as the door opened. With a +swift apology she sped away, after closing the door upon the visitor. + +Jasmine rose and embraced her friend, and Lady Tynemouth subsided into +a chair with a sigh. + +"My dear Jasmine, you look so frail," she said. "A short time ago I +feared you were going to blossom into too ripe fruit, now you look +almost a little pinched. But it quite becomes you, mignonne--quite. +You have dark lines under your eyes, and that transparency of skin-- +it is quite too fetching. Are you glad to see me?" + +"I would have seen no one to-day, no one, except you or Rudyard." + +"Love and duty," said Lady Tynemouth, laughing, yet acutely alive to +the something so terribly wrong, of which she had spoken to Ian +Stafford. + +"Why is it my duty to see you, Alice?" asked Jasmine, with the dry +glint in her tone which had made her conversation so pleasing to men. + +"You clever girl, how you turn the tables on me," her friend replied, +and then, seeing the sjambok on the table, took it up. "What is this +formidable instrument? Are you flagellating the saints?" + +"Not the saints, Alice." + +"You don't mean to say you are going to scourge yourself?" + +Then they both smiled--and both immediately sighed. Lady Tynemouth's +sympathy was deeply roused for Jasmine, and she meant to try and win +her confidence and to help her in her trouble, if she could; but she +was full of something else at this particular moment, and she was not +completely conscious of the agony before her. + +"Have you been using this sjambok on Mennaval?" she asked with an +attempt at lightness. "I saw him leaving as I came in. He looked +rather dejected--or stormy, I don't quite know which." + +"Does it matter which? I didn't see Mennaval today." + +"Then no wonder he looked dejected and stormy. But what is the history +of this instrument of torture?" she asked, holding up the sjambok +again. + +"Krool." + +"Krool! Jasmine, you surely don't mean to say that you--" + +"Not I--it was Rudyard. Krool was insolent--a half-caste, you know." + +"Krool--why, yes, it was he I saw being helped into a cab by a +policeman just down there in Piccadilly. You don't mean that +Rudyard--" + +She pushed the sjambok away from her. + +"Yes--terribly." + +"Then I suppose the insolence was terrible enough to justify it." + +"Quite, I think." Jasmine's voice was calm. + +"But of course it is not usual--in these parts." + +"Rudyard is not usual in these parts, or Krool either. It was a touch +of the Vaal." + +Lady Tynemouth gave a little shudder. "I hope it won't become +fashionable. We are altogether too sensational nowadays. But, +seriously, Jasmine, you are not well. You must do something. You must +have a change." + +"I am going to do something--to have a change." + +"That's good. Where are you going, dear?" + +"South.... And how are you getting on with your hospital-ship?" + +Lady Tynemouth threw up her hands. "Jasmine, I'm in despair. I had set +my heart upon it. I thought I could do it easily, and I haven't done +it, after trying as hard as can be. Everything has gone wrong, and now +Tynie cables I mustn't go to South Africa. Fancy a husband forbidding +a wife to come to him." + +"Well, perhaps it's better than a husband forbidding his wife to leave +him." + +"Jasmine, I believe you would joke if you were dying." + +"I am dying." + +There was that in the tone of Jasmine's voice which gave her friend a +start. She eyed her suddenly with a great anxiety. + +"And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell +me what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what +Tynemouth says. Of course you will do as you like." + +"Of course; but still Tynie has never 'issued instructions' before, +and if there was any time I ought to humour him it is now. He's so +intense about the war! But I can't explain everything on paper to him, +so I've written to say I'm going to South Africa to explain, and that +I'll come back by the next boat, if my reasons are not convincing." + +In other circumstances Jasmine would have laughed. "He will find you +convincing," she said, meaningly. + +"I said if he found my reasons convincing." + +"You will be the only reason to him." + +"My dear Jasmine, you are really becoming sentimental. Tynie would +blush to discover himself being silly over me. We get on so well +because we left our emotions behind us when we married." + +"Yours, I know, you left on the Zambesi," said Jasmine, deliberately. + +A dull fire came into Lady Tynemouth's eyes, and for an instant there +was danger of Jasmine losing a friend she much needed; but Lady +Tynemouth had a big heart, and she knew that her friend was in a mood +when anything was possible, or everything impossible. + +So she only smiled, and said, easily: "Dearest Jasmine, that umbrella +episode which made me love Ian Stafford for ever and ever without even +amen came after I was married, and so your pin doesn't prick, not a +weeny bit. No, it isn't Tynie that makes me sad. It's the Climbers who +won't pay." + +"The Climbers? You want money for--" + +"Yes, the hospital-ship; and I thought they'd jump at it; but they've +all been jumping in other directions. I asked the Steuvenfeldts, the +Boulters, the Felix Fowles, the Brutons, the Sheltons, and that fellow +Mackerel, who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it and +twenty others; and Mackerel was the only one who would give me +anything at all large. He gave me ten thousand pounds. But I want +fifty--fifty, my beloved. I'm simply broken-hearted. It would do so +much good, and I could manage the thing so well, and I could get other +splendid people to help me to manage it--there's Effie Lyndhall and +Mary Meacham. The Mackerel wanted to come along, too, but I told him +he could come out and fetch us back--that there mustn't be any scandal +while the war was on. I laugh, my dear, but I could cry my eyes out. I +want something to do--I've always wanted something to do. I've always +been sick of an idle life, but I wouldn't do a hundred things I might +have done. This thing I can do, however, and, if I did it, some of my +debt to the world would be paid. It seems to me that these last +fifteen years in England have been awful. We are all restless; we all +have been going, going--nowhere; we have all been doing, +doing--nothing; we have all been thinking, thinking, thinking--of +ourselves. And I've been a playbody like the rest; I've gone with the +Climbers because they could do things for me; I've wanted more and +more of everything--more gadding, more pleasure, more excitement. It's +been like a brass-band playing all the time, my life this past ten +years. I'm sick of it. It's only some big thing that can take me out +of it. I've got to make some great plunge, or in a few years more I'll +be a middle-aged peeress with nothing left but a double chin, a tongue +for gossip, and a string of pearls. There must be a bouleversement of +things as they are, or good-bye to everything except emptiness. Don't +you see, Jasmine, dearest?" + +"Yes yes, I see." Jasmine got up, went to her desk, opened a drawer, +took out a book, and began to write hastily. "Go on," she said as she +wrote; "I can hear what you are saying." + +"But are you really interested?" + +"Even Tynemouth would find you interesting and convincing. Go on." + +"I haven't anything more to say, except that nothing lies between me +and flagellation and the sack cloth,"--she toyed with the +sjambok--"except the Climbers; and they have failed me. They won't +play--or pay." + +Jasmine rose from the desk and came forward with a paper in her +hand. "No, they have not failed you, Alice," she said, gently. "The +Climbers seldom really disappoint you. The thing is, you must know how +to talk to them, to say the right thing, the flattering, the tactful, +and the nice sentimental thing,--they mostly have middle-class +sentimentality--and then you get what you want. As you do +now. There...." + +She placed in her friend's hand a long, narrow slip of paper. Lady +Tynemouth looked astonished, gazed hard at the paper, then sprang to +her feet, pale and agitated. + +"Jasmine--you--this--sixty thousand pounds!" she cried. "A cheque for +sixty thousand pounds--Jasmine!" + +There was a strange brilliance in Jasmine's eyes, a hectic flush on +her cheek. + +"It must not be cashed for forty-eight hours; but after that the money +will be there." + +Lady Tynemouth caught Jasmine's shoulders in her trembling yet strong +fingers, and looked into the wild eyes with searching inquiry and +solicitude. + +"But, Jasmine, it isn't possible. Will Rudyard--can you afford it?" + +"That will not be Rudyard's money which you will get. It will be all +my own." + +"But you yourself are not rich. Sixty thousand pounds--why?" + +"It is because it is a sacrifice to me that I give it; because it is +my own; because it is two-thirds of what I possess. And if all is +needed before we have finished, then all shall go." + +Alice Tynemouth still held the shoulders, still gazed into the eyes +which burned and shone, which seemed to look beyond this room into +some world of the soul or imagination. "Jasmine, you are not crazy, +are you?" she asked, excitedly. "You will not repent of this? It is +not a sudden impulse?" + +"Yes, it is a sudden impulse; it came to me all at once. But when it +came I knew it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I will not +repent of it. Have no fear. It is final. It is sure. It means that, +like you, I have found a rope to drag myself out of this stream which +sweeps me on to the rapids." + +"Jasmine, do you mean that you will--that you are coming, too?" + +"Yes, I am going with you. We will do it together. You shall lead, and +I shall help. I have a gift for organization. My grandfather? he--" + +"All the world knows that. If you have anything of his gift, we shall +not fail. We shall feel that we are doing something for our +country--and, oh, so much for ourselves! And we shall be near our +men. Tynie and Ruddy Byng will be out there, and we shall be ready for +anything if necessary. But Rudyard, will he approve?" She held up the +cheque. + +Jasmine made a passionate gesture. "There are times when we must do +what something in us tells us to do, no matter what the +consequences. I am myself. I am not a slave. If I take my own way in +the pleasures of life, why should I not take it in the duties and the +business of life?" + +Her eyes took on a look of abstraction, and her small hand closed on +the large, capable hand of her friend. "Isn't work the secret of life? +My grandfather used to say it was. Always, always, he used to say to +me, 'Do something, Jasmine. Find a work to do, and do it. Make the +world look at you, not for what you seem to be, but for what you +do. Work cures nearly every illness and nearly every trouble'--that is +what he said. And I must work or go mad. I tell you I must work, +Alice. We will work together out there where great battles will be +fought." + +A sob caught her in the throat, and Alice Tynemouth wrapped her round +with tender arms. "It will do you good, darling," she said, softly." +It will help you through--through it all, whatever it is." + +For an instant Jasmine felt that she must empty out her heart; tell +the inner tale of her struggle; but the instant of weakness passed as +suddenly as it came, and she only said--repeating Alice Tynemouth's +words: "Yes, through it all, through it all, whatever it is." Then she +added: "I want to do something big. I can, I can. I want to get out of +this into the open world. I want to fight. I want to balance things +somehow--inside myself...." + +All at once she became very quiet. "But we must do business like +business people. This money: there must be a small committee of +business men, who--" + +Alice Tynemouth finished the sentence for her. "Who are not Climbers?" + +"Yes. But the whole organization must be done by ourselves--all the +practical, unfinancial work. The committee will only be like careful +trustees." + +There was a new light in Jasmine's eyes. She felt for the moment that +life did not end in a cul de sac. She knew that now she had found a +way for Rudyard and herself to separate without disgrace, without +humiliation to him. She could see a few steps ahead. When she gave +Lablanche instructions to put out her clothes a little while before, +she did not know what she was going to do; but now she knew. She knew +how she could make it easier for Rudyard when the inevitable hour +came,--and it was here--which should see the end of their life +together. He need not now sacrifice himself so much for her sake. + +She wanted to be alone, and, as if divining her thought, Lady +Tynemouth embraced her, and a moment later there was no sound in the +room save the ticking of the clock and the crackle of the fire. + +How silent it was! The world seemed very far away. Peace seemed to +have taken possession of the place, and Jasmine's stillness as she sat +by the fire staring into the embers was a part of it. So lost was she +that she was not conscious of an opening door and of a footstep. She +was roused by a low voice. + +"Jasmine!" + +She did not start. It was as though there had come a call, for which +she had waited long, and she appeared to respond slowly to it, as one +would to a summons to the scaffold. There was no outward agitation +now, there was only a cold stillness which seemed little to belong to +the dainty figure which had ever been more like a decoration than a +living utility in the scheme of things. The crisis had come which she +had dreaded yet invited--that talk which they two must have before +they went their different ways. She had never looked Rudyard in the +eyes direct since the day when Adrian Fellowes died. They had met, but +never quite alone; always with some one present, either the servants +or some other. Now they were face to face. + +On Rudyard's lips was a faint smile, but it lacked the old bonhomie +which was part of his natural equipment; and there were still sharp, +haggard traces of the agitation which had accompanied the expulsion of +Krool. + +For an instant the idea possessed her that she would tell him +everything there was to tell, and face the consequences, no matter +what they might be. It was not in her nature to do things by halves, +and since catastrophe was come, her will was to drink the whole cup to +the dregs. She did not want to spare herself. Behind it all lay +something of that terrible wilfulness which had controlled her life so +far. It was the unlovely soul of a great pride. She did not want to be +forgiven for anything. She did not want to be condoned. There was a +spirit of defiance which refused to accept favours, preferring +punishment to the pity or the pardon which stooped to make it easier +for her. It was a dangerous pride, and in the mood of it she might +throw away everything, with an abandonment and recklessness only known +to such passionate natures. + +The mood came on her all at once as she stood and looked at +Rudyard. She read, or she thought she read in his eyes, in his smile, +the superior spirit condescending to magnanimity, to compassion; and +her whole nature was instantly up in arms. She almost longed on the +instant to strip herself bare, as it were, and let him see her as she +really was, or as, in her despair, she thought she really was. The +mood in which she had talked to Lady Tynemouth was gone, and in its +place a spirit of revolt was at work. A certain sullenness which +Rudyard and no one else had ever seen came into her eyes, and her lips +became white with an ominous determination. She forgot him and all +that he would suffer if she told him the whole truth; and the whole +truth would, in her passion, become far more than the truth: she was +again the egoist, the centre of the universe. What happened to her was +the only thing which mattered in all the world. So it had ever been; +and her beauty and her wit and her youth and the habit of being +spoiled had made it all possible, without those rebuffs and that +confusion which fate provides sooner or later for the egoist. + +"Well," she said, sharply, "say what you wish to say. You have wanted +to say it badly. I am ready." + +He was stunned by what seemed to him the anger and the repugnance in +her tone. + +"You remember you asked me to come, Jasmine, when you took the sjambok +from me." + +He nodded towards the table where it lay, then went forward and picked +it up, his face hardening as he did so. + +Like a pendulum her mood swung back. By accident he had said the one +thing which could have moved her, changed her at the moment. The +savage side of him appealed to her. What he lacked in brilliance and +the lighter gifts of raillery and eloquence and mental give-and-take, +he had balanced by his natural forces--from the power-house, as she +had called it long ago. Pity, solicitude, the forced smile, +magnanimity, she did not want in this black mood. They would have made +her cruelly audacious, and her temper would have known no license; but +now, suddenly, she had a vision of him as he stamped down the +staircase, his coat off, laying the sjambok on the shoulders of the +man who had injured her so, who hated her so, and had done so over all +the years. It appealed to her. + +In her heart of hearts she was sure he had done it directly or +indirectly for her sake; and that was infinitely more to her than that +he should stoop from the heights to pick her up. He was what he was +because Heaven had made him so; and she was what she was because +Heaven had forgotten to make her otherwise; and he could not know or +understand how she came to do things that he would not do. But she +could know and understand why his hand fell on Krool like that of Cain +on Abel. She softened, changed at once. + +"Yes, I remember," she said. "I've been upset. Krool was insolent, and +I ordered him to go. He would not." + +"I've been a fool to keep him all these years. I didn't know what he +was--a traitor, the slimmest of the slim, a real Hottentot-Boer. I was +pigheaded about him, because he seemed to care so much about me. That +counts for much with the most of us." + +"Alice Tynemouth saw a policeman help him into a cab in Piccadilly and +take him away. Will there be trouble?" + +A grim look crossed his face. "I think not," he responded. "There are +reasons. He has been stealing information for years, and sending it to +Kruger, he and--" + +He stopped short, and into his face came a look of sullen reticence. + +"Yes, he and--and some one else? Who else?" Her face was white. She +had a sudden intuition. + +He met her eyes. "Adrian Fellowes--what Fellowes knew, Krool knew, and +one way or another, by one means or another, Fellowes knew a great +deal." + +The knowledge of Adrian Fellowes' treachery and its full significance +had hardly come home to him, even when he punished Krool, so shaken +was he by the fact that the half-caste had been false to +him. Afterwards, however, as the Partners all talked together +up-stairs, the enormity of the dead man's crime had fastened on him, +and his brain had been stunned by the terrible thought that directly +or indirectly Jasmine had abetted the crime. Things he had talked over +with her, and with no one else, had got to Kruger's knowledge, as the +information from South Africa showed. She had at least been +indiscreet, had talked to Fellowes with some freedom or he could not +have known what he did. But directly, knowingly abetted Fellowes? Of +course, she had not done that; but her foolish confidences had abetted +treachery, had wronged him, had helped to destroy his plans, had +injured England. + +He had savagely punished Krool for insolence to her and for his +treachery, but a new feeling had grown up in him in the last +half-hour. Under the open taunts of his colleagues, a deep resentment +had taken possession of him that his work, so hard to do, so important +and critical, should have been circumvented by the indiscretions of +his wife. + +Upon her now this announcement came with crushing force. Adrian +Fellowes had gained from her--she knew it all too well now--that which +had injured her husband; from which, at any rate, he ought to have +been immune. Her face flushed with a resentment far greater than that +of Rudyard's, and it was heightened by a humiliation which overwhelmed +her. She had been but a tool in every sense, she, Jasmine Byng, one +who ruled, had been used like a--she could not form the comparison in +her mind--by a dependent, a hanger-on of her husband's bounty; and it +was through her, originally, that he had been given a real chance in +life by Rudyard. + +"I am sorry," she said, calmly, as soon as she could get her voice. +"I was the means of your employing him." + +"That did not matter," he said, rather nervously. "There was no harm +in that, unless you knew his character before he came to me." + +"You think I did?" + +"I cannot think so. It would have been too ruthless--too wicked." + +She saw his suffering, and it touched her. "Of course I did not know +that he could do such a thing--so shameless. He was a low coward. He +did not deserve decent burial," she added. "He had good fortune to die +as he did." + +"How did he die?" Rudyard asked her, with a face so unlike what it had +always been, so changed by agitation, that it scarcely seemed his. His +eyes were fixed on hers. + +She met them resolutely. Did he ask her in order to see if she had any +suspicion of himself? Had he done it? If he had, there would be some +mitigation of her suffering. Or was it Ian Stafford who had done it? +One or the other--but which? + +"He died without being made to suffer," she said. "Most people who do +wrong have to suffer." + +"But they live on," he said, bitterly. + +"That is no great advantage unless you want to live," she replied. "Do +you know how he died?" she added, after a moment, with sharp scrutiny. + +He shook his head and returned her scrutiny with added poignancy. "It +does not matter. He ceases to do any more harm. He did enough." + +"Yes, quite enough," she said, with a withered look, and going over to +her writing-table, stood looking at him questioningly. He did not +speak again, however. + +Presently she said, very quietly, "I am going away." + +"I do not understand." + +"I am going to work." + +"I understand still less." + +She took from the writing-table her cheque-book, and handed it to +him. He looked at it, and read the counterfoil of the cheque she had +given to Alice Tynemouth. + +He was bewildered. "What does this mean?" he asked. + +"It is for a hospital-ship." + +"Sixty thousand pounds! Why, it is nearly all you have." + +"It is two-thirds of what I have." + +"Why--in God's name, why?" + +"To buy my freedom," she answered, bitterly. + +"From what?" + +"From you." + +He staggered back and leaned heavily against a bookcase. + +"Freedom from me!" he exclaimed, hoarsely. + +He had had terribly bitter and revengeful feelings during the last +hour, but all at once his real self emerged, the thing that was +deepest in him. "Freedom from me? Has it come to that?" + +"Yes, absolutely. Do you remember the day you first said to me that +something was wrong with it all,--the day that Ian Stafford dined +after his return from abroad? Well, it has been all wrong--cruelly +wrong. We haven't made the best of things together, when everything +was with us to do so. I have spoiled it all. It hasn't been what you +expected." + +"Nor what you expected?" he asked, sharply. + +"Nor what I expected; but you are not to blame for that." + +Suddenly all he had ever felt for her swept through his being, and +sullenness fled away. "You have ceased to love me, then.... See, that +is the one thing that matters, Jasmine. All else disappears beside +that. Do you love me? Do you love me still? Do you love me, Jasmine? +Answer that." + +He looked like the ghost of his old dead self, pleading to be +recognized. + +His misery oppressed her. "What does one know of one's self in the +midst of all this--of everything that has nothing to do with love?" +she asked. + +What she might have said in the dark mood which was coming on her +again it is hard to say, but from beneath the window of the room which +looked on Park Lane, there came the voice of a street-minstrel, +singing to a travelling piano, played by sympathetic fingers, the +song: + +"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers +around her are sighing--" + +The simple pathos of the song had nothing to do with her own +experience or her own case, but the flood of it swept through her +veins like tears. She sank into a chair and listened for a moment with +eyes shining, then she sprang up in an agitation which made her +tremble and her face go white. + +"No, no, no, Rudyard, I do not love you," she said, swiftly. "And +because I do not love you, I will not stay. I never loved you, never +truly loved you at any time. I never knew myself--that is all that I +can say. I never was awake till now. I never was wholly awake till I +saw you driving Krool into the street with the sjambok." + +She flung up her hands. "For God's sake, let me be truthful at last. I +don't want to hurt you--I have hurt you enough, but I do not love you; +and I must go. I am going with Alice Tynemouth. We are going together +to do something. Maybe I shall learn what will make life possible." + +He reached out his arms towards her with a sudden tenderness. + +"No, no, no, do not touch me," she cried. "Do not come near me. I must +be alone now, and from now on and on.... You do not understand, but I +must be alone. I must work it out alone, whatever it is." + +She got up with a quick energy, and went over to the writing-table +again. "It may take every penny I have got, but I shall do it, because +it is the thing I feel I must do." + +"You have millions, Jasmine," he said, in a low, appealing voice. + +She looked at him almost fiercely again. "No, I have what is my own, +my very own, and no more," she responded, bitterly. "You will do your +work, and I will do mine. You will stay here. There will be no +scandal, because I shall be going with Alice Tynemouth, and the world +will not misunderstand." + +"There will be no scandal, because I am going, too," he said, firmly. + +"No, no, you cannot, must not, go," she urged. + +"I am going to South Africa in two days," he replied. "Stafford was +going with me, but he cannot go for a week or so. He will help you, I +am sure, with forming your committee and arranging, if you will insist +on doing this thing. He is still up-stairs there with the rest of +them. I will get him down now, I--" + +"Ian Stafford is here--in this house?" she asked, with staring +eyes. What inconceivable irony it all was! She could have shrieked +with that laughter which is more painful far than tears. + +"Yes, he is up-stairs. I made him come and help us--he knows the +international game. He will help you, too. He is a good friend--you +will know how good some day." + +She went white and leaned against the table. + +"No, I shall not need him," she said. "We have formed our committee." + +"But when I am gone, he can advise you, he can--" + +"Oh--oh!" she murmured, and swayed forward, fainting. + +He caught her and lowered her gently into a chair. + +"You are only mad," he whispered to ears which heard not as he bent +over her. "You will be sane some day." + + + + + +BOOK IV + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +THE MENACE OF THE MOUNTAIN + + +Far away, sharply cutting the ether, rise the great sterile peaks and +ridges. Here a stark, bare wall like a prison which shuts in a city of +men forbidden the blithe world of sun and song and freedom; yonder, a +giant of a lost world stretched out in stony ease, sleeping on, while +over his grey quiet, generations of men pass. First came savage, +warring, brown races alien to each other; then following, white races +with faces tanned and burnt by the sun, and smothered in unkempt beard +and hair--men restless and coarse and brave, and with ancient sins +upon them; but with the Bible in their hands and the language of the +prophets on their lips; with iron will, with hatred as deep as their +race-love is strong; they with their cattle and their herds, and the +clacking wagons carrying homes and fortunes, whose women were +housewives and warriors too. Coming after these, men of fairer aspect, +adventurous, self-willed, intent to make cities in the wilderness; to +win open spaces for their kinsmen, who had no room to swing the hammer +in the workshops of their far-off northern island homes; or who, +having room, stood helpless before the furnaces where the fires had +left only the ashes of past energies. + +Up there, these mountains which, like Marathon, look on the sea. But +lower the gaze from the austere hills, slowly to the plains +below. First the grey of the mountains, turning to brown, then the +bare bronze rock giving way to a tumbled wilderness of boulders, where +lizards lie in the sun, where the meerkat startles the gazelle. Then +the bronze merging into a green so deep and strong that it resembles a +blanket spread upon the uplands, but broken by kopjes, shelterless and +lonely, rising here and there like watch-towers. After that, below and +still below, the flat and staring plain, through which runs an ugly +rift turning and twisting like a snake, and moving on and on, till +lost in the arc of other hills away to the east and the south: a river +in the waste, but still only a muddy current stealing between banks +baked and sterile, a sinister stream, giving life to the veld, as some +gloomy giver of good gifts would pay a debt of atonement. + +On certain Dark Days of 1899-1900, if you had watched these turgid +waters flow by, your eyes would have seen tinges of red like blood; +and following the stain of red, gashed lifeless things, which had been +torn from the ranks of sentient beings. + +Whereupon, lifting your eyes from the river, you would have seen the +answer to your question--masses of men mounted and unmounted, who +moved, or halted, or stood like an animal with a thousand legs +controlled by one mind. Or again you would have observed those myriad +masses plunging across the veld, still in cohering masses, which shook +and broke and scattered, regathering again, as though drawn by a +magnet, but leaving stark remnants in their wake. + +Great columns of troops which had crossed the river and pushed on into +a zone of fierce fire, turn and struggle back again across the stream; +other thousands of men, who had not crossed, succour their wounded, +and retreat steadily, bitterly to places of safety, the victims of +blunders from which come the bloody punishment of valour. + +Beyond the grey mountains were British men and women waiting for +succour from forces which poured death in upon them from the +malevolent kopjes, for relief from the ravages of disease and +hunger. They waited in a straggling town of the open plain circled by +threatening hills, where the threat became a blow, and the blow was +multiplied a million times. Gaunt, fighting men sought to appease the +craving of starvation by the boiled carcasses of old horses; in caves +and dug-outs, feeble women, with undying courage, kept alive the +flickering fires of life in their children; and they smiled to cheer +the tireless, emaciated warriors who went out to meet death, or with a +superior yet careful courage stayed to receive or escape it. + +When night came, across the hills and far away in the deep blue, white +shaking streams of light poured upward, telling the besieged forces +over there at Lordkop that rescue would come, that it was moving on to +the mountain. How many times had this light in the sky flashed the +same grave pledge in the mystic code of the heliograph, "We are +gaining ground--we will reach you soon." How many times, however, had +the message also been, "Not yet--but soon." + +Men died in this great camp from wounds and from fever, and others +went mad almost from sheer despair; yet whenever the Master Player +called, they sprang to their places with a new-born belief that he who +had been so successful in so many long-past battles would be right in +the end with his old rightness, though he had been wrong so often on +the Dreitval. + +Others there were who were sick of the world and wished "to be well +out of it"--as they said to themselves. Some had been cruelly injured, +and desire of life was dead in them; others had given injury, and +remorse had slain peace. Others still there were who, having done evil +all their lives, knew that they could not retrace their steps, and yet +shrank from a continuance of the old bad things. + +Some indeed, in the red futile sacrifice, had found what they came to +find; but some still were left whose recklessness did not +avail. Comrades fell beside them, but, unscathed, they went on +fighting. Injured men were carried in hundreds to the hospitals, but +no wounds brought them low. Bullets were sprayed around them, but none +did its work for them. Shells burst near, yet no savage shard +mutilated their bodies. + +Of these was Ian Stafford. + +Three times he had been in the fore-front of the fight where Death +came sweeping down the veld like rain, but It passed him by. Horses +and men fell round his guns, yet he remained uninjured. + +He was patient. If Death would not hasten to meet him, he would +wait. Meanwhile, he would work while he could, but with no thought +beyond the day, no vision of the morrow. + +He was one of the machines of war. He was close to his General, he was +the beloved of his men, still he was the man with no future; though he +studied the campaign with that thoroughness which had marked his last +years in diplomacy. + +He was much among his own wounded, much with others who were comforted +by his solicitude, by the courage of his eye, and the grasp of his +firm, friendly hand. It was at what the soldiers called the Stay +Awhile Hospital that he came in living touch again with the life he +had left behind. + +He knew that Rudyard Byng had come to South Africa; but he knew no +more. He knew that Jasmine had, with Lady Tynemouth, purchased a ship +and turned it into a hospital at a day's notice; but as to whether +these two had really come to South Africa, and harboured at the Cape, +or Durban, he had no knowledge. He never looked at the English +newspapers which arrived at Dreitval River. He was done with that old +world in which he once worked; he was concerned only for this narrow +field where an Empire's fate was being solved. + +Night, the dearest friend of the soldier, had settled on the veld. A +thousand fires were burning, and there were no sounds save the +murmuring voices of myriads of men, and the stamp of hoofs where the +Cavalry and Mounted Infantry horses were picketed. Food and fire, the +priceless comfort of a blanket on the ground, and a saddle or kit for +a pillow gave men compensation for all the hardships and dangers of +the day; and they gave little thought to the morrow. + +The soldier lives in the present. His rifle, his horse, his boots, his +blanket, the commissariat, a dry bit of ground to sleep on--these are +the things which occupy his mind. His heroism is incidental, the +commonplace impulse of the moment. He does things because they are +there to do, not because some great passion, some exaltation, seizes +him. His is the real simple life. So it suddenly seemed to Stafford as +he left his tent, after he had himself inspected every man and every +horse in his battery that lived through the day of death, and made his +way towards the Stay Awhile Hospital. + +"This is the true thing," he said to himself as he gazed at the wide +camp. He turned his face here and there in the starlight, and saw +human life that but now was moving in the crash of great guns, the +shrieking of men terribly wounded, the agony of mutilated horses, the +bursting of shells, the hissing scream of the pom-pom, and the +discordant cries of men fighting an impossible fight. + +"There is no pretense here," he reflected. "It is life reduced down to +the bare elements. There is no room for the superficial thing. It's +all business. It's all stark human nature." + +At that moment his eye caught one of those white messages of the sky +flashing the old bitter promise, "We shall reach you soon." He forgot +himself, and a great spirit welled up in him. + +"Soon!" The light in the sky shot its message over the hills. + +That was it--the present, not the past. Here was work, the one thing +left to do. + +"And it has to be done," he said aloud, as he walked on swiftly, a +spring to his footstep. Presently he mounted and rode away across the +veld. Buried in his thoughts, he was only subconsciously aware of what +he saw until, after near an hour's riding, he pulled rein at the door +of the Stay Awhile Hospital, which was some miles in the rear of the +main force. + +As he entered, a woman in a nurse's garb passed him swiftly. He +scarcely looked at her; he was only conscious that she was in great +haste. Her eyes seemed looking at some inner, hidden thing, and, +though they glanced at him, appeared not to see him or to realize more +than that some one was passing. But suddenly, to both, after they had +passed, there came an arrest of attention. There was a consciousness, +which had nothing to do with the sight of the eyes, that a familiar +presence had gone by. Each turned quickly, and their eyes came back +from regarding the things of the imagination, and saw each other face +to face. The nurse gave an exclamation of pleasure and ran forward. + +Stafford held out a hand. It seemed to him, as he did it, that it +stretched across a great black gulf and found another hand in the +darkness beyond. + +"Al'mah!" he said, in a voice of protest as of companionship. + +Of all those he had left behind, this was the one being whom to meet +was not disturbing. He wished to encounter no one of that inner circle +of his tragic friendship; but he realized that Al'mah had had her +tragedy too, and that her suffering could not be less than his +own. The same dark factor had shadowed the lives of both. Adrian +Fellowes had injured them both through the same woman, had shaken, if +not shattered, the fabric of their lives. However much they two were +blameworthy, they had been sincere, they had been honourable in their +dishonour, they had been "falsely true." They were derelicts of life, +with the comradeship of despair as a link between them. + +"Al'mah," he said again, gently. Then, with a bitter humour, he added, +"You here--I thought you were a prima donna!" + +The flicker of a smile crossed her odd, fine, strong face. "This is +grand opera," she said. "It is the Nibelungen Ring of England." + +"To end in the Twilight of the Gods?" he rejoined with a hopeless kind +of smile. + +They turned to the outer door of the hospital and stepped into the +night. For a moment they stood looking at the great camp far away to +right and left, and to the lone mountains yonder, where the Boer +commandoes held the passes and trained their merciless armament upon +all approaches. Then he said at last: "Why have you come here? You had +your work in England." + +"What is my work?" she asked. + +"To heal the wounded," he answered. + +"I am trying to do that," she replied. + +"You are trying to heal bodies, but it is a bigger, greater thing to +heal the wounded mind." + +"I am trying to do that too. It is harder than the other." + +"Whose minds are you trying to heal?" he questioned, gently. + +"'Physician heal thyself' was the old command, wasn't it? But that is +harder still." + +"Must one always be a saint to do a saintly thing?" he asked. + +"I am not clever," she replied, "and I can't make phrases. But must +one always be a sinner to do a wicked thing? Can't a saint do a wicked +thing, and a sinner do a good thing without being called the one or +the other?" + +"I don't think you need apologize for not being able to make +phrases. I suppose you'd say there is neither absolute saintliness nor +absolute wickedness, but that life is helplessly composite of both, +and that black really may be white. You know the old phrase, 'Killing +no murder.'" + +She seemed to stiffen, and her lips set tightly for a minute; then, as +though by a great effort, she laughed bitterly. + +"Murder isn't always killing," she replied. "Don't you remember the +protest in Macbeth, 'Time was, when the brains were out the man would +die'?" Then, with a little quick gesture towards the camp, she added, +"When you think of to-day, doesn't it seem that the brains are out, +and yet that the man still lives? I'm not a soldier, and this awful +slaughter may be the most wonderful tactics, but it's all beyond my +little mind." + +"Your littleness is not original enough to attract notice," he replied +with kindly irony. "There is almost an epidemic of it. Let us hope we +shall have an antidote soon." + +There was a sudden cry from inside the hospital. Al'mah shut her eyes +for a moment, clinched her fingers, and became very pale; then she +recovered herself, and turned her face towards the door, as though +waiting for some one to come out. + +"What is the matter?" he asked. "Some bad case?" + +"Yes--very bad," she replied. + +"One you've been attending?" + +"Yes." + +"What arm--the artillery?" he asked with sudden interest. + +"Yes, the artillery." + +He turned towards the door of the hospital again. "One of my men? What +battery? Do you know?" + +"Not yours--Schiller's." + +"Schiller's! A Boer?" + +She nodded. "A Boer spy, caught by Boer bullets as he was going back." + +"When was that?" + +"This morning early." + +"The little business at Wortmann's Drift?" + +She nodded. "Yes, there." + +"I don't quite understand. Was he in our lines--a Boer spy?" + +"Yes. But he wore British uniform, he spoke English. He was an +Englishman once." + +Suddenly she came up close to him, and looked into his face +steadily. "I will tell you all," she said scarce above a whisper. "He +came to spy, but he came also to see his wife. She had written to ask +him not to join the Boers, as he said he meant to do; or, if he had, +to leave them and join his own people. He came, but not to join his +fellow-countrymen. He came to get money from his wife; and he came to +spy." + +An illuminating thought shot into Stafford's mind. He remembered +something that Byng once told him. + +"His wife is a nurse?" he asked in a low tone. + +"She is a nurse." + +"She knew, then, that he was a spy?" he asked. + +"Yes, she knew. I suppose she ought to be tried by court-martial. She +did not expose him. She gave him a chance to escape. But he was shot +as he tried to reach the Boer lines." + +"And was brought back here to his wife--to you! Did he let them"--he +nodded towards the hospital--"know he was your husband?" + +When she spoke again her voice showed strain, but it did not +tremble. "Of course. He would not spare me. He never did. It was +always like that." + +He caught her hand in his. "You have courage enough for a hundred," he +said. + +"I have suffered enough for a hundred," she responded. + +Again that sharp cry rang out, and again she turned anxiously towards +the door. + +"I came to South Africa on the chance of helping him in some way," she +replied. "It came to me that he might need me." + +"You paid the price of his life once to Kruger--after the Raid, I've +heard," he said. + +"Yes, I owed him that, and as much more as was possible," she +responded with a dark, pained look. + +"His life is in danger--an operation?" he questioned. + +"Yes. There is one chance; but they could not give him an anaesthetic, +and they would not let me stay with him. They forced me away--out +here." She appeared to listen again. "That was his voice--that +crying," she added presently. + +"Wouldn't it be better he should go? If he recovers there would only +be--" + +"Oh yes, to be tried as a spy--a renegade Englishman! But he would +rather live in spite of that, if it was only for an hour." + +"To love life so much as that--a spy!" Stafford reflected. + +"Not so much love of life as fear of--" She stopped short. + +"To fear--silence and peace!" he remarked darkly, with a shrug of his +shoulders. Then he added: "Tell me, if he does not die, and if--if he +is pardoned by any chance, do you mean to live with him again?" + +A bitter laugh broke from her. "How do I know? What does any woman +know what she will do until the situation is before her! She may mean +to do one thing and do the complete opposite. She may mean to hate, +and will end by loving. She may mean to kiss and will end by +killing. She may kiss and kill too all in one moment, and still not be +inconsistent. She would have the logic of a woman. How do I know what +I would do--what I will do!" + +The door of the hospital opened. A surgeon came out, and seeing +Al'mah, moved towards the two. Stafford went forward hurriedly, but +Al'mah stood like one transfixed. There was a whispered word, and then +Stafford came back to her. + +"You will not need to do anything," he said. + +"He is gone--like that!" she whispered in an awed voice. "Death, +death--so many die!" She shuddered. + +Stafford passed her arm through his, and drew her towards the door of +the hospital. + +A half-hour later Stafford emerged again from the hospital, his head +bent in thought. He rode slowly back to his battery, unconscious of +the stir of life round him, of the shimmering white messages to the +besieged town beyond the hills. He was thinking of the tragedy of the +woman he had left tearless and composed beside the bedside of the man +who had so vilely used her. He was reflecting how her life, and his +own, and the lives of at least three others, were so tangled together +that what twisted the existence of one disturbed all. In one sense the +woman he had just left in the hospital was nothing to him, and yet now +she seemed to be the only living person to whom he was drawn. + +He remembered the story he had once heard in Vienna of a man and a +woman who both had suffered betrayal, who both had no longer a single +illusion left, who had no love for each other at all, in whom indeed +love was dead--a mangled murdered thing; and yet who went away to +Corfu together, and there at length found a pathway out of despair in +the depths of the sea. Between these two there had never been even the +faint shadow of romance or passion; but in the terrible mystery of +pain and humiliation, they had drawn together to help each other, +through a breach of all social law, in pity of each other. He +apprehended the real meaning of the story when Vienna was alive with +it, but he understood far, far better now. + +A pity as deep as any feeling he had ever known had come to him as he +stood with Al'mah beside the bed of her dead renegade man; and it +seemed to him that they two also might well bury themselves in the +desert together, and minister to each other's despair. It was only the +swift thought of a moment, which faded even as it saw the light; but +it had its origin in that last flickering sense of human companionship +which dies in the atmosphere of despair. "Every man must live his dark +hours alone," a broken-down actor once said to Stafford as he tried to +cheer him when the last thing he cared for had been taken from +him--his old, faded, misshapen wife; when no faces sent warm glances +to him across the garish lights. "It is no use," this Roscius had +said, "every man must live his dark hours alone." + +That very evening, after the battle of the Dreitval, Jigger, +Stafford's trumpeter, had said a thing to him which had struck a chord +that rang in empty chambers of his being. He had found Jigger sitting +disconsolate beside a gun, which was yet grimy and piteous with the +blood of men who had served it, and he asked the lad what his trouble +was. + +In reply Jigger had said, "When it 'it 'm 'e curled up like a bit o' +shaving. An' when I done what I could 'e says, 'It's a speshul for one +now, an' it's lonely goin',' 'e says. When I give 'im a drink 'e says, +'It 'd do me more good later, little 'un'; an' 'e never said no more +except, 'One at a time is the order--only one.'" + +Not even his supper had lifted the cloud from Jigger's face, and +Stafford had left the lad trying to compose a letter to the mother of +the dead man, who had been an especial favourite with the trumpeter +from the slums. + +Stafford was roused from his reflections by the grinding, rumbling +sound of a train. He turned his face towards the railway line. + +"A troop-train--more food for the dragons," he said to himself. He +could not see the train itself, but he could see the head-light of the +locomotive, and he could hear its travail as it climbed slowly the +last incline to the camp. + +"Who comes there!" he said aloud, and in his mind there swept a +premonition that the old life was finding him out, that its invisible +forces were converging upon him. But did it matter? He knew in his +soul that he was now doing the right thing, that he had come out in +the open where all the archers of penalty had a fair target for their +arrows. He wished to be "Free among the dead that are wounded and that +lie in the grave and are out of remembrance;" but he would do no more +to make it so than tens of thousands of other men were doing on these +battle-fields. + +"Who comes there!" he said again, his eyes upon the white, round light +in the distance, and he stood still to try and make out the black, +winding, groaning thing. + +Presently he heard quick footsteps. + +A small, alert figure stopped short, a small, abrupt hand +saluted. "The General Commanding 'as sent for you, sir." + +It was trumpeter Jigger of the Artillery. + +"Are you the General's orderly, then?" asked Stafford quizzically. + +"The orderly's gone w'ere 'e thought 'e'd find you, and I've come +w'ere I know'd you'd be, sir." + +"Where did he think he'd find me?" + +"Wiv the 'osses, sir." + +A look of gratification crossed Stafford's face. He was well known in +the army as one who looked after his horses and his men. "And what +made you think I was at the hospital, Jigger?" + +"Becos you'd been to the 'osses, sir." + +"Did you tell the General's orderly that?" + +"No, your gryce--no, sir," he added quickly, and a flush of +self-reproach came to his face, for he prided himself on being a real +disciplinarian, a disciple of the correct thing. "I thought I'd like +'im to see our 'osses, an' 'ow you done 'em, an' I'd find you as quick +as 'e could, wiv a bit to the good p'r'aps." + +Stafford smiled. "Off you go, then. Find that orderly. Say, Colonel +Stafford's compliments to the General Commanding and he will report +himself at once. See that you get it straight, trumpeter." + +Jigger would rather die than not get it straight, and his salute made +that quite plain. + +"It's made a man of him, anyhow," Stafford said to himself, as he +watched the swiftly disappearing figure. "He's as straight as a nail, +body and mind--poor little devil.... How far away it all seems!" + +A quarter of an hour later he was standing beside the troop-train +which he had seen labouring to its goal. It was carrying the old +regiment of the General Officer Commanding, who had sent Stafford to +its Colonel with an important message. As the two officers stood +together watching the troops detrain and make order out of the chaos +of baggage and equipment, Stafford's attention was drawn to a woman +some little distance away, giving directions about her impedimenta. + +"Who is the lady?" he asked, while in his mind was a sensible stir of +recognition. + +"Ah, there's something like the real thing!" his companion replied. +"She is doing a capital bit of work. She and Lady Tynemouth have got a +hospital-ship down at Durban. She's come to link it up better with the +camp. It's Rudyard Byng's wife. They're both at it out here." + +"Who comes there!" Stafford had exclaimed a moment before with a sense +of premonition. + +Jasmine had come. + +He drew back in the shadow as she turned round towards them. + +"To the Stay Awhile--right!" he heard a private say in response to her +directions. + +He saw her face, but not clearly. He had glimpse of a Jasmine not so +daintily pretty as of old, not so much of a dresden-china shepherdess; +but with the face of a woman who, watching the world with +understanding eyes, and living with an understanding heart, had taken +on something of the mysterious depths of the Life behind life. It was +only a glimpse he had, but it was enough. It was more than enough. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked his fellow-officer. + +"He's been up there with Tain's Brigade for a fortnight. He was in +Kimberley, but got out before the investment, went to Cape Town, and +came round here--to be near his wife, I suppose." + +"He is soldiering, then?" + +"He was a Colonel in the Rand Rifles once. He's with the South African +Horse now in command of the regiment attached to Tain. Tain's out of +your beat--away on the right flank there." + +Presently Stafford saw Jasmine look in their direction; then, on +seeing Stafford's companion, came forward hastily. The Colonel left +Stafford and went to meet her. + +A moment afterwards, she turned and looked at Stafford. Her face was +now deadly pale, but it showed no agitation. She was in the light of +an electric lamp, and he was in the shadow. For one second only she +gazed at him, then she turned and moved away to the cape-cart awaiting +her. The Colonel saw her in, then returned to Stafford. + +"Why didn't you come and be introduced?" the Colonel asked. "I told +her who you were." + +"Hospital-ships are not in my line," Stafford answered +casually. "Women and war don't go together." + +"She's a nurse, she's not a woman," was the paradoxical reply. + +"She knows Byng is here?" + +"I suppose so. It looks like a clever bit of strategy--junction of +forces. There's a lot of women at home would like the chance she +has--at a little less cost." + +"What is the cost?" + +"Well, that ship didn't cost less than a hundred thousand pounds." + +"Is that all?" + +The Colonel looked at Stafford in surprise: but Stafford was not +thinking of the coin. + + + +CHAPTER XXX + +"AND NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET!" + + +As the cape-cart conveying Jasmine to the hospital moved away from the +station, she settled down into the seat beside the driver with the +helplessness of one who had received a numbing blow. Her body swayed +as though she would faint, and her eyes closed, and stayed closed for +so long a time, that Corporal Shorter, who drove the rough little pair +of Argentines, said to her sympathetically: + +"It's all right, ma'am. We'll be there in a jiffy. Don't give way." + +This friendly solicitude had immediate effect. Jasmine sat up, and +thereafter held herself as though she was in her yellow salon yonder +in London. + +"Thank you," she replied serenely to Corporal Shorter. "It was a long, +tiring journey, and I let myself go for a moment." + +"A good night's rest'll do you a lot of good, ma'am," he +ventured. Then he added, "Beggin' pardon, ain't you Mrs. Colonel +Rudyard Byng?" + +She turned and looked at the man inquiringly. "Yes, I am Mrs. Byng." + +"Thank you, ma'am. Now how did I know? Why," he chuckled, "I saw a big +B on your hand-bag, and I knew you was from the hospital-ship--they +told me that at the Stay Awhile; and the rest was easy, ma'am. I had a +mate along o' your barge. He was one of them the Boers got at Talana +Hill. They chipped his head-piece nicely--just like the 4.7's flay the +kopjes up there. My mate's been writing to me about you. We're a long +way from home, Joey and me, and a bit o' kindness is a bit of all +right to us." + +"Where is your home?" Jasmine asked, her fatigue and oppression +lifting. + +He chuckled as though it were a joke, while he answered: "Australia +onct and first. My mate, Joey Clynes, him that's on your ship, we was +both born up beyond Bendigo. When we cut loose from the paternal +leash, so to speak, we had a bit of boundary-riding, rabbit-killing, +shearing and sun-downing--all no good, year by year. Then we had a bit +o' luck and found a mob of warrigals--horses run wild, you know. We +stalked 'em for days in the droughttime to a water-course, and got +'em, and coaxed 'em along till the floods come; then we sold 'em, and +with the hard tin shipped for to see the world. So it was as of +old. And by and by we found ourselves down here, same as all the rest, +puttin' in a bit o' time for the Flag." + +Jasmine turned on him one of those smiles which had made her so many +friends in the past--a smile none the less alluring because it had +lost that erstime flavour of artifice and lure which, however hidden, +had been part of its power. Now it was accompanied by no slight +drooping of the eyelids. It brightened a look which was direct and +natural. + +"It's a good thing to have lived in the wide distant spaces of the +world," she responded. "A man couldn't easily be mean or small where +life is so simple and so large." + +His face flushed with pleasure. She was so easy to get on with, he +said to himself; and she certainly had a wonderfully kind smile. But +he felt too that she needed greater wisdom, and he was ready to give +it--a friendly characteristic of the big open spaces "where life is so +simple and so large." + +"Well, that might be so 'long o' some continents," he remarked, "but +it wasn't so where Joey Clynes and me was nourished, so to speak. I +tripped up on a good many mean things from Bendigo to Thargomindah and +back around. The back-blocks has its tricks as well as the towns, as +you would see if you come across a stock-rider with a cheque to be +broke in his hand. I've seen six months' wages go bung in a day with a +stock-rider on the gentle jupe. But again, peradventure, I've seen a +man that had lost ten thousand sheep tramp fifty miles in a blazing +sun with a basket of lambs on his back, savin' them two switherin' +little papillions worth nothin' at all, at the risk of his own +life--just as mates have done here on this salamanderin' veld; same as +Colonel Byng did to-day along o' Wortmann's Drift." + +Jasmine had been trying to ask a question concerning her husband ever +since the man had mentioned his name, and had not been able to do +so. She had never spoken of him directly to any one since she had left +England; had never heard from him; had written him no word; was, so +far as the outer acts of life were concerned, as distant from him as +Corporal Shorter was from his native Bendigo. She had been busy as she +had never before been in her life, in a big, comprehensive, useful +way. It had seemed to her in England, as she carried through the +negotiations for the Valoria, fitted it out for the service it was to +render, directed its administration over the heads of the committee +appointed, for form's sake, to assist Lady Tynemouth and herself, that +the spirit of her grandfather was over her, watching her, inspiring +her. This had become almost an obsession with her. Her grandfather had +had belief in her, delight in her; and now the innumerable talks she +had had with him, as to the way he had done things, gave her +confidence and a key to what she had to do. It was the first real +work; for what she did for Ian Stafford in diplomacy was only playing +upon the weakness of human nature with a skilled intelligence, with an +instinctive knowledge of men and a capacity for managing them. The +first real pride she had ever felt soothed her angry soul. + +Her grandfather had been more in her mind than any one else--than +either Rudyard or Ian Stafford. Towards both of these her mind had +slowly and almost unconsciously changed, and she wished to think about +neither. There had been a revolution in her nature, and all her tragic +experience, her emotions, and her faculties, had been shaken into a +crucible where the fire of pain and revolt burned on and on and +on. From the crucible there had come as yet no precipitation of life's +elements, and she scarcely knew what was in her heart. She tried to +smother every thought concerning the past. She did not seek to find +her bearings, or to realize in what country of the senses and the +emotions she was travelling. + +One thing was present, however, at times, and when it rushed over her +in its fulness, it shook her as the wind shakes the leaf on a tree--a +sense of indignation, of anger, or resentment. Against whom? Against +all. Against Rudyard, against Ian Stafford; but most of all, a +thousand times most against a dead man, who had been swept out of +life, leaving behind a memory which could sting murderously. + +Now, when she heard of Rudyard's bravery at Wortmann's Drift, a +curious thrill of excitement ran through her veins, or it would be +truer to say that a sensation new and strange vibrated in her +blood. She had heard many tales of valour in this war, and more than +one hero of the Victoria Cross had been in her charge at Durban; but +as a child's heart might beat faster at the first words of a wonderful +story, so she felt a faint suffocation in the throat and her brooding +eyes took on a brighter, a more objective look, as she heard the tale +of Wortmann's Drift. + +"Tell me about it," she said, yet turned her head away from her eager +historian. + +Corporal Shorter's words were addressed to the smallest pink ear he +had ever seen except on a baby, but he was only dimly conscious of +that. He was full of a man's pride in a man's deed. + +"Well, it was like this," he recited. "Gunter's horse bolted--Dick +Gunter's in the South African Horse same as Colonel Byng--his lot. Old +Gunter's horse gits away with him into the wide open. I s'pose there'd +been a hunderd Boers firing at the runaway for three minutes, and at +last off comes Gunter. He don't stir for a minute or more, then we see +him pick himself up a bit quick, but settle back again. And while we +was lookin' and tossin' pennies like as to his chances out there, a +grey New Zealand mare nips out across the veld stretchin' every +string. We knowed her all right, that grey mare--a regular +Mrs. Mephisto, w'ich belongs to Colonel Byng. Do the Boojers fire at +him? Don't they! We could see the spots of dust where the bullets +struck, spittin', spittin', spittin', and Lord knows how many hunderd +more there was that didn't hit the ground. An' the grey mare gets +there. As cool as a granadillar, down drops Colonel Byng beside old +Gunter; down goes the grey mare--Colonel Byng had taught her that +trick, like the Roosian Cossack hosses. Then up on her rolls old +Gunter, an' up goes Colonel Byng, and the grey mare switchin' her +bobtail, as if she was havin' a bit of mealies in the middle o' the +day. But when they was both on, then the band begun to play. Men was +fightin' of course, but it looked as if the whole smash stopped to see +what the end would be. It was a real pretty race, an' the grey mare +takin' it as free as if she was carryin' a little bit of a pipkin like +me instead of twenty-six stone. She's a flower, that grey mare! Once +she stumbled, an' we knowed it wasn't an ant-bear's hole she'd found +in the veld, and that she'd been hurt. But they know, them hosses, +that they must do as their Baases do; and they fight right on. She +come home with the two all right. She switched round a corner and over +a nose of land where that crossfire couldn't hit the lot; an' there +was the three of 'em at 'ome for a cup o' tea. Why, ma'am, that done +the army as much good to-day, that little go-to-the-devil, you +mud-suckers! as though we'd got Schuster's Hill. 'Twas what we +needed--an' we got it. It took our eyes off the nasty little fact that +half of a regiment was down, an' the other half with their job not +done as it was ordered. It made the S.A.'s and the Lynchesters and the +Gessex lot laugh. Old Gunter's all right. He's in the Stay Awhile +now. You'll be sure to see him. And Colonel Byng's all right, too, +except a little bit o' splinter--" + +"A bit of splinter--" Her voice was almost peremptory. + +"A chip off his wrist like, but he wasn't thinkin' of that when he got +back. He was thinkin' of the grey mare; and she was hit in three +places, but not to mention. One bullet cut through her ear and through +Colonel Byng's hat as he stooped over her neck; but the luck was with +them. They was born to do a longer trek together. A little bit of the +same thing in both of 'em, so to speak. The grey mare has a temper +like a hunderd wildcats, and Colonel Byng can let himself go too, as +you perhaps know, ma'am. We've seen him let loose sometimes when there +was shirkers about, but he's all right inside his vest. And he's a +good feeder. His men get their tucker all right. He knows when to shut +his eyes. He's got a way to make his bunch--and they're the +hardest-bit bunch in the army--do anything he wants 'em to. He's as +hard himself as ever is, but he's all right underneath the +epidermotis." + +All at once there flashed before Jasmine's eyes the picture of Rudyard +driving Krool out of the house in Park Lane with a sjambok. She heard +again the thud of the rhinoceros-whip on the cringing back of the +Boer; she heard the moan of the victim as he stumbled across the +threshold into the street; and again she felt that sense of +suffocation, that excitement which the child feels on the brink of a +wonderful romance, the once-upon-a-time moment. + +They were nearing the hospital. The driver silently pointed to it. He +saw that he had made an impression, and he was content with it. He +smiled to himself. + +"Is Colonel Byng in the camp?" she asked. + +"He's over--'way over, miles and miles, on the left wing with Kearey's +brigade now. But old Gunter's here, and you're sure to see Colonel +Byng soon--well, I should think." + +She had no wish to see Colonel Byng soon. Three days would suffice to +do what she wished here, and then she would return to Durban to her +work there--to Alice Tynemouth, whose friendship and wonderful +tactfulness had helped her in indefinable ways, as a more obvious +sympathy never could have done. She would have resented one word which +would have suggested that a tragedy was slowly crushing out her life. + +Never a woman in the world was more alone. She worked and smiled with +eyes growing sadder, yet with a force hardening in her which gave her +face a character it never had before. Work had come at the right +moment to save her from the wild consequences of a nature maddened by +a series of misfortunes and penalties, for which there had been no +warning and no preparation. + +She was not ready for a renewal of the past. Only a few minutes before +she had been brought face to face with Ian Stafford, had seen him look +at her out of the shadow there at the station, as though she was an +infinite distance away from him; and she had realized with overwhelming +force how changed her world was. Ian Stafford, who but a few short +months ago had held her in his arms and whispered unforgettable things, +now looked at her as one looks at the image of a forgotten thing. She +recalled his last words to her that awful day when Rudyard had read +the fatal letter, and the world had fallen: + +"Nothing can set things right between you and me, Jasmine," he had +said. "But there is Rudyard. You must help him through. He heard +scandal about Mennaval last night at De Lancy Scovel's. He didn't +believe it. It rests with you to give it all the lie. Good-bye." + +That had been the end--the black, bitter end. Since then Ian had never +spoken a word to her, nor she to him; but he had stood there in the +shadow at the station like a ghost, reproachful, unresponsive, +indifferent. She recalled now the day when, after three years' +parting, she had left him cool, indifferent, and self-contained in the +doorway of the sweet-shop in Regent Street; how she had entered her +carriage, had clinched her hands, and cried with wilful passion: "He +shall not treat me so. He shall show some feeling. He shall! He +shall!" + +Here was indifference again, but of another land. Hers was not a +woman's vanity, in fury at being despised. Vanity, maybe, was still +there, but so slight that it made no contrast to the proud turmoil of +a nature which had been humiliated beyond endurance; which, for its +mistakes, had received accruing penalties as precise as though they +had been catalogued; which had waked to find that a whole lifetime had +been an error; and that it had no anchor in any set of principles or +impelling habits. + +And over all there hung the shadow of a man's death, with its black +suspicion. When Ian Stafford looked at her from the shadow of the +railway-station, the question had flashed into his mind, Did she kill +him? Around Adrian Fellowes' death there hung a cloud of mystery which +threw a sinister shadow on the path of three people. In the middle of +the night, Jasmine started from her sleep with the mystery of the +man's death torturing her, and with the shuddering question, Which? on +her fevered lips. Was it her husband--was it Ian Stafford? As he +galloped over the veld, or sat with his pipe beside the camp-fire, +Rudyard Byng was also drawn into the frigid gloom of the ugly thought, +and his mind asked the question, Did she kill him? It was as though +each who had suffered from the man in life was destined to be menaced +by his shade, till it should be exorcised by that person who had taken +the useless life, saying, "It was I; I did it!" + +As Jasmine entered the hospital, it seemed to her excited imagination +as though she was entering a House of Judgment: as though here in a +court of everlasting equity she would meet those who had played their +vital parts in her life. + +What if Rudyard was here! What if in these few days while she was to +be here he was to cross her path! What would she say? What would she +do? What could be said or done? Bitterness and resentment and dark +suspicion were in her mind--and in his. Her pride was less wilful and +tempestuous than on the day when she drove him from her; when he said +things which flayed her soul, and left her body as though it had been +beaten with rods. Her bitterness, her resentment had its origin in the +fact that he did not understand--and yet in his crude big way he had +really understood better than Ian Stafford. She felt that Rudyard +despised her now a thousand times more than ever he had hinted at in +that last stifling scene in Park Lane; and her spirit rebelled against +it. She would rather that he had believed everything against her, and +had made an open scandal, because then she could have paid any debt +due to him by the penalty most cruel a woman can bear. But pity, +concession, the condescension of a superior morality, were impossible +to her proud mind. + +As for Ian Stafford, he had left her stripped bare of one single +garment of self-respect. His very kindness, his chivalry in defending +her; his inflexible determination that all should be over between them +forever, that she should be prevailed upon to be to Rudyard more than +she had ever been--it all drove her into a deeper isolation. This +isolation would have been her destruction but that something bigger +than herself, a passion to do things, lifted to idealism a mind which +in the past had grown materialistic, which, in gaining wit and mental +skill, had missed the meaning of things, the elemental sense. + +Corporal Shorter's tale of Rudyard's heroism had stirred her; but she +could not have said quite what her feeling was with regard to it. She +only knew vaguely that she was glad of it in a more personal than +impersonal way. When she shook hands with the cheerful non-com. at the +door of the hospital, she gave him a piece of gold which he was loth +to accept till she said: "But take it as a souvenir of Colonel Byng's +little ride with 'Old Gunter.'" + +With a laugh, he took it then, and replied, "I'll not smoke it, I'll +not eat it, and I'll not drink it. I'll wear it for luck and +God-bless-you!" + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + +THE GREY HORSE AND ITS RIDER + + +It was almost midnight. The camp was sleeping. The forces of +destruction lay torpid in the starry shadow of the night. There was no +moon, but the stars gave a light that relieved the gloom. They were so +near to the eye that it might seem a lancer could pick them from their +nests of blue. The Southern Cross hung like a sign of hope to guide +men to a new Messiah. + +In vain Jasmine had tried to sleep. The day had been too much for +her. All that happened in the past four years went rushing past, and +she saw herself in scenes which were so tormenting in their reality +that once she cried out as in a nightmare. As she did so, she was +answered by a choking cry of pain like her own, and, waking, she +started up from her couch with poignant apprehension; but presently +she realized that it was the cry of some wounded patient in the ward +not far from the room where she lay. + +It roused her, however, from the half wakefulness which had been +excoriated by burning memories, and, hurriedly rising, she opened wide +the window and looked out into the night. The air was sharp, but it +soothed her hot face and brow, and the wild pulses in her wrists +presently beat less vehemently. She put a firm hand on herself, as she +was wont to do in these days, when there was no time for brooding on +her own troubles, and when, with the duties she had taken upon +herself, it would be criminal to indulge in self-pity. + +Looking out of the window now into the quiet night, the watch-fires +dotting the plain had a fascination for her greater than the wonder of +the southern sky and its plaque of indigo sprinkled with silver dust +and diamonds. Those fires were the bulletins of the night, telling +that around each of them men were sleeping, or thinking of other +scenes, or wondering whether the fight to-morrow would be their last +fight, and if so, what then? They were to the army like the candle in +the home of the cottager. Those little groups of men sleeping around +their fires were like a family, where men grow to serve each other as +brother serves brother, knowing each other's foibles, but preserving +each other's honour for the family's pride, risking life to save each +other. + +As Jasmine gazed into the gloom, spattered with a delicate radiance +which did not pierce the shadows, but only made lively the darkness, +she was suddenly conscious of the dull regular thud of horses' hoofs +upon the veld. Troops of Mounted Infantry were evidently moving to +take up a new position at the bidding of the Master Player. The sound +was like the rub-a-dub of muffled hammers. The thought forced itself +on her mind that here were men secretly hastening to take part in the +grim lottery of life and death, from which some, and maybe many, would +draw the black ticket of doom, and so pass from the game before the +game was won. + +The rumbling roll of hoofs grew distinct. Now they seemed to be almost +upon her, and presently they emerged into view from the right, where +their progress had been hidden by the hospital-building. When they +reached the hospital there came a soft command and, as the troop +passed, every face was turned towards the building. It was men full of +life and the interest of the great game paying passing homage to their +helpless comrades in this place of healing. + +As they rode past, a few of the troopers had a glimpse of the figure +dimly outlined at the window. Some made kindly jests, cheffing each +other--"Your fancy, old sly-boots? Arranged it all, eh? Watch me, +Lizzie, as I pass, and wave your lily-white hand!" + +But others pressed their lips tightly, for visions of a woman +somewhere waiting and watching flashed before their eyes; while others +still had only the quiet consciousness of the natural man, that a +woman looks at them; and where women are few and most of them are +angels,--the battle-field has no shelter for any other--such looks +have deep significance. + +The troop went by steadily, softly and slowly. After they had all gone +past, two horsemen detached from the troop came after. Presently one +of them separated from his companion and rode on. The other came +towards the hospital at a quick trot, drew bridle very near Jasmine's +window, slid to the ground, said a soft word to his charger, patted +its neck, and, turning, made for the door of the hospital. For a +moment Jasmine stood looking out, greatly moved, she scarcely knew +why, by this little incident of the night, and then suddenly the +starlight seemed to draw round the patient animal standing at +attention, as it were. + +Then she saw it was a grey horse. + +Its owner, as Corporal Shorter predicted, had come to see "Old +Gunter," ere he went upon another expedition of duty. Its owner was +Rudyard Byng. + +That was why so strange a coldness, as of apprehension or anxiety, had +passed through Jasmine when the rider had come towards her out of the +night. Her husband was here. If she called, he would come. If she +stretched out her hand, she could touch him. If she opened a door, she +would be in his presence. If he opened the door behind her, he could-- + +She stepped back hastily into the room, and drew her night-robe +closely about her with sudden flushing of the face. If he should enter +her room--she felt in the darkness for her dressing-gown. It was not +on the chair beside her bed. She moved hastily, and blundered against +a table. She felt for the foot of the bed. The dressing-gown was not +there. Her brain was on fire. Where was her dressing-gown? She tried +to button the night-dress over her palpitating breast, but abandoned +it to throw back her head and gather her golden hair away from her +shoulders and breast. All this in the dark, in the safe dusk of her +own room.... Where was her dressing-gown? Where was her maid? Why +should she be at such a disadvantage! She reached for the table again +and found a match-box. She would strike a light, and find her +dressing-gown. Then she abruptly remembered that she had no +dressing-gown with her; that she had travelled with one single +bag--little more than a hand-bag--and it contained only the emergency +equipment of a nurse. She had brought no dressing-gown; only the light +outer rain-proof coat which should serve a double purpose. She had +forgotten for a moment that she was not in her own house, that she was +an army-woman, living a soldier's life. She felt her way to the wall, +found the rain-proof coat, and, with trembling fingers, put it on. As +she did so a wave of weakness passed over her, and she swayed as +though she would fall; but she put a hand on herself and fought her +growing agitation. + +She turned towards the bed, but stopped abruptly, because she heard +footsteps in the hall outside--footsteps she knew, footsteps which for +years had travelled towards her, day and night, with eagerness; the +quick, urgent footsteps of a man of decision, of impulse, of +determination. It was Rudyard's footsteps outside her door, Rudyard's +voice speaking to some one; then Rudyard's footsteps pausing; and +afterwards a dead silence. She felt his presence; she imagined his +hand upon her door. With a little smothered gasp, she made a move +forward as though to lock the door; then she remembered that it had no +lock. With strained and startled eyes, she kept her gaze turned on the +door, expecting to see it open before her. Her heart beat so hard she +could hear it pounding against her breast, and her temples were +throbbing. + +The silence was horrible to her. Her agitation culminated. She could +bear it no longer. Blindly she ran to another door which led into the +sitting-room of the matron, used for many purposes--the hold-all of +the odds and ends of the hospital life; where surgeons consulted, +officers waited, and army authorities congregated for the business of +the hospital. She found the door, opened it and entered hastily. One +light was burning--a lamp with a green shade. She shut the door behind +her quickly and leaned against it, closing her eyes with a sense of +relief. Presently some movement in the room startled her. She opened +her eyes. A figure stood between the green lamp and the farther door. + +It was her husband. + +Her senses had deceived her. His footsteps had not stopped before her +bedroom-door. She had not heard the handle of the door of her bedroom +turn, but the handle of the door of this room. The silence which had +frightened her had followed his entrance here. + +She hastily drew the coat about her. The white linen of her +night-dress showed. She thrust it back, and instinctively drew behind +the table, as though to hide her bare ankles. + +He had started back at seeing her, but had instantly recovered +himself. "Well, Jasmine," he said quietly, "we've met in a queer +place." + +All at once her hot agitation left her, and she became cold and +still. She was in a maelstrom of feeling a minute before, though she +could not have said what the feeling meant; now she was dominated by a +haunting sense of injury, roused by resentment, not against him, but +against everything and everybody, himself included. All the work of +the last few months seemed suddenly undone--to go for nothing. Just as +a drunkard in his pledge made reformation, which has done its work for +a period, feels a sudden maddening desire to indulge his passion for +drink, and plunges into a debauch,--the last maddening degradation +before his final triumph,--so Jasmine felt now the restrictions and +self-control of the past few months fall away from her. She emerged +from it all the same woman who had flung her married life, her man, +and her old world to the winds on the day that Krool had been driven +into the street. Like Krool, she too had gone out into the +unknown--into a strange land where "the Baas" had no habitation. + +Rudyard's words seemed to madden her, and there was a look of scrutiny +and inquiry in his eyes which she saw--and saw nothing else +there. There was the inquisition in his look which had been there in +their last interview when he had said as plainly as man could say, +"What did it mean--that letter from Adrian Fellowes?" + +It was all there in his eyes now--that hateful inquiry, the piercing +scrutiny of a judge in the Judgment House, and there came also into +her eyes, as though in consequence, a look of scrutiny too. + +"Did you kill Adrian Fellowes? Was it you?" her disordered mind asked. + +She had mistaken the look in his eyes. It was the same look as the +look in hers, and in spite of all the months that had gone, both asked +the same question as in the hour when they last parted. The dead man +stood between them, as he had never stood in life--of infinitely more +importance than he had ever been in life. He had never come between +Rudyard and herself in the old life in any vital sense, not in any +sense that finally mattered. He had only been an incident; not part of +real life, but part of a general wastage of character; not a +disintegrating factor in itself. Ah, no, not Adrian Fellowes, not him! +It enraged her that Rudyard should think the dead man had had any sway +over her. It was a needless degradation, against which she revolted +now. + +"Why have you come here--to this room?" she asked coldly. + +As a boy flushes when he has been asked a disconcerting question which +angers him or challenges his innocence, so Rudyard's face suffused; +but the flush faded as quickly as it came. His eyes then looked at her +steadily, the whites of them so white because of his bronzed face and +forehead, the glance firmer by far than in his old days in +London. There was none of that unmanageable emotion in his features, +the panic excitement, the savage disorder which were there on the day +when Adrian Fellowes' letter brought the crisis to their lives; none +of the barbaric storm which drove Krool down the staircase under the +sjambok. Here was force and iron strength, though the man seemed +older, his thick hair streaked with grey, while there was a deep +fissure between the eyebrows. The months had hardened him physically, +had freed him from all superfluous flesh; and the flabbiness had +wholly gone from his cheeks and chin. There was no sign of a luxurious +life about him. He was merely the business-like soldier with work to +do. His khaki fitted him as only uniform can fit a man with a physique +without defect. He carried in his hand a short whip of +rhinoceros-hide, and as he placed his hands upon his hips and looked +at Jasmine meditatively, before he answered her question, she recalled +the scene with Krool. Her eyes were fascinated by the whip in his +hand. It seemed to her, all at once, as though she was to be the +victim of his wrath, and that the whip would presently fall upon her +shoulders, as he drove her out into the veld. But his eyes drew hers +to his own presently, and even while he spoke to her now, the illusion +of the sjambok remained, and she imagined his voice to be +intermingling with the dull thud of the whip on her shoulders. + +"I came to see one of my troop who was wounded at Wortmann's Drift," +he answered her. + +"Old Gunter," she said mechanically. + +"Old Gunter, if you like," he returned, surprised. "How did you know?" + +"The world gossips still," she rejoined bitterly. + +"Well, I came to see Gunter." + +"On the grey mare," she said again like one in a dream. + +"On the grey mare. I did not know that you were here, and--" + +"If you had known I was here, you would not have come?" she asked with +a querulous ring to her voice. + +"No, I should not have come if I had known, unless people in the camp +were aware that I knew. Then I should have felt it necessary to come." + +"Why?" She knew; but she wanted him to say. + +"That the army should not talk and wonder. If you were here, it is +obvious that I should visit you." + +"The army might as well wonder first as last," she rejoined. "That +must come." + +"I don't know anything that must come in this world," he replied. "We +don't control ourselves, and must lies in the inner Mystery where we +cannot enter. I had only to deal with the present. I could not come to +the General and go again, knowing that you were here, without seeing +you. We ought to do our work here without unnecessary cross-firing +from our friends. There's enough of that from our foes." + +"What right had you to enter my room?" she rejoined stubbornly. + +"I am not in your room. Something--call it anything you like--made us +meet on this neutral ground." + +"You might have waited till morning," she replied perversely. + +"In the morning I shall be far from here. Before daybreak I shall be +fighting. War waits for no one--not even for you," he added, with more +sarcasm than he intended. + +Her feelings were becoming chaos again. He was going into +battle. Bygone memories wakened, and the first days of their lives +together came rushing upon her; but her old wild spirit was up in arms +too against the irony of his last words, "Not even for you." Added to +this was the rushing remembrance that South Africa had been the medium +of all her trouble. If Rudyard had not gone to South Africa, that one +five months a year and more ago, when she was left alone, restless, +craving for amusement and excitement and--she was going to say +romance, but there was no romance in those sordid hours of +pleasure-making, when she plucked the fruit as it lay to her hand--ah, +if only Rudyard had not gone to South Africa then! That five months +held no romance. She had never known but one romance, and it was over +and done. The floods had washed it away. + +"You are right. War does not wait even for me," she exclaimed. "It +came to meet me, to destroy me, when I was not armed. It came in the +night as you have come, and found me helpless as I am now." + +Suddenly she clasped her hands and wrung them, then threw them above +her head in a gesture of despair. "Why didn't God or Destiny, or +whatever it is, stop you from coming here! There is nothing between us +worth keeping, and there can never be. There is a black sea between +us. I never want to see you any more." + +In her agitation the coat had fallen away from her white night- +dress, and her breast showed behind the parted folds of the linen. +Involuntarily his eyes saw. What memories passed through him were +too vague to record; but a heavy sigh escaped him, followed, +however, by a cloud which gathered on his brow. The shadow of a +man's death thrust itself between them. This war might have never +been, had it not been for the treachery of the man who had been +false to everything and every being that had come his way. +Indirectly this vast struggle in which thousands of lives were +being lost had come through his wife's disloyalty, however +unintentional, or in whatever degree. Whenever he thought of it, +his pulses beat faster with indignation, and a deep resentment +possessed him. + +It was a resentment whose origin was not a mere personal wrong to him, +but the betrayal of all that invaded his honour and the honour of his +country. The map was dead--so much. He had paid a price--too small. + +And Jasmine, as she looked at her husband now, was, oppressed by the +same shadow--the inescapable thing. That was what she meant when she +said, "There is a black sea between us." + +What came to her mind when she saw his glance fall on her breast, she +could not have told. But a sudden flame of anger consumed her. The +passion of the body was dead in her--atrophied. She was as one through +whose veins had passed an icy fluid which stilled all the senses of +desire, but never had her mind been so passionate, so alive. In the +months lately gone, there had been times when her mind was in a +paroxysm of rebellion and resentment and remorse; but in this red +corner of the universe, from which the usual world was shut out, from +which all domestic existence, all social organization, habit or the +amenities of social intercourse were excluded, she had been able to +restore her equilibrium. Yet now here, all at once, there was an +invasion of this world of rigid, narrow organization, where there was +no play; where all men's acts were part of a deadly mortal issue; +where the human being was only part of a scheme which allowed nothing +of the flexible adaptations of the life of peace, the life of cities, +of houses: here was the sudden interposition of a purely personal +life, of domestic being--of sex. She was conscious of no reasoning, of +no mental protest which could be put into words: she was only +conscious of emotions which now shook her with their power, now left +her starkly cold, her brain muffled, or again aflame with a suffering +as intense as that of Procrustes on his bed of iron. + +This it was that seized her now. The glance of his eyes at her bared +breast roused her. She knew not why, except that there was an +indefinable craving for a self respect which had been violated by +herself and others; except that she longed for the thing which she +felt he would not give her. The look in his eye offered her nothing of +that. + +That she mistook what really was in his eyes was not material, though +he was thinking of days when he believed he had discovered the secret +of life--a woman whose life was beautiful; diffusing beauty, +contentment, inspiration and peace. She did not know that his look was +the wistful look backward, with no look forward; and that alone. She +was living a life where new faculties of her nature were being +exercised or brought into active being; she was absorbed by it all; it +was part of her scheme for restoring herself, for getting surcease of +anguish; but here, all at once, every entrenchment was overrun, the +rigidity of the unit was made chaos, and she was tossed by the Spirit +of Confusion upon a stormy sea of feeling. + +"Will you not go?" she asked in a voice of suppressed passion. "Have +you no consideration? It is past midnight." + +His anger flamed, but he forced back the words upon his lips, and said +with a bitter smile: "Day and night are the same to me always +now. What else should be in war? I am going." He looked at the watch +at his wrist. "It is half-past one o'clock. At five our work +begins--not an eight-hour day. We have twenty-four-hour days here +sometimes. This one may be shorter. You never can tell. It may be a +one-hour day--or less." + +Suddenly he came towards her with hands outstretched. "Dear +wife--Jasmine--" he exclaimed. + +Pity, memory, a great magnanimity carried him off his feet for a +moment, and all that had happened seemed as nothing beside this fact +that they might never see each other again; and peace appeared to him +the one thing needful after all. The hatred and conflict of the world +seemed of small significance beside the hovering presence of an enemy +stronger than Time. + +She was still in a passion of rebellion against the inevitable--that +old impatience and unrealized vanity which had helped to destroy her +past. She shrank back in blind misunderstanding from him, for she +scarcely heard his words. She mistook what he meant. She was +bewildered, distraught. + +"No, no--coward!" she cried. + +He stopped short as though he had been shot. His face turned +white. Then, with an oath, he went swiftly to the window which opened +to the floor and passed through it into the night. + +An instant later he was on his horse. + +A moment of dumb confusion succeeded, then she realized her madness, +and the thing as it really was. Running to the window, she leaned out. + +She called, but only the grey mare's galloping came back to her +awe-struck ears. + +With a cry like that of an animal in pain, she sank on her knees on +the floor, her face turned towards the stars. + +"Oh, my God, help me!" she moaned. + +At least here was no longer the cry of doom. + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + +THE WORLD'S FOUNDLING + + +At last day came. Jasmine was crossing the hallway of the hospital on +her way to the dining-room when there came from the doorway of a ward +a figure in a nurse's dress. It startled her by some familiar +motion. Presently the face turned in her direction, but without seeing +her. Jasmine recognized her then. She went forward quickly and touched +the nurse's arm. + +"Al'mah--it is Al'mah?" she said. + +Al'mah's face turned paler, and she swayed slightly, then she +recovered herself. "Oh, it is you, Mrs. Byng!" she said, almost +dazedly. + +After an instant's hesitation she held out a hand. "It's a queer place +for it to happen," she added. + +Jasmine noticed the hesitation and wondered at the words. She searched +the other's face. What did Al'mah's look mean? It seemed composite of +paralyzing surprise, of anxiety, of apprehension. Was there not also a +look of aversion? + +"Everything seems to come all at once," Al'mah continued, as though in +explanation. + +Jasmine had no inkling as to what the meaning of the words was; and, +with something of her old desire to conquer those who were alien to +her, she smiled winningly. + +"Yes, things concentrate in life," she rejoined. + +"I've noticed that," was the reply. "Fate seems to scatter, and then +to gather in all at once, as though we were all feather-toys on +strings." + +After a moment, as Al'mah regarded her with vague wonder, though now +she smiled too, and the anxiety, apprehension, and pain went from her +face, Jasmine said: "Why did you come here? You had a world to work +for in England." + +"I had a world to forget in England," Al'mah replied. Then she added +suddenly, "I could not sing any longer." + +"Your voice--what happened to it?" Jasmine asked. + +"One doesn't sing with one's voice only. The music is far behind the +voice." + +They had been standing in the middle of the hallway. Suddenly Al'mah +caught at Jasmine's sleeve. "Will you come with me?" she said. + +She led the way into a room which was almost gay with veld +everlastings, pictures from illustrated papers, small flags of the +navy and the colonies, the Boer Vierkleur and the Union Jack. + +"I like to have things cheerful here," Al'mah said almost gaily. +"Sometimes I have four or five convalescents in here, and they like a +little gaiety. I sing them things from comic operas--Offenbach, +Sullivan, and the rest; and if they are very sentimentally inclined I +sing them good old-fashioned love-songs full of the musician's +tricks. How people adore illusions! I've had here an old Natal +sergeant, over sixty, and he was as cracked as could be about songs +belonging to the time when we don't know that it's all illusion, and +that there's no such thing as Love, nor ever was; but only a kind of +mirage of the mind, a sort of phantasy that seizes us, in which we do +crazy things, and sometimes, if the phantasy is strong enough, we do +awful things. But still the illusions remain in spite of everything, +as they did with the old sergeant. I've heard the most painful stories +here from men before they died, of women that were false, and injuries +done, many, many years ago; and they couldn't see that it wasn't real +at all, but just phantasy." + +"All the world's mad," responded Jasmine wearily, as Al'mah paused. + +Al'mah nodded. "So I laugh a good deal, and try to be cheerful, and it +does more good than being too sympathetic. Sympathy gets to be mere +snivelling very often. I've smiled and laughed a great deal out here; +and they say it's useful. The surgeons say it, and the men say it too +sometimes." + +"Are you known as Nurse Grattan?" Jasmine asked with sudden +remembrance. + +"Yes, Grattan was my mother's name. I am Nurse Grattan here." + +"So many have whispered good things of you. A Scottish Rifleman said +to me a week ago, 'Ech, she's aye see cheery!' What a wonderful thing +it is to make a whole army laugh. Coming up here three officers spoke +of you, and told of humorous things you had said. It's all quite +honest, too. It's a reputation made out of new cloth. No one knows who +you are?" + +Al'mah flushed. "I don't know quite who I am myself. I think sometimes +I'm the world's foundling." + +Suddenly a cloud passed over her face again, and her strong whimsical +features became drawn. + +"I seem almost to lose my identity at times; and then it is I try most +to laugh and be cheerful. If I didn't perhaps I should lose my +identity altogether. Do you ever feel that?" + +"No; I often wish I could." + +Al'mah regarded her steadfastly. "Why did you come here?" she +asked. "You had the world at your feet; and there was plenty to do in +London. Was it for the same reason that brought me here? Was it +something you wanted to forget there, some one you wanted to help +here?" + +Jasmine saw the hovering passion in the eyes fixed on her, and +wondered what this woman had to say which could be of any import to +herself; yet she felt there was something drawing nearer which would +make her shrink. + +"No," Jasmine answered, "I did not come to forget, but to try and +remember that one belongs to the world, to the work of the world, to +the whole people, and not to one of the people; not to one man, or to +one family, or to one's self. That's all." + +Al'mah's face was now very haggard, but her eyes were burning. "I do +not believe you," she said straightly. "You are one of those that have +had a phantasy. I had one first fifteen years ago, and it passed, yet +it pursued me till yesterday--till yesterday evening. Now it's gone; +that phantasy is gone forever. Come and see what it was." + +She pointed to the door of another room. + +There was something strangely compelling in her tone, in her +movements. Jasmine followed her, fascinated by the situation, by the +look in the woman's face. The door opened upon darkness, but Jasmine +stepped inside, with Almah's fingers clutching her sleeve. For a +moment nothing was visible; then, Jasmine saw, dimly, a coffin on two +chairs. + +"That was the first man I ever loved--my husband," Al'mah said +quietly, pointing at the coffin. "There was another, but you took him +from me--you and others." + +Jasmine gave a little cry which she smothered with her hand; and she +drew back involuntarily towards the light of the hallway. The smell of +disinfectants almost suffocated her. A cloud of mystery and +indefinable horror seemed to envelop her; then a light flooded through +her brain. It was like a stream of fire. But with a voice strangely +calm, she said, "You mean Adrian Fellowes?" + +Al'mah's face was in the shadow, but her voice was full of storm. "You +took him from me, but you were only one," she said sharply and +painfully. "I found it out at last. I suspected first at +Glencader. Then at last I knew. It was an angry, contemptuous letter +from you. I had opened it. I understood. When everything was clear, +when there was no doubt, when I knew he had tried to hurt little +Jigger's sister, when he had made up his mind to go abroad, then, I +killed him. Then--I killed him." + +Jasmine's cheek was white as Al'mah's apron; but she did not +shrink. She came a step nearer, and peered into Al'mah's face, as +though to read her inmost mind, as though to see if what she said was +really true. She saw not a quiver of agitation, not the faintest +horror of memory; only the reflective look of accomplished purpose. + +"You--are you insane?" Jasmine exclaimed in a whisper. "Do you know +what you have said?" + +Al'mah smoothed her apron softly. "Perfectly. I do not think I am +insane. I seem not to be. One cannot do insane things here. This is +the place of the iron rule. Here we cure madness--the madness of war +and other madnesses." + +"You had loved him, yet you killed him!" + +"You would have killed him though you did not love him. Yes, of +course--I know that. Your love was better placed; but it was like a +little bird caught by the hawk in the upper air--its flight was only a +little one before the hawk found it. Yes, you would have killed +Adrian, as I did if you had had the courage. You wanted to do it, but +I did it. Do you remember when I sang for you on the evening of that +day he died? I sang, 'More Was Lost at Mohacksfield.' As soon as I saw +your face that evening I felt you knew all. You had been to his rooms +and found him dead. I was sure of that. You remember how La Tosca +killed Scarpia? You remember how she felt? I felt so--just like +that. I never hesitated. I knew what I wanted to do, and I did it." + +"How did you kill him?" Jasmine asked in that matter-of-fact way which +comes at those times when the senses are numbed by tragedy. + +"You remember the needle--Mr. Mappin's needle? I knew Adrian had +it. He showed it to me. He could not keep the secret. He was too +weak. The needle was in his pocket-book--to kill me with some day +perhaps. He certainly had not the courage to kill himself.... I went +to see him. He was dressing. The pocket-book lay on the table. As I +said, he had showed it to me. While he was busy I abstracted the +needle. He talked of his journey abroad. He lied--nothing but lies, +about himself, about everything. When he had said enough,--lying was +easier to him than anything else--I told him the truth. Then he went +wild. He caught hold of me as if to strangle me.... He did not realize +the needlepoint when it caught him. If he did, it must have seemed to +him only the prick of a pin.... But in a few minutes it was all +over. He died quite peacefully. But it was not very easy getting him +on the sofa. He looked sleeping as he lay there. You saw. He would +never lie any more to women, to you or to me or any other. It is a +good thing to stop a plague, and the simplest way is the best. He was +handsome, and his music was very deceiving. It was almost good of its +kind, and it was part of him. When I look back I find only misery. Two +wicked men hurt me. They spoiled my life, first one and then another; +and I went from bad to worse. At least he"--she pointed to the other +room--"he had some courage at the very last. He fought, he braved +death. The other--you remember the Glencader Mine. Your husband and +Ian Stafford went down, and Lord Tynemouth was ready to go, but Adrian +would not go. Then it was I began to hate him. That was the +beginning. What happened had to be. I was to kill him; and I did. It +avenged me, and it avenged your husband. I was glad of that, for +Rudyard Byng had done so much for me: not alone that he saved me at +the opera, you remember, but other good things. I did his work for him +with Adrian." + +"Have you no fear--of me?" Jasmine asked. + +"Fear of--you? Why?" + +"I might hate you--I might tell." + +Al'mah made a swift gesture of protest. "Do not say foolish things. +You would rather die than tell. You should be grateful to me. Some +one had to kill him. There was Rudyard Byng, Ian Stafford, or +yourself. It fell to me. I did your work. You will not tell; but it +would not matter if you did. Nothing would happen--nothing at +all. Think it out, and you will see why." + +Jasmine shuddered violently. Her body was as cold as ice. + +"Yes, I know. What are you going to do after the war?" + +"Back to Covent Garden perhaps; or perhaps there will be no 'after the +war.' It may all end here. Who knows--who cares!" + +Jasmine came close to her. For an instant a flood of revulsion had +overpowered her; but now it was all gone. + +"We pay for all the wrong we do. We pay for all the good we get"--once +Ian Stafford had said that, and it rang in her ears now. Al'mah would +pay, and would pay here--here in this world. Meanwhile, Al'mah was a +woman who, like herself, had suffered. + +"Let me be your friend; let me help you," Jasmine said, and she took +both of Almah's hands in her own. + +Somehow Jasmine's own heart had grown larger, fuller, and kinder all +at once. Until lately she had never ached to help the world or any +human being in all her life; there had never been any of the divine +pity which finds its employ in sacrifice. She had been kind, she had +been generous, she had in the past few months given service unstinted; +but it was more as her own cure for her own ills than yearning +compassion for all those who were distressed "in mind, body, or +estate." + +But since last evening, in the glimmer of the stars, when Rudyard went +from her with bitter anger on his lips, and a contempt which threw her +far behind him,--since that hour, when, in her helplessness, she had +sunk to the ground with an appeal to Something outside herself, her +heart had greatly softened. Once before she had appealed to the +Invisible--that night before her catastrophe, when she wound her +wonderful hair round her throat and drew it tighter and tighter, and +had cried out to the beloved mother she had never known. But her +inborn, her cultivated, her almost invincible egoism, had not even +then been scattered by the bitter helplessness of her life. + +That cry last night was a cry to the Something behind all. Only in the +last few hours--why, she knew not--her heart had found a new +sense. She felt her soul's eyes looking beyond herself. The Something +that made her raise her eyes to the stars, which seemed a pervading +power, a brooding tenderness and solicitude, had drawn her mind away +into the mind of humanity. Her own misery now at last enabled her to +see, however dimly, the woes of others; and it did not matter whether +the woes were penalties or undeserved chastisement; the new-born pity +of her soul made no choice and sought no difference. + +As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over +Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a +light which made them aglow with understanding. + +"I always thought you selfish--almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said +presently. "I thought you didn't know any real life, any real +suffering--only the surface, only disappointment at not having your +own happiness; but now I see that was all a mask. You understand why I +did what I did?" + +"I understand." + +"I suppose there would be thousands who would gladly see me in prison +and on the scaffold--if they knew--" + +Pain travelled across Jasmine's face. She looked Al'mah in the eyes +with a look of reproof and command. "Never, never again speak of that +to me or to any living soul," she said. "I will try to forget it; you +must put it behind you." . . . Suddenly she pointed to the other room +where Al'mah's husband lay dead. "When is he to be buried?" she asked. + +"In an hour." A change came over Al'mah's face again, and she stood +looking dazedly at the door of the room, behind which the dead man +lay. "I cannot realize it. It does not seem real," she said. "It was +all so many centuries ago, when I was young and glad." + +Jasmine admonished her gently and drew her away. + +A few moments later an officer approached them from one of the +wards. At that moment the footsteps of the three were arrested by the +booming of artillery. It seemed as though all the guns of both armies +were at work. + +The officer's eyes blazed, and he turned to the two women with an +impassioned gesture. + +"Byng and the S.A.'s have done their trick," he said. "If they hadn't, +that wouldn't be going on. It was to follow--a general assault--if +Byng pulled it off. Old Blunderbuss has done it this time. His +combination's working all right--thanks to Byng's lot." + +As he hurried on he was too excited to see Jasmine's agitation. + +"Wait!" Jasmine exclaimed, as he went quickly down the hallway. But +her voice was scarcely above a whisper, and he did not hear. + +She wanted to ask him if Rudyard was safe. She did not realize that he +could not know. + +But the thunder of artillery told her that Rudyard had had his +fighting at daybreak, as he had said. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + +"ALAMACHTIG!" + + +When Rudyard flung himself on the grey mare outside Jasmine's window +at the Stay Awhile Hospital, and touched her flank with his heel, his +heart was heavy with passion, his face hard with humiliation and +defeat. He had held out the hand of reconciliation, and she had met it +with scorn. He had smothered his resentment, and let the light of +peace in upon their troubles, and she had ruthlessly drawn a black +curtain between them. He was going upon as dangerous a task as could +be set a soldier, from which he might never return, and she had not +even said a God-be-with-you--she who had lain in his bosom, been so +near, so dear, so cherished: + +"For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- +And, now they have looked and seen us, +Oh, we that were dear, we are all too near, +With the thick of the world between us!" + +How odd it seemed that two beings who had been all in all to each +other, who in the prime of their love would have died of protesting +shame, if they had been told that they would change towards each +other, should come to a day when they would be less to each other than +strangers, less and colder and farther off! It is because some cannot +bear this desecration of ideals, this intolerable loss of life's +assets, that they cling on and on, long after respect and love have +gone, after hope is dead. + +There had been times in the past few months when such thoughts as +these vaguely possessed Rudyard's mind; but he could never, would +never, feel that all was over, that the book of Jasmine's life was +closed to him; not even when his whole nature was up in arms against +the injury she had done him. + +But now, as the grey mare reached out to achieve the ground his +troopers had covered before him, his brain was in a storm of +feeling. After all, what harm had he done her, that he should be +treated so? Was he the sinner? Why should he make the eternal +concession? Why should he be made to seem the one needing forgiveness? +He did not know why. But at the bottom of everything lay a +something--a yearning--which would not be overwhelmed. In spite of +wrong and injury, it would live on and on; and neither Time nor crime, +nor anything mortal could obliterate it from his heart's oracles. + +The hoofs of the grey mare fell like the soft thud of a hammer in the +sand, regular and precise. Presently the sound and the motion lulled +his senses. The rage and humiliation grew less, his face cooled. His +head, which had been bent, lifted and his face turned upwards to the +stars. The influence of an African night was on him. None that has not +felt it can understand it so cold, so sweet, so full of sleep, so +stirring with an underlife. Many have known the breath of the pampas +beyond the Amazon; the soft pungency of the wattle blown across the +salt-bush plains of Australia; the friendly exhilaration of the +prairie or the chaparral; the living, loving loneliness of the desert; +but yonder on the veld is a life of the night which possesses all the +others have, and something of its own besides; something which gets +into the bones and makes for forgetfulness of the world. It lifts a +man away from the fret of life, and sets his feet on the heights where +lies repose. + +The peace of the stars crept softly into Rudyard's heart as he +galloped gently on to overtake his men. His pulses beat slowly once +again, his mind regained its poise. He regretted the oath he uttered, +as he left Jasmine; he asked himself if, after all, everything was +over and done. + +How good the night suddenly seemed! No, it was not all over--unless, +unless, indeed, in this fight coming on with the daybreak, Fate should +settle it all by doing with him as it had done with so many thousands +of others in this war. But even then, would it be all over? He was a +primitive man, and he raised his face once more to the heavens. He was +no longer the ample millionaire, sitting among the flesh-pots; he was +a lean, simple soldier eating his biscuit as though it were the +product of the chef of the Cafe Voisin; he was the fighter sleeping in +a blanket in the open; he was a patriot after his kind; he was the +friend of his race and the lover of one woman. + +Now he drew rein. His regiment was just ahead. Daybreak was not far +off, and they were near the enemy's position. In a little while, if +they were not surprised, they would complete a movement, take a hill, +turn the flank of the foe, and, if designed supports came up, have the +Boers at a deadly disadvantage. Not far off to the left of him and his +mounted infantry there were coming on for this purpose two batteries +of artillery and three thousand infantry--Leary's brigade, which had +not been in the action the day before at Wortmann's Drift. + +But all depended on what he was able to do, what he and his +hard-bitten South Africans could accomplish. Well, he had no +doubt. War was part chance, part common sense, part the pluck and luck +of the devil. He had ever been a gambler in the way of taking chances; +he had always possessed ballast even when the London life had +enervated, had depressed him; and to men of his stamp pluck is a +commonplace: it belongs as eyes and hands and feet belong. + +Dawn was not far away, and before daybreak he must have the hill which +was the key to the whole position, which commanded the left flank of +the foe. An hour or so after he got it, if the artillery and infantry +did their portion, a great day's work would be done for England; and +the way to the relief of the garrison beyond the mountains would be +open. The chance to do this thing was the reward he received for his +gallant and very useful fight at Wortmann's Drift twenty-four hours +before. It would not do to fail in justifying the choice of the Master +Player, who had had enough bad luck in the campaign so far. + +The first of his force to salute him in the darkness was his next in +command, Barry Whalen. They had been together in the old Rand Rifles, +and had, in the words of the Kaffir, been as near as the flea to the +blanket, since the day when Rudyard discovered that Barry Whalen was +on the same ship bound for the seat of war. They were not youngsters, +either of them; but they had the spring of youth in them, and a deep +basis of strength and force; and they knew the veld and the veld +people. There was no trick of the veldschoen copper for which they +were not ready; and for any device of Kruger's lambs they were +prepared to go one better. As Barry Whalen had said, "They'll have to +get up early in the morning if they want to catch us." + +This morning the Boers would not get up early enough; for Rudyard's +command had already reached the position from which they could do +their work with good chances in their favour; and there had been no +sign of life from the Boer trenches in the dusk--naught of what +chanced at Magersfontein. Not a shot had been fired, and there would +certainly have been firing if the Boer had known; for he could not +allow the Rooinek to get to the point where his own position would be +threatened or commanded. When Kruger's men did discover the truth, +there would be fighting as stiff as had been seen in this struggle for +half a continent. + +"Is it all right?" whispered Rudyard, as Barry VVhalen drew up by him. + +"Not a sound from them--not a sign." + +"Their trenches should not be more than a few hundred yards on, eh?" + +"Their nearest trenches are about that. We are just on the left of +Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Good. Let Glossop occupy the kopje with his squadrons, while we take +the trenches. If we can force them back on their second line of +trenches, and keep them there till our supports come up, we shall be +all right." + +"When shall we begin, sir?" asked Barry. + +"Give orders to dismount now. Get the horses in the lee of the kopje, +and we'll see what Brother Boer thinks of us after breakfast." + +Rudyard took out a repeating-watch, and held it in his closed palm. As +it struck, he noted the time. + +His words were abrupt but composed. "Ten minutes more and we shall +have the first streak of dawn. Then move. We shall be on them before +they know it." + +Barry Whalen made to leave, then turned back. Rudyard understood. They +clasped hands. It was the grip of men who knew each other--knew each +other's faults and weaknesses, yet trusted with a trust which neither +disaster nor death could destroy. + +"My girl--if anything happens to me," Barry said. + +"You may be sure--as if she were my own," was Rudyard's reply. "If I +go down, find my wife at the Stay Awhile Hospital. Tell her that the +day I married her was the happiest day of my life, and that what I +said then I thought at the last. Everything else is straightened +out--and I'll not forget your girl, Barry. She shall be as my own if +things should happen that way." + +"God bless you, old man," whispered Barry. "Goodbye." Then he +recovered himself and saluted. "Is that all, sir?" + +"Au revoir, Barry," came the answer; then a formal return of the +salute. "That is all," he added brusquely. + +They moved forward to the regiment, and the word to dismount was given +softly. When the forces crept forward again, it was as infantrymen, +moving five paces apart, and feeling their way up to the Boer +trenches. + +Dawn. The faintest light on the horizon, as it were a soft, grey +glimmer showing through a dark curtain. It rises and spreads slowly, +till the curtain of night becomes the veil of morning, white and +kind. Then the living world begins to move. Presently the face of the +sun shines through the veil, and men's bodies grow warm with active +being, and the world stirs with busy life. On the veld, with the first +delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above +the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes +flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the +meerkat sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon +the stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging. Presently man and +beast and all wild things are afoot or a-wing, as though the world was +new-created; as though there had never been any mornings before, and +this was not the monotonous repetition of a million mornings, when all +things living begin the world afresh. + +But nowhere seems the world so young and fresh and glad as on the +sun-warmed veld. Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the +aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter +than attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house +or fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any +mysterious thing may happen--a world of five thousand years ago--the +air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would +seem of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast +colonies of green-clad archers moving to virgin woods might +belong. Something frightens the timid spirit of a springbok, and his +flight through the grass is like a phrase of music on a wilful +adventure; a bird hears the sighing of the breeze in the mimosa leaves +or the swaying shrubs, and in disdain of such slight performance +flings out a song which makes the air drunken with sweetness. + +A world of light, of commendable trees, of grey grass flecked with +flowers, of life having the supreme sense of a freedom which has known +no check. It is a life which cities have not spoiled, and where man is +still in touch with the primeval friends of man; where the wildest +beast and the newest babe of a woman have something in common. + +Drink your fill of the sweet intoxicating air with eyes shut till the +lungs are full and the heart beats with new fulness; then open them +upon the wide sunrise and scan the veld so full of gracious odour. Is +it not good and glad? And now face the hills rising nobly away there +to the left, the memorable and friendly hills. Is it not-- + +Upon the morning has crept suddenly a black cloud, although the sun is +shining brilliantly. A moment before the dawn all was at peace on the +veld and among the kopjes, and only the contented sighing of men and +beasts broke the silence, or so it seemed; but with the glimmer of +light along the horizon came a change so violent that all the circle +of vision was in a quiver of trouble. Affrighted birds, in fluttering +bewilderment, swept and circled aimlessly through the air with +strange, half-human cries; the jackal and the meerkat, the springbok +and the rheebok, trembled where they stood, with heads uplifted, +vaguely trying to realize the Thing which was breaking the peace of +their world; useless horses which had been turned out of the armies of +Boers and British galloped and stumbled and plunged into space in +alarm; for they knew what was darkening the morning. They had suffered +the madness of battle, and they realized it at its native first value. + +There was a battle forward on the left flank of the Boer Army. Behind +Hetmeyer's Kopje were the horses of the men whom Rudyard Byng had +brought to take a position and hold it till support came and this +flank of the Farmer's Army was turned; but the men themselves were at +work on the kopjes--the grim work of dislodging the voortrekker people +from the places where they burrowed like conies among the rocks. + +Just before dawn broke Byng's men were rushing the outer +trenches. These they cleared with the wild cries of warriors whose +blood was in a tempest. Bayonets dripped red, rifles were fired at +hand-to-hand range, men clubbed their guns and fought as men fought in +the days when the only fighting was man to man, or one man to many +men. Here every "Boojer" and Rooinek was a champion. The Boer fell +back because he was forced back by men who were men of the veld like +himself; and the Briton pressed forward because he would not be +denied; because he was sick of reverses; of going forward and falling +back; of taking a position with staggering loss and then abandoning +it; of gaining a victory and then not following it up; of having the +foe in the hollow of the hand and hesitating to close it with a +death-grip; of promising relief to besieged men, and marking time when +you had gained a foothold, instead of gaining a foothold farther on. + +Byng's men were mostly South-Africans born, who had lived and worked +below the Zambesi all their lives; or else those whose blood was in a +fever at the thought that a colony over which the British flag flew +should be trod by the feet of an invader, who had had his own liberty +and independence secured by that flag, but who refused to white men +the status given to "niggers" in civilized states. These fighters +under Byng had had their fill of tactics and strategy which led +nowhere forward; and at Wortmann's Drift the day before they had done +a big thing for the army with a handful of men. They could ride like +Cossacks, they could shoot like William Tell, and they had a mind to +be the swivel by which the army of Queen Victoria should swing from +almost perpetual disaster, in large and small degree, to victory. + +From the first trenches on and on to the second trenches higher up! +But here the Boer in his burrow with his mauser rifle roaring, and his +heart fierce with hatred and anger at the surprise, laid down to the +bloody work with an ugly determination to punish remorselessly his +fellow-citizens of the veld and the others. It was a fire which only +bullet-proof men could stand, and these were but breasts of flesh and +muscle, though the will was iron. + +Up, up, and up, struggled these men of the indomitable will. Step by +step, while man after man fell wounded or dead, they pushed forward, +taking what cover was possible; firing as steadily as at Aldershot; +never wasting shots, keeping the eye vigilant for the black slouch hat +above the rocks, which told that a Boer's head was beneath it, and +might be caught by a lightning shot. + +Step by step, man by man, troop by troop, they came nearer to the +hedges of stone behind which an inveterate foe with grim joy saw a +soldier fall to his soft-nosed bullet; while far down behind these men +of a forlorn hope there was hurrying up artillery which would +presently throw its lyddite and its shrapnel on the top of the hill up +where hundreds of Boers held, as they thought, an impregnable +position. At last with rushes which cost them almost as dearly in +proportion as the rush at Balaclava cost the Light Brigade, Byng's men +reached the top, mad with the passion of battle, vengeful in spirit +because of the comrades they had lost; and the trenches emptied before +them. As they were forsaken, men fought hand to hand and as savagely +as ever men fought in the days of Rustum. + +In one corner, the hottest that the day saw, Rudyard and Barry Whalen +and a scattered handful of men threw themselves upon a greatly larger +number of the enemy. For a moment a man here and there fought for his +life against two or three of the foe. Of these were Rudyard and Barry +Whalen. The khaki of the former was shot through in several places, he +had been slashed in the cheek by a bullet, and a bullet had also +passed through the muscle of his left forearm; but he was scarcely +conscious of it. It seemed as though Fate would let no harm befall +him; but, in the very moment, when on another part of the ridge his +men were waving their hats in victory, three Boers sprang up before +him, ragged and grim and old, but with the fire of fanaticism and +race-hatred in their eyes. One of them he accounted for, another he +wounded, but the wounded voortrekker--a giant of near seven feet +clubbed his rifle, and drove at him. Rudyard shot at close quarters +again, but his pistol missed fire. + +Just as the rifle of his giant foe swung above him, Byng realized that +the third Boer was levelling a rifle directly at his breast. His eyes +involuntarily closed as though to draw the curtain of life itself, +but, as he did so, he heard a cry--the wild, hoarse cry of a voice he +knew so well. + +"Baas! Baas!" it called. + +Then two shots came simultaneously, and the clubbed rifle brought him +to the ground. + +"Baas! Baas!" + +The voice followed him, as he passed into unconsciousness. + +Barry Whalen had seen Rudyard's danger, but had been unable to do +anything. His hands were more than full, his life in danger; but in +the instant that he had secured his own safety, he heard the cry of +"Baas! Baas!" Then he saw the levelled rifle fall from the hands of +the Boer who had aimed at Byng, and its owner collapse in a heap. As +Rudyard fell beneath the clubbed rifle he heard the cry, "Baas! Baas!" +again, and saw an unkempt figure darting among the rocks. His own +pistol brought down the old Boer who had felled Byng, and then he +realized who it was had cried out, "Baas!" + +The last time he had heard that voice was in Park Lane, when Byng, +with sjambok, drove a half-caste valet into the street. + +It was the voice of Krool. And Krool was now bending over Rudyard's +body, raising his head and still murmuring, "Baas--Baas!" + +Krool's rifle had saved Rudyard from death by killing one of his own +fellow-fighters. Much as Barry Whalen loathed the man, this act showed +that Krool's love for the master who had sjamboked him was stronger +than death. + +Barry, himself bleeding from slight wounds, stooped over his +unconscious friend with a great anxiety. + +"No, it is nothing," Krool said, with his hand on Rudyard's +breast. "The left arm, it is hurt, the head not get all the +blow. Alamachtig, it is good! The Baas--it is right with the Baas." + +Barry Whalen sighed with relief. He set about to restore Rudyard, as +Krool prepared a bandage for the broken head. + +Down in the valley the artillery was at work. Lyddite and shrapnel and +machine-guns were playing upon the top of the ridge above them, and +the infantry--Humphrey's and Blagdon's men--were hurrying up the slope +which Byng's pioneers had cleared, and now held. From this position +the enemy could be driven from their main position on the summit, +because they could be swept now by artillery fire from a point as high +as their own. + +"A good day's work, old man," said Barry Whalen to the still +unconscious figure. "You've done the trick for the Lady at Windsor +this time. It's a great sight better business than playing baccarat at +DeLancy Scovel's." + +Cheering came from everywhere, cries of victory filled the air. As he +looked down the valley Barry could see the horses they had left behind +being brought, under cover of the artillery and infantry fire, to the +hill they had taken. The grey mare would be among them. But Rudyard +would not want the grey mare yet awhile. An ambulance-cart was the +thing for him. + +Barry would have given much for a flask of brandy. A tablespoonful +would bring Rudyard back. A surgeon was not needed, however. Krool's +hands had knowledge. Barry remembered the day when Wallstein was taken +ill in Rudyard's house, and how Krool acted with the skill of a +Westminster sawbones. + +Suddenly a bugle-call sounded, loud and clear and very near them. Byng +had heard that bugle call again and again in this engagement, and once +he had seen the trumpeter above the trenches, sounding the advance +before more than a half-dozen men had reached the defences of the +Boers. The same trumpeter was now running towards them. He had been +known in London as Jigger. In South Africa he was familiarly called +Little Jingo. + +His face was white as he leaned over Barry Whalen to look at Rudyard, +but suddenly the blood came back to his cheek. + +"He wants brandy," Jigger said. + +"Well, go and get it," said Barry sharply. + +"I've got it here," was the reply; and he produced a flask. + +"Well, I'm damned!" said Barry. "You'll have a gun next, and fire it +too!" + +"A 4.7," returned Jigger impudently. + +As the flask was at Rudyard's lips, Barry Whalen said to Krool, "What +do you stay here as--deserter or prisoner? It's got to be one or the +other." + +"Prisoner," answered Krool. Then he added, "See--the Baas." + +Rudyard's eyes were open. + +"Prisoner--who is a prisoner?" he asked feebly. + +"Me, Baas," whispered Krool, leaning over him. + +"He saved your life, Colonel," interposed Barry Whalen. + +"I thought it was the brandy," said Jigger with a grin. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + +"THE ALPINE FELLOW" + + +To all who fought in the war a change of some sort had come. Those who +emerged from it to return to England or her far Dominions, or to stay +in the land of the veld, of the kranz and the kloof and the spruit, +were never the same again. Something came which, to a degree, +transformed them, as the salts of the water and the air permeate the +skin and give the blood new life. None escaped the salt of the air of +conflict. + +The smooth-faced young subaltern who but now had all his life before +him, realized the change when he was swept by the leaden spray of +death on Spion Kop, and received in his face of summer warmth, or in +his young exultant heart, the quietus to all his hopes, impulses and +desires. The young find no solace or recompense in the philosophy of +those who regard life as a thing greatly over-estimated. + +Many a private grown hard of flesh and tense of muscle, with his scant +rations and meagre covering in the cold nights, with his long marches +and fruitless risks and futile fightings, when he is shot down, has +little consolation, save in the fact that the thing he and his +comrades and the regiment and the army set out to do is done. If he +has to do so, he gives his life with a stony sense of loss which has +none of the composure of those who have solace in thinking that what +they leave behind has a constantly decreasing value. And here and +there some simple soul, more gifted than his comrades, may touch off +the meaning of it all, as it appears to those who hold their lives in +their hands for a nation's sake, by a stroke of mordant comment. + +So it was with that chess-playing private from New Zealand of whom +Barry Whalen told Ian Stafford. He told it a few days after Rudyard +Byng had won that fight at Hetmeyer's Kopje, which had enabled the +Master Player to turn the flank of the Boers, though there was yet +grim frontal work to do against machines of Death, carefully hidden +and masked on the long hillsides, which would take staggering toll of +Britain's manhood. + +"From behind Otago there in New Zealand, he came," began Barry, "as +fine a fella of thirty-three as ever you saw. Just come, because he +heard old Britain callin'. Down he drops the stock-whip, away he +shoves the plough, up he takes his little balance from the bank, +sticks his chess-box in his pocket, says 'so-long' to his girl, and +treks across the world, just to do his whack for the land that gave +him and all his that went before him the key to civilization, and how +to be happy though alive.... He was the real thing, the ne plus ultra, +the I-stand-alone. The other fellas thought him the best of the +best. He was what my father used to call 'a wide man.' He was in and +out of a fight with a quirk at the corner of his mouth, as much as to +say, 'I've got the hang of this, and it's different from what I +thought; but that doesn't mean it hasn't got to be done, and done in +style. It's the has-to-be.' And when they got him where he breathes, +he fished out the little ivory pawn and put it on a stone at his head, +to let it tell his fellow-countrymen how he looked at it--that he was +just a pawn in the great game. The game had to be played, and won, and +the winner had to sacrifice his pawns. He was one of the +sacrifices. Well, I'd like a tombstone the same as that fella from New +Zealand, if I could win it as fair, and see as far." + +Stafford raised his head with a smile of admiration. "Like the +ancients, like the Oriental Emperors to-day, he left his message. An +Alexander, with not one world conquered." + +"I'm none so sure of that," was Barry's response. "A man that could +put such a hand on himself as he did has conquered a world. He didn't +want to go, but he went as so many have gone hereabouts. He wanted to +stay, but he went against his will, and--and I wish that the +grub-hunters, and tuft-hunters, and the blind greedy majority in +England could get hold of what he got hold of. Then life 'd be a +different thing in Thamesfontein and the little green islands." + +"You were meant for a Savonarola or a St. Francis, my bold grenadier," +said Stafford with a friendly nod. + +"I was meant for anything that comes my way, and to do everything that +was hard enough." + +Stafford waved a hand. "Isn't this hard enough--a handful of guns and +fifteen hundred men lost in a day, and nothing done that you can put +in an envelope and send 'to the old folks at 'ome?'" + +"Well, that's all over, Colonel. Byng has turned the tide by turning +the Boer flank. I'm glad he's got that much out of his big +shindy. It'll do him more good than his millions. He was oozing away +like a fat old pine-tree in London town. He's got all his balsam in +his bones now. I bet he'll get more out of this thing than anybody, +more that's worth having. He doesn't want honours or promotion; he +wants what 'd make his wife sorry to be a widow; and he's getting it." + +"Let us hope that his wife won't be put to the test," responded +Stafford evenly. + +Barry looked at him a little obliquely. "She came pretty near it when +we took Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"Is he all right again?" Stafford asked; then added quickly, "I've had +so much to do since the Hetmeyer business that I have not seen Byng." + +Barry spoke very carefully and slowly. "He's over at Brinkwort's Farm +for a while. He didn't want to go to the hospital, and the house at +the Farm is good enough for anybody. Anyhow, you get away from the +smell of disinfectants and the business of the hospital. It's a +snigger little place is Brinkwort's Farm. There's an orchard of +peaches and oranges, and there are pomegranate hedges, and plenty of +nice flowers in the garden, and a stoep made for candidates for +Stellenbosch--as comfortable as the room of a Rand director." + +"Mrs. Byng is with him?" asked Stafford, his eyes turned towards +Brinkwort's Farm miles away. He could see the trees, the kameel-thorn, +the blue-gums, the orange and peach trees surrounding it, a clump or +cloud of green in the veld. + +"No, Mrs. Byng's not with him," was the reply. + +Stafford stirred uneasily, a frown gathered, his eyes took on a look +of sombre melancholy. "Ah," he said at length, "she has returned to +Durban, then?" + +"No. She got a chill the night of the Hetmeyer coup, and she's in bed +at the hospital." + +Stafford controlled himself. "Is it a bad chill?" he asked +heavily. "Is she dangerously ill?" His voice seemed to thicken. + +"She was; but she's not so bad that a little attention from a friend +would make her worse. She never much liked me; but I went just the +same, and took her some veld-roses." + +"You saw her?" Stafford's voice was very low. + +"Yes, for a minute. She's as thin as she once wasn't," Barry answered, +"but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and she can +smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I expect. Everything +gets a turn of its own at the Front." + +"She was upset and anxious about Byng, I suppose?" Stafford asked, +with his head turned away from this faithfulest of friends, who would +have died for the man now sitting on the stoep of Brinkwort's house, +looking into the bloom of the garden. + +"Naturally," was the reply. Barry Whalen thought carefully of what he +should say, because the instinct of the friend who loved his friend +had told him that, since the night at De Lancy Scovel's house when the +name of Mennaval had been linked so hatefully with that of Byng's +wife, there had been a cloud over Rudyard's life; and that Rudyard and +Jasmine were not the same as of yore. + +"Naturally she was upset," he repeated. "She made Al'mah go and nurse +Byng." + +"Al'mah," repeated Stafford mechanically. "Al'mah!" His mind rushed +back to that night at the opera, when Rudyard had sprung from the box +to the stage and had rescued Al'mah from the flames. The world had +widened since then. + +Al'mah and Jasmine had been under the same roof but now; and Al'mah +was nursing Jasmine's husband--surely life was merely farce and +tragedy. + +At this moment an orderly delivered a message to Barry Whalen. He rose +to go, but turned back to Stafford again. + +"She'd be glad to see you, I'm certain," he said. "You never can tell +what a turn sickness will take in camp, and she's looking pretty +frail. We all ought to stand by Byng and whatever belongs to Byng. No +need to say that to you; but you've got a lot of work and +responsibility, and in the rush you mightn't realize that she's more +ill than the chill makes her. I hope you won't mind my saying so in my +stupid way." + +Stafford rose and grasped his hand, and a light of wonderful +friendliness and comradeship shone in his eyes. + +"Beau chevalier! Beau chevalier!" was all he said, and impulsive Barry +Whalen went away blinking; for hard as iron as he was physically, and +a fighter of courage, his temperament got into his eyes or at his lips +very easily. + +Stafford looked after him admiringly. "Lucky the man who has such a +friend," he said aloud--"Sans peur et sans reproche! He could not +betray a "--the waving of wings above him caught his eye--"he could +not betray an aasvogel." His look followed the bird of prey, the +servitor of carrion death, as it flew down the wind. + +He had absorbed the salt of tears and valour. He had been enveloped in +the Will that makes all wills as one, the will of a common purpose; +and it had changed his attitude towards his troubles, towards his +past, towards his future. + +What Barry had said to him, and especially the tale of the New +Zealander, had revealed the change which had taken place. The War had +purged his mind, cleared his vision. When he left England he was +immersed in egoism, submerged by his own miseries. He had isolated +himself in a lazaretto of self-reproach and resentment. The universe +was tottering because a woman had played him false. Because of this +obsession of self, he was eager to be done with it all, to pay a price +which he might have paid, had it been possible to meet Rudyard pistol +or sword in hand, and die as many such a man has done, without trying +to save his own life or to take the life of another. That he could not +do. Rudyard did not know the truth, had not the faintest knowledge +that Jasmine had been more to himself than an old and dear friend. To +pay the price in any other way than by eliminating himself from the +equation was to smirch her name, be the ruin of a home, and destroy +all hope for the future. + +It had seemed to him that there was no other way than to disappear +honourably through one of the hundred gates which the war would open +to him--to go where Death ambushed the reckless or the brave, and take +the stroke meant for him, on a field of honour all too kind to himself +and soothing to those good friends who would mourn his going, those +who hoped for him the now unattainable things. + +In a spirit of stoic despair he had come to the seat of war. He had +invited Destiny to sweep him up in her reaping, by placing himself in +the ambit of her scythe; but the sharp reaping-hook had passed him by. + +The innumerable exits were there in the wall of life and none had +opened to him; but since the evening when he saw Jasmine at the +railway station, there had been an opening of doors in his soul +hitherto hidden. Beyond these doors he saw glimpses of a new +world--not like the one he had lived in, not so green, so various, or +tumultuous, but it had the lure of that peace, not sterile or +somnolent, which summons the burdened life, or the soul with a +vocation, to the hood of a monk--a busy self-forgetfulness. + +Looking after Barry Whalen's retreating figure he saw this new, grave +world opening out before him; and as the vision floated before his +eyes, Barry's appeal that he should visit Jasmine at the hospital came +to him. + +Jasmine suffered. He recalled Barry's words: "She's as thin as she +once wasn't, but twice as beautiful. Her eyes are as big as stars, and +she can smile still, but it's a new one--a war-smile, I +expect. Everything gets a turn of its own at the Front." + +Jasmine suffered in body. He knew that she suffered in mind also. To +go to her? Was that his duty? Was it his desire? Did his heart cry out +for it either in pity--or in love? + +In love? Slowly a warm flood of feeling passed through him. It was +dimly borne in on him, as he gazed at the hospital in the distance, +that this thing called Love, which seizes upon our innermost selves, +which takes up residence in the inner sanctuary, may not be +dislodged. It stays on when the darkness comes, reigning in the +gloom. Even betrayal, injury, tyranny, do not drive it forth. It +continues. No longer is the curtain drawn aside for tribute, for +appeal, or for adoration, but It remains until the last footfall dies +in the temple, and the portals ate closed forever. + +For Stafford the curtain was drawn before the shrine; but love was +behind the curtain still. + +He would not go to her as Barry had asked. There in Brinkwort's house +in the covert of peaches and pomegranates was the man and the only man +who should, who must, bring new bloom to her cheek. Her suffering +would carry her to Rudyard at the last, unless it might be that one or +the other of them had taken Adrian Fellowes' life. If either had done +that, there could be no reunion. + +He did not know what Al'mah had told Jasmine, the thing which had +cleared Jasmine's vision, and made possible a path which should lead +from the hospital to the house among the orchard-trees at Brinkwort's +Farm. + +No, he would not, could not go to Jasmine--unless, it might be, she +was dying. A sudden, sharp anxiety possessed him. If, as Barry Whalen +suggested, one of those ugly turns should come, which illnesses take +in camp, and she should die without a friend near her, without Rudyard +by her side! He mounted his horse, and rode towards the hospital. + +His inquiries at the hospital relieved his mind. "If there is no turn +for the worse, no complications, she will go on all right, and will be +convalescent in a few days," the medicine-man had said. + +He gave instructions for a message to be sent to him if there was any +change for the worse. His first impulse, to tell them not to let her +know he had inquired, he set aside. There must not be subterfuge or +secrecy any longer. Let Destiny take her course. + +As he left the hospital, he heard a wounded Boer prisoner say to a +Tommy who had fought with him on opposite sides in the same +engagement, "Alles zal recht kom!" All will come right, was the +English of it. + +Out of the agony of conflict would all come right--for Boer, for +Briton, for Rudyard, for Jasmine, for himself, for Al'mah? + +As he entered his tent again, he was handed his mail, which had just +arrived. The first letter he touched had the postmark of Durban. The +address on the envelope was in the handwriting of Lady Tynemouth. + +He almost shrank from opening it, because of the tragedy which had +come to the husband of the woman who had been his faithful friend over +so many years. At an engagement a month before, Tynemouth had been +blinded by shrapnel, and had been sent to Durban. To the two letters +he had written there had come no answer until now; and he felt that +this reply would be a plaint against Fate, a rebellion against the +future restraint and trial and responsibility which would be put upon +the wife, who was so much of the irresponsible world. + +After a moment, however, he muttered a reproach against his own +darkness of spirit and his lack of faith in her womanliness, and +opened the envelope. + +It was not the letter he had imagined and feared. It began by thanking +him for his own letter, and then it plunged into the heart of her +trouble: + +".... Tynie is blind. He will never see again. But his face seems to +me quite beautiful. It shines, Ian: beauty comes from within. Poor old +Tynie, who would have thought that the world he loved couldn't make +that light in his face! I never saw it there--did you? It is just +giving up one's self to the Inevitable. I suppose we mostly are giving +up ourselves to Ourselves, thinking always of our own pleasure and +profit and pride, never being content, pushing on and on...., Ian, I'm +not going to push on any more. I've done with the Climbers. There's +too much of the Climbers in us all--not social climbing, I mean, but +wanting to get somewhere that has something for us, out in the big +material world. When I look at Tynie--he's lying there so +peaceful--you might think it is a prison he is in. It isn't. He's set +free into a world where he had never been. He's set free in a world of +light that never blinds us. If he'd lived to be a hundred with the +sight of his eyes, he'd never have known that there's a world that +belongs to Allah,--I love that word, it sounds so great and yet so +friendly, so gentler than the name by which we call the First One in +our language and our religion--and that world is inside +ourselves.... Tynie is always thinking of other people now, wondering +what they are doing and how they are doing it. He was talking about +you a little while ago, and so admiringly. It brought the tears to my +eyes. Oh, I am so glad, Ian, that our friendship has always been so +much on the surface, so 'void of offence'--is that the phrase? I can +look at it without wincing; and I am glad. It never was a thing of +importance to you, for I am not important, and there was no weight of +life in it or in me. But even the butterfly has its uses, and maybe I +was meant to play a little part in your big life. I like to think it +was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a little more interest from the +drone of the locust or the glow of a butterfly's wings. I'm not sure +that the locust's droning and the bright flutter of the butterfly's +wings are not the way Nature has of fastening the soul to the meaning +of it all. I wonder if you ever heard the lines--foolish they read, +but they are not: + +"'All summer long there was one little butterfly, +Flying ahead of me, +Wings red and yellow, a pretty little fellow, +Flying ahead of me. +One little butterfly, one little butterfly, +What can his message be?-- +All summer long, there was one little butterfly +Flying ahead of me.' + +"It may be so that the poet meant the butterfly to mean the joy of +things, the hope of things, the love of things flying ahead to draw us +on and on into the sunlight and up the steeps, and over the higher +hills. + +"Ian, I would like to be such a butterfly in your eyes at this moment; +perhaps the insignificant means of making you see the near thing to +do, and by doing it get a step on towards the Far Thing. You used +always to think of the Far Thing. Ah, what ambition you had when I +first knew you on the Zambesi, when the old red umbrella, but for you, +would have carried me over into the mist and the thunder! Well, you +have lost that ambition. I know why you came out here. No one ever +told me. The thing behind the words in your letter tells me plainer +than words. The last time I saw you in London--do you remember when it +was? It was the day that Rudyard Byng drove Krool into Park Lane with +the sjambok. Well, that last time, when I met you in the hall as we +were both leaving a house of trouble, I felt the truth. Do you +remember the day I went to see you when Mr. Mappin came? I felt the +truth then more. I often wondered how I could ever help you in the old +days. That was an ambition of mine. But I had no brains--no brains +like Jasmine's and many another woman; and I was never able to do +anything. But now I feel as I never felt anything before in my life. +I feel that my time and my chance have come. I feel like a prophetess, +like Miriam,--or was it Deborah?--and that I must wind the horn of +warning as you walk on the edge of the precipice. + +"Ian, it's only little souls who do the work that should be left to +Allah, and I don't believe that you can take the reins out of Allah's +hands,--He lets you do it, of course, if you insist, for a wilful +child must be taught his lesson--without getting smashed up at a sharp +corner that you haven't learnt to turn. Ian, there's work for you to +do. Even Tynie thinks that he can do some work still. He sees he can, +as he never did before; and he talks of you as a man who can do +anything if you will. He says that if England wanted a strong man +before the war she will want a stronger man afterwards to pick up the +pieces, and put them all together again. He says that after we win, +reconstruction in South Africa will be a work as big as was ever given +to a man, because, if it should fail, 'down will go the whole Imperial +show'--that's Tynie's phrase. And he says, why shouldn't you do it +here, or why shouldn't you be the man who will guide it all in +England? You found the key to England's isolation, to her foreign +problem,--I'm quoting Tynie--which meant that the other nations keep +hands off in this fight; well, why shouldn't you find another key, +that to the future of this Empire? You got European peace for England, +and now the problem is how to make this Empire a real thing. Tynie +says this, not me. His command of English is better than mine, but +neither of us would make a good private secretary, if we had to write +letters with words of over two syllables. I've told you what Tynie +says, but he doesn't know at all what I know; he doesn't see the +danger I see, doesn't realize the mad thing in your brain, the sad +thing weighing down your heart--and hers. + +"Ian, I feel it on my own heart, and I want it lifted away. Your +letter has only one word in it really. That word is Finis. I say, it +must not, shall not, be Finis. Look at the escapes you have had in +this war. Is not that enough to prove that you have a long way to go +yet, and that you have to 'make good' the veld as you trek. To outspan +now would be a crime. It would spoil a great life, it would darken +memory--even mine, Ian. I must speak the truth. I want you, we all +want you, to be the big man you are at heart. Do not be a Lassalle. It +is too small. If one must be a slave, then let it be to something +greater than one's self, higher--toweringly unattainably +higher. Believe me, neither the girl you love nor any woman on earth +is entitled to hold in slavery the energies and the mind and hopes of +a man who can do big things--or any man at all. + +"Ian, Tynie and I have our trials, but we are going to live them +down. At first Tynie wanted to die, but he soon said he would see it +through--blind at forty. You have had your trials, you have them +still; but every gift of man is yours, and every opportunity. Will you +not live it all out to the end? Allah knows the exit He wants for us, +and He must resent our breaking a way out of the prison of our own +making. + +"You've no idea how this life of work with Jasmine has brought things +home to me--and to Jasmine too. When I see the multitude of broken and +maimed victims of war, well, I feel like Jeremiah; but I feel sad too +that these poor fellows and those they love must suffer in order to +teach us our lesson--us and England. Dear old friend, great man, I am +going to quote a verse Tynie read to me last night--oh, how strange +that seems! Yet it was so in a sense, he did read to me. Tynie made me +say the words from the book, but he read into them all that they were, +he that never drew a literary breath. It was a poem Jasmine quoted to +him a fortnight ago--Browning's 'Grammarian,' and he stopped me at +these words: + +"'Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: +Wait ye the warning? +Our low life was the level's and the night's; +He's for the morning.' + +"Tynie stopped me there, and said, 'That's Stafford. He's the Alpine +fellow!' . . ." + +A few sentences more and then the letter ended on a note of courage, +solicitude and friendship. And at the very last she said: + +"It isn't always easy to find the key to things, but you will find it, +not because you are so clever, but because at heart you are so +good.... We both send our love, and don't forget that England hasn't +had a tenth of her share of Ian Stafford...." + +Then there followed a postscript which ran: + +"I always used to say, 'When my ship comes home,' I'd have this or +that. Well, here is the ship--mine and Jasmine's, and it has come Home +for me, and for Jasmine, too, I hope." + +Stafford looked out over the veld. He saw the light of the sun, the +joy of summer, the flowers, the buoyant hills, where all the guns were +silent now; he saw a blesbok in the distance leaping to join its +fellows of a herd which had strayed across the fields of war; he felt +that stir of vibrant life in the air which only the new lands know; +and he raised his head with the light of resolve growing in his eyes. + +"Don't forget that England hasn't had a tenth of her share of Ian +Stafford," Alice Tynemouth had said. + +Looking round, he saw men whose sufferings were no doubt as great as +his own or greater; but they were living on for others' sakes. Despair +retreated before a woman's insight. + +"The Alpine fellow" wanted to live now. + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + +AT BRINKWORT'S FARM + + +"What are you doing here, Krool?" The face of the half-caste had grown +more furtive than it was in the London days, and as he looked at +Stafford now, it had a malignant expression which showed through the +mask of his outward self-control. + +"I am prisoner," Krool answered thickly. + +"When--where?" Stafford inquired, his eye holding the other's. + +"At Hetmeyer's Kopje." + +"But what are you--a prisoner--doing here at Brinkwort's Farm?" + +"I was hurt. They take me hospital, but the Baas, he send for me." + +"They let you come without a guard ?" + +"No--not. They are outside"--Krool jerked a finger towards the rear of +the house--"with the biltong and the dop." + +"You are a liar, Krool. There may be biltong, but there is no dop." + +"What matters!" Krool's face had a leer. He looked impudently at +Stafford, and Stafford read the meaning behind the unveiled insolence: +Krool knew what no one else but Jasmine and himself knew with absolute +certainty. Krool was in his own country, more than half a savage, with +the lust of war in his blood, with memories of a day in Park Lane when +the sjambok had done its ugly work, and Ian Stafford had, as Krool +believed, placed it in the hands of the Baas. + +It might be that this dark spirit, this Nibelung of the tragedy of the +House of Byng, would even yet, when the way was open to a +reconstructed life for Jasmine and Rudyard, bring catastrophe. + +The thought sickened him, and then black anger took possession of +him. The look he cast on the bent figure before him in the threadbare +frock-coat which had been taken from the back of some dead Boer, with +the corded breeches stuck in boots too large for him, and the khaki +hat which some vanished Tommy would never wear again, was resolute and +vengeful. + +Krool must not stay at Brinkwort's Farm. He must be removed. If the +Caliban told Rudyard what he knew, there could be but one end to it +all; and Jasmine's life, if not ruined, must ever be, even at the +best, lived under the cover of magnanimity and compassion. That would +break her spirit, would take from her the radiance of temperament +which alone could make life tolerable to her or to others who might +live with her under the same roof. Anxiety possessed him, and he +swiftly devised means to be rid of Krool before harm could be done. He +was certain harm was meant--there was a look of semi-insanity in +Krool's eyes. Krool must be put out of the way before he could speak +with the Baas.... But how? + +With a great effort Stafford controlled himself. Krool must be got rid +of at once, must be sent back to the prisoners' quarters and kept +there. He must not see Byng now. In a few more hours the army would +move on, leaving the prisoners behind, and Rudyard would presently +move on with the army. This was Byng's last day at Brinkwort's Farm, +to which he himself had come to-day lest Rudyard should take note of +his neglect, and their fellow-officers should remark that the old +friendship had grown cold, and perhaps begin to guess at the reason +why. + +"You say the Baas sent for you?" he asked presently. + +"Yes." + +"To sjambok you again?" + +Krool made a gesture of contempt. "I save the Baas at Hetmeyer's +Kopje. I kill Piet Graaf to do it." + +There was a look of assurance in the eyes of the mongrel, which sent a +wave of coldness through Stafford's veins and gave him fresh anxiety. + +He was in despair. He knew Byng's great, generous nature, and he +dreaded the inconsistency which such men show--forgiving and +forgetting when the iron penalty should continue and the chains of +punishment remain. + +He determined to know the worst. "Traitor all round!" he said +presently with contempt. "You saved the Baas by killing Piet +Graaf--have you told the Baas that? Has any one told the Baas that? +The sjambok is the Baas' cure for the traitor, and sometimes it kills +to cure. Do you think that the Baas would want his life through the +killing of Piet Graaf by his friend Krool, the slim one from the +slime?" + +As a sudden tempest twists and bends a tree, contorts it, bows its +branches to the dust, transforms it from a thing of beauty to a hag of +Walpurgis, so Stafford's words transformed Krool. A passion of rage +possessed him. He looked like one of the creatures that waited on +Wotan in the nether places. He essayed to speak, but at first could +not. His body bent forward, and his fingers spread out in a spasm of +hatred, then clinched with the stroke of a hammer on his knees, and +again opened and shut in a gesture of loathsome cruelty. + +At length he spoke, and Stafford listened intently, for now Caliban +was off his guard, and he knew the worst that was meant. + +"Ah, you speak of traitor--you! The sjambok for the traitor, eh? The +sjambok--fifty strokes, a hunderd strokes--a t'ousand! Krool--Krool +is a traitor, and the sjambok for him. What did he do? What did Krool +do? He help Oom Paul against the Rooinek--against the Philistine. He +help the chosen against the children of Hell. + +"What did Krool do? He tell Oom Paul how the thieves would to come in +the night to sold him like sheep to a butcher, how the t'ousand wolves +would swarm upon the sheepfold, and there would be no homes for the +voortrekker and his vrouw, how the Outlander would sit on our stoeps +and pick the peaches from our gardens. And he tell him other things +good for him to hear." + +Stafford was conscious of the smell of orchard blossoms blown through +the open window, of the odour of the pomegranate in the hedge; but his +eyes were fascinated by the crouching passion of the figure before him +and the dissonance of the low, unhuman voice. There was no pause in +the broken, turgid torrent, which was like a muddy flood pouring over +the boulders of a rapid. + +"Who the traitor is? Is it the man that tries to save his homeland +from the wolf and the worm? I kill Piet Graaf to save the Baas. The +Baas an' I, we understand--on the Limpopo we make the unie. He is the +Baas, and I am his slave. All else nothing is. I kill all the people +of the Baas' country, but I die for the Baas. The Baas kill me if he +will it. So it was set down in the bond on the Limpopo. If the Baas +strike, he strike; if he kill, he kill. It is in the bond, it is set +down. All else go. Piet Graaf, he go. Oom Paul, he go. Joubert, +Cronje, Botha, they all go, if the Baas speak. It is written so. On +the Limpopo it is written. All must go, if the Baas speak--one, two, +three, a t'ousand. Else the bond is water, and the spirits come in the +night, and take you to the million years of torment. It is nothing to +die--pain! But only the Baas is kill me. It is written so. Only the +Baas can hurt me. Not you, nor all the verdomde Rooineks out +there"--he pointed to the vast camp out on the veld--"nor the Baas' +vrouw. Do I not know all about the Baas' vrouw! She cannot hurt +me.. ." He spat on the ground. "Who is the traitor? Is it Krool? Did +Krool steal from the Baas? Krool is the Baas' slave; it is only the +friend of the Baas that steal from him--only him is traitor. I kill +Piet Graaf to save the Baas. No one kills you to save the Baas! I saw +you with your arms round the Baas' vrouw. So I go tell the Baas +all. If he kill me--it is the Baas. It is written." + +He spat on the ground again, and his eyes grown red with his passion +glowered on Stafford like those of some animal of the jungle. + +Stafford's face was white, and every nerve in his body seemed suddenly +to be wrenched by the hand of torture. What right had he to resent +this abominable tirade, this loathsome charge by such a beast? Yet he +would have shot where he stood the fellow who had spoken so of "the +Baas' vrouw," if it had not come to him with sudden conviction that +the end was not to be this way. Ever since he had read Alice +Tynemouth's letter a new spirit had been working in him. He must do +nothing rash. There was enough stain on his hands now without the +added stain of blood. But he must act; he must prevent Krool from +telling the Baas. Yonder at the hospital was Jasmine, and she and her +man must come together here in this peaceful covert before Rudyard +went forward with the army. It must be so. + +Two sentries were beyond the doorway. He stepped quickly to the stoep +and summoned them. They came. Krool watched with eyes that, at first, +did not understand. + +Stafford gave an order. "Take the prisoner to the guard. They will at +once march him back to the prisoners' camp." + +Now Krool understood, and he made as if to spring on Stafford, but a +pistol suddenly faced him, and he knew well that what Stafford would +not do in cold blood, he would do in the exercise of his duty and as a +soldier before these Rooinek privates. He stood still; he made no +resistance. + +But suddenly his voice rang out in a guttural cry--"Baas!" + +In an instant a hand was clapped on his mouth, and his own dirty +neckcloth provided a gag. + +The storm was over. The native blood in him acknowledged the logic +of superior force, and he walked out quietly between the sentries. +Stafford's move was regular from a military point of view. He was +justified in disposing of a dangerous and recalcitrant prisoner. +He could find a sufficient explanation if he was challenged. + +As he turned round from the doorway through which Krool had +disappeared, he saw Al'mah, who had entered from another room during +the incident. + +A light came to Stafford's face. They two derelicts of life had much +in common--the communion of sinners who had been so much sinned +against. + +"I heard his last words about you and--her," she said in a low voice. + +"Where is Byng?" he asked anxiously. + +"In the kloof near by. He will be back presently." + +"Thank God!" + +Al'mah's face was anxious. "I don't know what you are going to say to +him, or why you have come," she said, "but--" + +"I have come to congratulate him on his recovery." + +"I understand. I want to say some things to you. You should know them +before you see him. There is the matter of Adrian Fellowes." + +"What about Adrian Fellowes?" Stafford asked evenly, yet he felt his +heart give a bound and his brain throb. + +"Does it matter to you now? At the inquest you were--concerned." + +"I am more concerned now," he rejoined huskily. + +He suddenly held out a hand to her with a smile of rare +friendliness. There came over him again the feeling he had at the +hospital when they talked together last, that whatever might come of +all the tragedy and sorrow around them they two must face +irretrievable loss. + +She hesitated a moment, and then as she took his outstretched hand she +said, "Yes, I will take it while I can." + +Her eyes went slowly round the room as though looking for +something--some point where they might rest and gather courage maybe, +then they steadied to his firmly. + +"You knew Adrian Fellowes did not die a natural death--I saw that at +the inquest." + +"Yes, I knew." + +"It was a poisoned needle." + +"I know. I found the needle." + +"Ah! I threw it down afterwards. I forgot about it." + +Slowly the colour left Stafford's face, as the light of revelation +broke in upon his brain. Why had he never suspected her? His brain was +buzzing with sounds which came from inner voices--voices of old +thoughts and imaginings, like little beings in a dark forest hovering +on the march of the discoverer. She was speaking, but her voice seemed +to come through a clouded medium from a great distance to him. + +"He had hurt me more than any other--than my husband or her. I did +it. I would do it again.... I had been good to him.... I had suffered, +I wanted something for all I had lost, and he was . . ." + +Her voice trailed away into nothing, then rose again presently. "I am +not sorry. Perhaps you wonder at that. But no, I do not hate myself +for it--only for all that went before it. I will pay, if I have to +pay, in my own way.... Thousands of women die who are killed by hands +that carry no weapon. They die of misery and shame and regret.... This +one man died because ..." + +He did not hear, or if he heard he did not realize what she was saying +now. One thought was ringing through his mind like bells pealing. The +gulf of horrible suspicion between Rudyard and Jasmine was closed. So +long as it yawned, so long as there was between them the accounting +for Adrian Fellowes' death, they might have come together, but there +would always have been a black shadow between--the shadow that hangs +over the scaffold. + +"They should know the truth," he said almost peremptorily. + +"They both know," she rejoined calmly. "I told him this evening. On +the day I saw you at the hospital, I told her." + +There was silence for a moment, and then he said: "She must come here +before he joins his regiment." + +"I saw her last night at the hospital," Al'mah answered. "She was +better. She was preparing to go to Durban. I did not ask her if she +was coming, but I was sure she was not. So, just now, before you came, +I sent a message to her. It will bring her.... It does not matter what +a woman like me does." + +"What did you say to her?" + +"I wrote, 'If you wish to see him before the end, come quickly.' She +will think he is dying." + +"If she resents the subterfuge?" + +"Risks must be taken. If he goes without their meeting--who can tell! +Now is the time--now. I want to see it. It must be." + +He reached out both hands and took hers, while she grew pale. Her eyes +had a strange childishly frightened look. + +"You are a good woman, Al'mah," he said. + +A quivering, ironical laugh burst from her lips. Then, suddenly, her +eyes were suffused. + +"The world would call it the New Goodness then," she replied in a +voice which told how deep was the well of misery in her being. + +"It is as old as Allah," he replied. + +"Or as old as Cain?" she responded, then added quickly, "Hush! He is +coming." + +An instant afterwards she was outside among the peach trees, and +Rudyard and Stafford faced each other in the room she had just left. + +As Al'mah stood looking into the quivering light upon the veld, her +fingers thrust among the blossoms of a tree which bent over her, she +heard horses' hoofs, and presently there came round the corner of the +house two mounted soldiers who had brought Krool to Brinkwort's +Farm. Their prisoner was secured to a stirrup-leather, and the +neckcloth was still binding his mouth. + +As they passed, Krool turned towards the house, eyes showing like +flames under the khaki trooper's hat, which added fresh incongruity to +the frock-coat and the huge top-boots. + +The guard were now returning to their post at the door-way. + +"What has happened?" she asked, with a gesture towards the departing +Krool. + +"A bit o' lip to Colonel Stafford, ma'am," answered one of the +guard. "He's got a tongue like a tanner's vat, that goozer. Wants a +lump o' lead in 'is baskit 'e does." + +"'E done a good turn at Hetmeyer's Kopje," added the Second. "If it +hadn't been for 'im the S.A.'s would have had a new Colonel"--he +jerked his head towards the house, from which came the murmur of men's +voices talking earnestly. + +"Whatever 'e done it for, it was slim, you can stake a tidy lot on +that, ma'am," interjected the First. "He's the bottom o' the sink, +this half-caste Boojer is." + +The Second continued: "If I 'ad my way 'e'd be put in front at the +next push-up, just where the mausers of his pals would get 'im. 'E's +done a lot o' bitin' in 'is time--let 'im bite the dust now, I +sez. I'm fair sick of treatin' that lot as if they was square +fighters. Why, 'e'd fire on a nurse or an ambulanche, that tyke +would." + +"There's lots like him in yonder," urged the First, as a hand was +jerked forward towards the hills, "and we're goin' to get 'em this +time--goin' to get 'em on the shovel. Their schanses and their kranzes +and their ant-bear dugouts ain't goin' to help them this mop-up. We're +goin' to get the tongue in the hole o' the buckle this time. It's over +the hills and far away, and the Come-in-Elizas won't stop us. When the +howitzers with their nice little balls of lyddite physic get opening +their bouquets to-morrow--" + +"Who says to-morrow?" demanded the Second. + +"I says to-morrow. I know. I got ears, and 'im that 'as ears to 'ear +let 'im 'ear--that's what the Scripture saith. I was brought up on the +off side of a vicarage." + +He laughed eagerly at his own joke, chuckling till his comrade +followed up with a sharp challenge. + +"I bet you never heard nothin' but your own bleatin's--not about wot +the next move is, and w'en it is." + +The First made quick retort. "Then you lose your bet, for I 'eard +Colonel Byng get 'is orders larst night--w'en you was sleepin' at +your post, Willy. By to-morrow this time you'll see the whole outfit +at it. You'll see the little billows of white rolling over the +hills--that's shrapnel. You'll hear the rippin', zippin', zimmin' +thing in the air wot makes you sick; for you don't know who it's goin' +to 'it. That's shells. You'll hear a thousand blankets being +shook--that's mausers and others. You'll see regiments marching out o' +step, an' every man on his own, which is not how we started this war, +not much. And where there's a bit o' rock, you say, 'Ere's a friend, +and you get behind it like a man. And w'en there's nothing to get +behind, you get in front, and take your chances, and you get +there--right there, over the trenches, over the bloomin' Amalakites, +over the hills and far away, where they want the relief they're goin' +to get, or I'm a pansy blossom." + +"Well, to-morrow can't come quick enough for me," answered the +Second. He straightened out his shoulders and eyed the hills in front +of him with a calculating air, as though he were planning the tactics +of the fight to come. + +"We'll all be in it--even you, ma'am," insinuated the First to Al'mah +with a friendly nod. "But I'd ruther 'ave my job nor yours. I've done +a bit o' nursin'--there was Bob Critchett that got a splinter o' shell +in 'is 'ead, and there was Sergeant Hoyle and others. But it gits me +where I squeak that kind o' thing do." + +Suddenly they brought their rifles to the salute, as a footstep +sounded smartly on the stoep. It was Stafford coming from the house. + +He acknowledged the salute mechanically. His eyes were fastened on the +distance. They had a rapt, shining look, and he walked like one in a +pleasant dream. A moment afterwards he mounted his horse with the +lightness of a boy, and galloped away. + +He had not seen Al'mah as he passed. + +In her fingers was crushed a bunch of orange blossoms. A heavy sigh +broke from her lips. She turned to go within, and, as she did so, saw +Rudyard Byng looking from the doorway towards the hospital where +Jasmine was. + +"Will she come?" Al'mah asked herself, and mechanically she wiped the +stain of the blossoms from her fingers. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + +SPRINGS OF HEALING + + +Dusk had almost come, yet Jasmine had not arrived at Brinkwort's Farm, +the urgency of Al'mah's message notwithstanding. As things stood, it +was a matter of life and death; and to Al'mah's mind humanity alone +should have sent Jasmine at once to her husband's side. Something of +her old prejudice against Jasmine rose up again. Perhaps behind it all +was involuntary envy of an invitation to happiness so freely laid at +Jasmine's feet, but withheld from herself by Fate. Never had the +chance to be happy or the obvious inducement to be good ever been +hers. She herself had nothing, and Jasmine still had a chance for all +to which she had no right. Her heart beat harder at the thought of +it. She was of those who get their happiness first in making others +happy--as she would have done with Blantyre, if she had had a chance; +as even she tried to do with the man whom she had sent to his account +with the firmness and fury of an ancient Greek. The maternal, the +protective sense was big in her, and indirectly it had governed her +life. It had sent her to South Africa--to protect the wretch who had +done his best to destroy her; it had made her content at times as she +did her nurse's work in what dreadful circumstances! It was the source +of her revolt at Jasmine's conduct and character. + +But was it also that, far beneath her criticism of Jasmine, which was, +after all, so little in comparison with the new-found affection she +really had for her, there lay a kinship, a sympathy, a soul's +rapprochement with Rudyard, which might, in happier circumstances, +have become a mating such as the world knew in its youth? Was that +also in part the cause of her anxiety for Rudyard, and of her sharp +disapproval of Jasmine? Did she want to see Rudyard happy, no matter +at what cost to Jasmine? Was it the everlasting feminine in her which +would make a woman sacrifice herself for a man, if need be, in order +that he might be happy? Was it the ancient tyrannical soul in her +which would make a thousand women sacrifice themselves for the man she +herself set above all others? + +But she was of those who do not know what they are, or what they think +and feel, till some explosion forces open the doors of their souls and +they look upon a new life over a heap of ruins. + +She sat in the gathering dusk, waiting, while hope slowly +waned. Rudyard also, on the veranda, paced weakly, almost stumblingly, +up and down, his face also turning towards the Stay Awhile +Hospital. At length, with a heavy sigh, he entered the house and sat +down in a great arm-chair, from which old Brinkwort the Boer had laid +down the law for his people. + +Where was Jasmine? Why did she not hasten to Brinkwort's Farm? + +A Staff Officer from the General Commanding had called to congratulate +Jasmine on her recovery, and to give fresh instructions which would +link her work at Durban effectively with the army as it now moved on +to the relief of the town beyond the hills. Al'mah's note had arrived +while the officer was with Jasmine, and it was held back until he +left. It was then forgotten by the attendant on duty, and it lay for +three hours undelivered. Then when it was given to her, no mention was +made of the delay. + +When the Staff Officer left her, he had said to himself that hers was +one of the most alluring and fascinating faces he had ever seen; and +he, like Stafford, though in another sphere--that of the Secret +Intelligence Department--had travelled far and wide in the +world. Perfectly beautiful he did not call her, though her face was as +near that rarity as any he had known. He would only have called a +woman beautiful who was tall, and she was almost petite; but that was +because he himself was over-tall, and her smallness seemed to be +properly classed with those who were pretty, not the handsome or the +beautiful. But there was something in her face that haunted him--a +wistful, appealing delicacy, which yet was associated with an instant +readiness of intellect, with a perspicuous judgment and a gift of +organization. And she had eyes of blue which were "meant to drown +those who hadn't life-belts," as he said. + +In one way or another he put all this to his fellow officers, and said +that the existence of two such patriots as Byng and Jasmine in one +family was unusual. + +"Pretty fairly self-possessed, I should say," said Rigby, the youngest +officer present at mess. "Her husband under repair at Brinkwort's +Farm, in the care of the blue-ribbon nurse of the army, who makes a +fellow well if he looks at her, and she studying organization at the +Stay Awhile with a staff-officer." + +The reply of the Staff Officer was quick and cutting enough for any +officers' mess. + +"I see by the latest papers from England, that Balfour says we'll +muddle through this war somehow," he said. "He must have known you, +Rigby. With the courage of the damned you carry a fearsome lot of +impedimenta, and you muddle quite adequately. The lady you have +traduced has herself been seriously ill, and that is why she is not at +Brinkwort's Farm. What a malicious mind you've got! Byng would think +so." + +"If Rigby had been in your place to-day," interposed a gruff major, +"the lady would surely have had a relapse. Convalescence is no time +for teaching the rudiments of human intercourse." + +Pale and angry, Rigby, who was half Scotch and correspondingly +self-satisfied, rejoined stubbornly: "I know what I know. They haven't +met since she came up from Durban. Sandlip told me that--" + +The Staff Officer broke the sentence. "What Sandlip told you is what +Nancy woutd tell Polly and Polly would tell the cook--and then Rigby +would know. But statement number one is an Ananiasism, for Byng saw +his wife at the hospital the night before Hetmeyer's Kopje. I can't +tell what they said, though, nor what was the colour of the lady's +pegnoir, for I am neither Nancy nor Polly nor the cook--nor Rigby." + +With a maddened gesture Rigby got to his feet, but a man at his side +pulled him down. "Sit still, Baby Bunting, or you'll not get over the +hills to-morrow," he said, and he offered Rigby a cigar from Rigby's +own cigar-case, cutting off the end, handing it to him and lighting a +match. + +"Gun out of action: record the error of the day," piped the thin +precise voice of the Colonel from the head of the table. + +A chorus of quiet laughter met the Colonel's joke, founded on the +technical fact that the variation in the firing of a gun, due to any +number of causes, though apparently firing under the same conditions, +is carted officially "the error of the day" in Admiralty reports. + +"Here the incident closed," as the newspapers say, but Rigby the +tactless and the petty had shown that there was rumour concerning the +relations of Byng and his wife, which Jasmine, at least, imagined did +not exist. + +When Jasmine read the note Al'mah had sent her, a flush stole slowly +over her face, and then faded, leaving a whiteness, behind which was +the emanation, not of fear, but of agitation and of shock. + +It meant that Rudyard was dying, and that she must go to him. That she +must go to him? Was that the thought in her mind--that she must go to +him? + +If she wished to see him again before he went! That midnight, when he +was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had flung from her room into +the night, and ridden away angrily on his grey horse, not hearing her +voice faintly calling after him. Now, did she want to see him--the +last time before he rode away again forever, on that white horse +called Death? A shudder passed through her. + +"Ruddy! Poor Ruddy!" she said, and she did not remember that those +were the pitying, fateful words she used on the day when Ian Stafford +dined with her alone after Rudyard made his bitter protest against the +life they lived. "We have everything--everything," he had said, "and +yet--" + +Now, however, there was an anguished sob in her voice. With the +thought of seeing him, her fingers tremblingly sought the fine-spun +strands of hair which ever lay a little loose from the wonder of its +great coiled abundance, and then felt her throat, as though to adjust +the simple linen collar she wore, making exquisite contrast to the +soft simplicity of her dark-blue gown. + +She found the attendant who had given her the letter, and asked if the +messenger was waiting, and was only then informed that he had been +gone three hours or more. + +Three hours or more! It might be that Rudyard was gone forever without +hearing what she had to say, or knowing whether she desired +reconciliation and peace. + +She at once gave orders for a cape-cart to take her over to +Brinkwort's Farm. The attendant respectfully said that he must have +orders. She hastened to the officer in charge of the hospital, and +explained. His sympathy translated itself into instant action. +Fortunately there was a cart at the door. In a moment she was +ready, and the cart sped away into the night across the veld. + +She had noticed nothing as she mounted the cart--neither the driver +nor the horses; but, as they hurried on, she was roused by a familiar +voice saying, "'E done it all right at Hetmeyer's Kopje--done it +brown. First Wortmann's Drift, and then Hetmeyer's Kopje, and he'll be +over the hills and through the Boers and into Lordkop with the rest of +the hold-me-backs." + +She recognized him--the first person who had spoken to her of her +husband on her arrival, the cheerful Corporal Shorter, who had told +her of Wortmann's Drift and the saving of "Old Gunter." + +She touched his arm gently. "I am glad it is you," she said in a low +tone. + +"Not so glad as I am," he answered. "It's a purple shame that you +should ha' been took sick when he was mowed down, and that some one +else should be healin' 'is gapin' wounds besides 'is lawful wife, and +'er a rifle-shot away! It's a fair shame, that's wot it is. But all's +well as ends well, and you're together at the finish." + +She shrank from his last words. Her heart seemed to contract; it hurt +her as though it was being crushed in a vise. She was used to that +pain now. She had felt it--ah, how many times since the night she +found Adrian Fellowes' white rose on her pillow, laid there by the man +she had sworn at the altar to love, honor, and obey! Her head +drooped. "At the finish"--how strange and new and terrible it was! +The world stood still for her. + +"You'll go together to Lordkop, I expeck," she heard her companion's +voice say, and at first she did not realize its meaning; then slowly +it came to her. "At the finish" in his words meant the raising of the +siege of Lordkop, it meant rescue, victory, restoration. He had not +said that Rudyard was dead, that the Book of Rudyard and Jasmine was +closed forever. Her mind was in chaos, her senses in confusion. She +seemed like one in a vague shifting, agonizing dream. + +She was unconscious of what her friendly Corporal was saying. She only +answered him mechanically now and then; and he, seeing that she was +distraught, talked on in a comforting kind of way, telling her +anecdotes of Rudyard, as they were told in that part of the army to +which he belonged. + +What was she going to do when she arrived? What could she do if +Rudyard was dead? If Rudyard was still alive, she would make him +understand that she was not the Jasmine of the days "before the +flood"--before that storm came which uprooted all that ever was in her +life except the old, often anguished, longing to be good, and the +power which swept her into bye and forbidden paths. If he was gone, +deaf to her voice and to any mortal sound, then--there rushed into her +vision the figure of Ian Stafford, but she put that from her with a +trembling determination. That was done forever. She was as sure of it +as she was sure of anything in the world. Ian had not forgiven her, +would never forgive her. He despised her, rejected her, abhorred +her. Ian had saved her from the result of Rudyard's rash retaliation +and fury, and had then repulsed her, bidden her stand off from him +with a magnanimity and a chivalry which had humiliated her. He had +protected her from the shame of an open tragedy, and then had shut the +door in her face. Rudyard, with the same evidence as Ian held,--the +same letter as proof--he, whatever he believed or thought, he had +forgiven her. Only a few nights ago, that night before the fight at +Hetmeyer's Kopje, he had opened his arms to her and called her his +wife. In Rudyard was some great good thing, something which could not +die, which must live on. She sat up straight in the seat of the cart, +her hands clinched. + +No, no, no, Rudyard was not dead, and he should not die. It mattered +not what Al'mah had written, she must have her chance to prove +herself; his big soul must have its chance to run a long course, must +not be cut off at the moment when so much had been done; when there +was so much to do. Ian should see that she was not "just a little +burst of eloquence," as he had called her, not just a strumpet, as he +thought her; but a woman now, beyond eloquence, far distant from the +poppy-fields of pleasure. She was young enough for it to be a virtue +in her to avoid the poppy-fields. She was not twenty-six years of age, +and to have learned the truth at twenty-six, and still not to have +been wholly destroyed by the lies of life, was something which might +be turned to good account. + +She was sharply roused, almost shocked out of her distraction. Bright +lights appeared suddenly in front of her, and she heard the voice of +her Corporal saying: "We're here, ma'am, where old Brinkwort built a +hospital for one, and that one's yours, Mrs. Byng." + +He clucked to his horses and they slackened. All at once the lights +seemed to grow larger, and from the garden of Brinkwort's house came +the sharp voice of a soldier saying: + +"Halt! Who goes there?" + +"A friend," was the Corporal's reply. + +"Advance, friend, and give the countersign," was brusquely returned. + +A moment afterwards Jasmine was in the sweet-smelling garden, and the +lights of the house were flaring out upon her. + +She heard at the same time the voices of the sentry and of Corporal +Shorter in low tones of badinage, and she frowned. It was cruel that +at the door of the dead or the dying there should be such levity. + +All at once a figure came between her and the light. Instinctively she +knew it was Al'mah. + +"Al'mah! Al'mah!" she said painfully, and in a voice scarce above a +whisper. + +The figure of the singing-woman bent over her protectingly, as it +might almost seem, and her hands were caught in a warm clasp. + +"Am I in time?" Jasmine asked, and the words came from her in gasps. + +Al'mah had no repentance for her deception. She saw an agitation which +seemed to her deeper and more real than any emotion ever shown by +Jasmine, not excepting the tragical night at the Glencader Mine and +the morning of the first meeting at the Stay Awhile Hospital. The +butterfly had become a thrush that sang with a heart in its throat. + +She gathered Jasmine's eyes to her own. It seemed as though she never +would answer. To herself she even said, why should she hurry, since +all was well, since she had brought the two together living, who had +been dead to each other these months past, and, more than all, had +been of the angry dead? A little more pain and regret could do no +harm, but only good. Besides, now that she was face to face with the +result of her own deception, she had a sudden fear that it might go +wrong. She had no remorse for the act, but only a faint apprehension +of the possible consequences. Suppose that in the shock of discovery +Jasmine should throw everything to the winds, and lose herself in +arrant egotism once more! Suppose--no, she would suppose nothing. She +must believe that all she had done was for the best. + +She felt how cold were the small delicate hands in her own strong warm +fingers, she saw the frightened appeal of the exquisite haunting eyes, +and all at once realized the cause of that agitation--the fear that +death had come without understanding, that the door had been forever +shut against the answering voices. + +"You are in time," she said gently, encouragingly, and she tightened +the grasp of her hands. + +As the volts of an electric shock quivering through a body are +suddenly withdrawn, and the rigidity becomes a ghastly inertness, so +Jasmine's hands, and all her body, seemed released. She felt as though +she must fall, but she reasserted her strength, and slowly regained +her balance, withdrawing her hands from those of Al'mah. + +"He is alive--he is alive--he is alive," she kept repeating to herself +like one in a dream. Then she added hastily, with an effort to bear +herself with courage: "Where is he? Take me." + +Al'mah motioned, and in a moment they were inside the house. A sense +of something good and comforting came over Jasmine. Here was an old, +old room furnished in heavy and simple Dutch style, just as old Elias +Brinkwort had left it. It had the grave and heavy hospitableness of a +picture of Teniers or Jan Steen. It had the sense of home, the welcome +of the cradle and the patriarch's chair. These were both here as they +were when Elias Brinkwort and his people went out to join the Boer +army in the hills, knowing that the verdomde Rooinek would not loot +his house or ravage his belongings. + +To Jasmine's eyes, it brought a new strange sense, as though all at +once doors had been opened up to new sensations of life. Almost +mechanically, yet with a curious vividness and permanency of vision, +her eyes drifted from the patriarch's chair to the cradle in the +corner; and that picture would remain with her till she could see no +more at all. Unbidden and unconscious there came upon her lips a faint +smile, and then a door in front of her was opened, and she was inside +another room--not a bedroom as she had expected, but a room where the +Dutch simplicity and homely sincerity had been invaded by something +English and military. This she felt before her eyes fell on a man +standing beside a table, fully dressed. Though shaken and worn, it was +a figure which had no affinity with death. + +As she started back Al'mah closed the door behind her, and she found +herself facing Rudyard, looking into his eyes. + +Al'mah had miscalculated. She did not realize Jasmine as she really +was--like one in a darkened room who leans out to the light and +sun. The old life, the old impetuous egoism, the long years of self +were not yet gone from a character composite of impulse, vanity and +intensity. This had been too daring an experiment with one of her +nature, which had within the last few months become as strangely, +insistently, even fanatically honest, as it had been elusive in the +past. In spite of a tremulous effort to govern herself and see the +situation as it really was--an effort of one who desired her good to +bring her and Rudyard together, the ruse itself became magnified to +monstrous proportions, and her spirit suddenly revolted. She felt that +she had been inveigled; that what should have been her own voluntary +act of expiation and submission, had been forced upon her, and pride, +ever her most secret enemy, took possession of her. + +"I have been tricked," she said, with eyes aflame and her body +trembling. "You have trapped me here!" There was scorn and indignation +in her voice. + +He did not move, but his eyes were intent upon hers and persistently +held them. He had been near to death, and his vision had been more +fully cleared than hers. He knew that this was the end of all or the +beginning of all things for them both; and though anger suddenly +leaped at the bottom of his heart, he kept it in restraint, the +primitive thing of which he had had enough. + +"I did not trick you, Jasmine," he answered, in a low voice. "The +letter was sent without my knowledge or permission. Al'mah thought she +was doing us both a good turn. I never deceived you--never. I should +not have sent for you in any case. I heard you were ill and I tried to +get up and go to you; but it was not possible. Besides, they would not +let me. I wanted to go to you again, because, somehow, I felt that +midnight meeting in the hospital was a mistake; that it ended as you +would not really wish it to end." + +Again, with wonderful intuition for a man who knew so little of women, +as he thought, he had said the one thing which could have cooled the +anger that drowned the overwhelming gratitude she felt at his being +alive--overwhelming, in spite of the fact that her old mad temperament +had flooded it for the moment. + +He would have gone to her--that was what he had said. In spite of her +conduct that midnight, when he was on his way to Hetmeyer's Kopje, he +would have come again to her! How, indeed, he must have loved her; or +how magnanimous, how impossibly magnanimous, he was! + +How thin and worn he was, and how large the eyes were in the face +grown hollow with suffering! There were liberal streaks of grey also +at his temples, and she noted there was one strand all white just in +the centre of his thick hair. A swift revulsion of feeling in her +making for peace was, however, sharply arrested by the look in his +eyes. It had all the sombreness of reproach--of immitigable +reproach. Could she face that look now and through the years to come? +It were easier to live alone to the end with her own remorse, drinking +the cup that would not empty, on and on, than to live with that look +in his eyes. + +She turned her head away from him. Her glance suddenly caught a +sjambok lying along two nails on the wall. His eyes followed hers, and +in the minds of both was the scene when Rudyard drove Krool into the +street under just such a whip of rhinoceros-hide. + +Something of the old spirit worked in her in spite of +all. Idiosyncrasy may not be cauterized, temperament must assert +itself, or the personality dies. Was he to be her master--was that the +end of it all? She had placed herself so completely in his power by +her wilful waywardness and errors. Free from blame, she would have +been ruler over him; now she must be his slave! + +"Why did you not use it on me?" she asked, in a voice almost like a +cry, though it had a ring of bitter irony. "Why don't you use it now? +Don't you want to?" + +"You were always so small and beautiful," he answered, slowly. "A +twenty-stamp mill to crush a bee!" + +Again resentment rose in her, despite the far-off sense of joy she had +in hearing him play with words. She could forgive almost anything for +that--and yet she was real and had not merely the dilettante soul. But +why should he talk as though she was a fly and he an eagle? Yet there +was admiration in his eyes and in his words. She was angry with +herself--and with him. She was in chaos again. + +"You treat me like a child, you condescend--" + +"Oh, for God's sake--for God's sake!" he interrupted, with a sudden +storm in his face; but suddenly, as though by a great mastery of the +will, he conquered himself, and his face cleared. + +"You must sit down, Jasmine," he said, hurriedly. "You look tired. You +haven't got over your illness yet." + +He hastily stepped aside to get her a chair, but, as he took hold of +it, he stumbled and swayed in weakness, born of an excitement far +greater than her own; for he was thinking of the happiness of two +people, not of the happiness of one; and he realized how critical was +this hour. He had a grasp of the bigger things, and his talk with +Stafford of a few hours ago was in his mind--a talk which, in its +brevity, still had had the limitlessness of revelation. He had made a +promise to one of the best friends that man--or woman--ever had, as he +thought; and he would keep it. So he said to himself. Stafford +understood Jasmine, and Stafford had insisted that he be not deceived +by some revolt on the part of Jasmine, which would be the outcome of +her own humiliation, of her own anger with herself for all the trouble +she had caused. So he said to himself. + +As he staggered with the chair she impulsively ran to aid him. + +"Rudyard," she exclaimed, with concern, "you must not do that. You +have not the strength. It is silly of you to be up at all. I wonder at +Al'mah and the doctor!" + +She pushed him to a big arm-chair beside the table and gently pressed +him down into the seat. He was very weak, and his hand trembled on the +chair-arm. She reached out, as if to take it; but, as though the act +was too forward, her fingers slipped to his wrist instead, and she +felt his pulse with the gravity of a doctor. + +Despite his weakness a look of laughter crept into his eyes and stayed +there. He had read the little incident truly. Presently, seeing the +whiteness of his face but not the look in his eyes, she turned to the +table, and pouring out a glass of water from a pitcher there, held it +to his lips. + +"Here, Rudyard," she said, soothingly, "drink this. You are faint. You +shouldn't have got up simply because I was coming." + +As he leaned back to drink from the glass she caught the gentle humour +of his look, begotten of the incident of a moment before. + +There was no reproach in the strong, clear eyes of blue which even +wounds and illness had not faced--only humour, only a hovering joy, +only a good-fellowship, and the look of home. She suddenly thought of +the room from which she had just come, and it seemed, not +fantastically to her, that the look in his eyes belonged to the other +room where were the patriarch's chair and the baby's cradle. There was +no offending magnanimity, no lofty compassion in his blameless eyes, +but a human something which took no account of the years that the +locust had eaten, the old mad, bad years, the wrong and the shame of +them. There was only the look she had seen the day he first visited +her in her own home, when he had played with words she had used in the +way she adored, and would adore till she died; when he had said, in +reply to her remark that he would turn her head, that it wouldn't make +any difference to his point of view if she did turn her head! Suddenly +it was all as if that day had come back, although his then giant +physical strength had gone; although he had been mangled in the +power-house of which they had spoken that day. Come to think of it, +she too had been working in the "power-house" and had been mangled +also; for she was but a thread of what she was then, but a wisp of +golden straw to the sheaf of the then young golden wheat. + +All at once, in answer to the humour in his eyes, to the playful +bright look, the tragedy and the passion which had flown out from her +old self like the flame that flares out of an opened furnace-door, +sank back again, the door closed, and all her senses were cooled as by +a gentle wind. + +Her eyes met his, and the invitation in them was like the call of the +thirsty harvester in the sunburnt field. With an abandon, as startling +as it was real and true to her nature, she sank down to the floor and +buried her face in her hands at his feet. She sobbed deeply, softly. + +With an exclamation of gladness and welcome he bent over her and drew +her close to him, and his hands soothed her trembling shoulders. + +"Peace is the best thing of all, Jasmine," he whispered. "Peace." + +They were the last words that Ian had addressed to her. It did not +make her shrink now that both had said to her the same thing, for both +knew her, each in his own way, better than she had ever known herself; +and each had taught her in his own way, but by what different means! + +All at once, with a start, she caught Rudyard's arm with a little +spasmodic grasp. + +"I did not kill Adrian Fellowes," she said, like a child eager to be +absolved from a false imputation. She looked up at him simply, +bravely. + +"Neither did I," he answered gravely, and the look in his eyes did not +change. She noted that. + +"I know. It was--" + +She paused. What right had she to tell! + +"Yes, we both know who did it," he added. "Al'mah told me." + +She hid her head in her hands again, while he hung over her wisely +waiting and watching. + +Presently she raised her head, but her swimming eyes did not seek +his. They did not get so high. After one swift glance towards his own, +they dropped to where his heart might be, and her voice trembled as +she said: + +"Long ago Alice Tynemouth said I ought to marry a man who would master +me. She said I needed a heavy hand over me--and the shackles on my +wrists." + +She had forgotten that these phrases were her own; that she had used +them concerning herself the night before the tragedy. + +"I think she was right," she added. "I had never been mastered, and I +was all childish wilfulness and vanity. I was never worth while. You +took me too seriously, and vanity did the rest." + +"You always had genius," he urged, gently, "and you were so +beautiful." + +She shook her head mournfully. "I was only an imitation always--only a +dresden-china imitation of the real thing I might have been, if I had +been taken right in time. I got wrong so early. Everything I said or +did was mostly imitation. It was made up of other people's acts and +words. I could never forget anything I'd ever heard; it drowned any +real thing in me. I never emerged--never was myself." + +"You were a genius," he repeated again. "That's what genius does. It +takes all that ever was and makes it new." + +She made a quick spasmodic protest of her hand. She could not bear to +have him praise her. She wanted to tell him all that had ever been, +all that she ought to be sorry for, was sorry for now almost beyond +endurance. She wanted to strip her soul bare before him; but she +caught the look of home in his eyes, she was at his knees at peace, +and what he thought of her meant so much just now--in this one hour, +for this one hour. She had had such hard travelling, and here was a +rest-place on the road. + +He saw that her soul was up in battle again, but he took her arms, and +held them gently, controlling her agitation. Presently, with a great +sigh, her forehead drooped upon his hands. They were in a vast theatre +of war, and they were part of it; but for the moment sheer waste of +spirit and weariness of soul made peace in a turbulent heart. + +"It's her real self--at last," he kept saying to himself, "She had to +have her chance, and she has got it." + +Outside in a dark corner of the veranda, Al'mah was in reverie. She +knew from the silence within that all was well. The deep peace of the +night, the thing that was happening in the house, gave her a moment's +surcease from her own problem, her own arid loneliness. Her mind went +back to the night when she had first sung "Manassa" at Covent +Garden. The music shimmered in her brain. She essayed to hum some +phrases of the opera which she had always loved, but her voice had no +resonance or vibration. It trailed away into a whisper. + +"I can't sing any more. What shall I do when the war ends? Or is it +that I am to end here with the war?" she whispered to herself.... +Again reverie deepened. Her mind delivered itself up to an obsession. +"No, I am not sorry I killed him," she said firmly after a long time, +"If a price must be paid, I will pay it." + +Buried in her thoughts, she was scarcely conscious of voices near +by. At last they became insistent to her ears, They were the voices of +sentries off duty--the two who had talked to her earlier in the +evening, after Ian Stafford had left. + +"This ain't half bad, this night ain't," said one. "There's a lot o' +space in a night out here." + +"I'd like to be 'longside o' some one I know out by 'Ampstead 'Eath," +rejoined the other. + +"I got a girl in Camden Town," said the First victoriously. + +"I got kids--somewheres, I expect," rejoined the Second with a +flourish of pride and self-assertion. + +"Oh, a donah's enough for me!" returned the First. + +"You'll come to the other when you don't look for it neither," +declared his friend in a voice of fatality. + +"You ain't the only fool in the world, mate, of course. But 'struth, I +like this business better. You've got a good taste in your mouth in +the morning 'ere." + +"Well, I'll meet you on 'Ampstead 'Eath when the war is over, son," +challenged the Second. + +"I ain't 'opin' and I ain't prophesyin' none this heat," was the quiet +reply. "We've got a bit o' hell in front of us yet. I'll talk to you +when we're in Lordkop." + +"I'll talk to your girl in Camden Town, if you 'appen to don't," was +the railing reply. + +"She couldn't stand it not but the once," was the retort; and then +they struck each other with their fists in rough play, and laughed, +and said good-night in the vernacular. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVII + +UNDER THE GUN + + +They had left him for dead in a dreadful circle of mangled gunners who +had fallen back to cover in a donga, from a fire so stark that it +seemed the hillside itself was discharging myriad bolts of death, as a +waterwheel throws off its spray. No enemy had been visible, but far +away in front--that front which must be taken--there hung over the +ridge of the hills veils of smoke like lace. Hideous sounds tortured +the air--crackling, snapping, spitting sounds like the laughter of +animals with steel throats. Never was ill work better done than when, +on that radiant veld, the sky one vast turquoise vault, beneath which +quivered a shimmer of quicksilver light, the pom-poms, the maulers, +and the shrapnel of Kruger's men mowed down Stafford and his battery, +showered them, drowned them in a storm of lead. + +"Alamachtig," said a Rustenburg dopper who, at the end of the day, +fell into the hands of the English, "it was like cutting alfalfa with +a sickle! Down they tumbled, horses and men, mashed like mealies in +the millstones. A damn lot of good horses was killed this time. The +lead-grinders can't pick the men and leave the horses. It was a +verdomde waste of good horses. The Rooinek eats from a bloody basin +this day." + +Alamachtig! + +At the moment Ian Stafford fell the battle was well launched. The air +was shrieking with the misery of mutilated men and horses and the +ghoulish laughter of pom-poms. When he went down it seemed to him that +human anger had reached its fullest expression. Officers and men alike +were in a fury of determination and vengeance. He had seen no fear, no +apprehension anywhere, only a defiant anger which acted swiftly, +coolly. An officer stepped over the lacerated, shattered body of a +comrade of his mess with the abstracted impassiveness of one who finds +his way over a puddle in the road; and here were puddles too--puddles +of blood. A gunner lifted away the corpse of his nearest friend from +the trail and strained and wrenched at his gun with the intense +concentration of one who kneads dough in a trough. The sobbing agony +of those whom Stafford had led rose up from the ground around him, and +voices cried to be put out of pain and torture. These begrimed men +around him, with jackets torn by bullets, with bandaged head stained +with blood or dragging leg which left a track of blood behind, were +not the men who last night were chatting round the camp-fires and +making bets as to where the attack would begin to-day. + +Stafford was cool enough, however. It was as though an icy liquid had +been poured into his veins. He thought more clearly than he had ever +done, even in those critical moments of his past when cool thinking +was indispensable. He saw the mistake that had been made in giving his +battery work which might have been avoided, and with the same result +to the battle; but he also saw the way out of it, and he gave orders +accordingly. When the horses were lashed to a gallop to take up the +new position, which, if they reached, would give them shelter against +this fiendish rain of lead, and also enable them to enfilade the foe +at advantage, something suddenly brought confusion to his senses, and +the clear thinking stopped. His being seemed to expand suddenly to an +enormity of chaos and then as suddenly to shrink, dwindle, and fall +back into a smother--as though, in falling, blankets were drawn +roughly over his head and a thousand others were shaken in the air +around him. And both were real in their own way. The thousand blankets +flapping in the air were the machine guns of the foe following his +battery into a zone of less dreadful fire, and the blankets that +smothered him were wrappings of unconsciousness which save us from the +direst agonies of body and mind. + +The last thing he saw, as his eyes, with a final effort of power, +sought to escape from this sudden confusion, was a herd of springboks +flinging themselves about in the circle of fire, caught in the +struggle of the two armies, and, like wild birds in a hurricane, +plunging here and there in flight and futile motion. As +unconsciousness enwrapped him the vision of these distraught denizens +of the veld was before his eyes. Somehow, in a lightning +transformation, he became one with them and was mingled with them. + +Time passed. + +When his eyes opened again, slowly, heavily, the same vision was +before him--the negative left on the film of his sight by his last +conscious glance at the world. + +He raised himself on his elbow and looked out over the veld. The +springboks were still distractedly tossing here and there, but the +army to which he belonged had moved on. It was now on its way up the +hill lying between them and the Besieged City. He was dimly conscious +of this, for the fight round him had ceased, the storm had gone +forward. There was noise, great noise, but he was outside of it, in a +kind of valley of awful inactivity. All round him was the debris of a +world in which he had once lived and moved and worked. How many +years--or centuries--was it since he had been in that harvest of +death? There was no anomaly. It was not that time had passed; it was +that his soul had made so far a journey. + +In his sleep among the guns and the piteous, mutilated dead, he had +gone a pilgrimage to a Distant Place and had been told the secret of +the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that +confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of +the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it +waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own +blood, in the swath which the battle had cut. + +His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the +mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him +on the shoulder, had summoned him. + +When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to +live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and +Rudyard had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken +roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It +had seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and +that the way was open to peace, if not to happiness. + +When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I +will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time +and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way +of the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death. + +To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and +absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when +he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by +the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not +for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had +reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink +it. Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it." + +He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a +vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the +everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he +smiled too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant +that the army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would +soon be the Relief for which England prayed. + +There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His +battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its +work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great +day's work. + +He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable +day. He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery +had suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who had not +hitherto shown life at this point. His promptness alone had saved the +battery from annihilation. His swift orders secured the gallant +withdrawal of the battery into a zone of comparative safety and +renewed activity, while he was left with this one abandoned gun and +his slain men and fellow-officers. + +But somehow it all suddenly became small and distant and insignificant +to his senses. He did not despise the work, for it had to be done. It +was big to those who lived, but in the long movement of time it was +small, distant, and subordinate. + +If only the thirst did not torture him, if only the sounds of the +battle were less loud in his ears! It was so long since he waked from +that long sleep, and the world was so full of noises, the air so arid, +and the light of the sun so fierce. Darkness would be peace. He longed +for darkness. + +He thought of the spring that came from the rocks in the glen behind +the house, where he was born in Derbyshire. He saw himself stooping +down, kneeling to drink, his face, his eyes buried in the water, as he +gulped down the good stream. Then all at once it was no longer the +spring from the rock in which he laved his face and freshened his +parched throat; a cool cheek touched his own, lips of tender freshness +swept his brow, silken hair with a faint perfume of flowers brushed +his temples, his head rested on a breast softer than any pillow he had +ever known. + +"Jasmine!" he whispered, with parched lips and closed +eyes. "Jasmine--water," he pleaded, and sank away again intothat dream +from which he had but just wakened. + +It had not been all a vision. Water was here at his tongue, his head +was pillowed on a woman's breast, lips touched his forehead. + +But it was not Jasmine's breast; it was not Jasmine's hand which held +the nozzle of the water-bag to his parched lips. + +Through the zone of fire a woman and a young surgeon had made their +way from the attending ambulance that hovered on the edge of battle to +this corner of death in the great battle-field. It mattered not to the +enemy, who still remained in the segment of the circle where they +first fought, whether it was man or woman who crossed this zone of +fire. No heed could be given now to Red Cross work, to ambulance, +nurse, or surgeon. There would come a time for that, but not yet. Here +were two races in a life-and-death grip; and there could be no give +and take for the wounded or the dead until the issue of the day was +closed. + +The woman who had come through the zone of fire was Al'mah. She had no +right to be where she was. As a nurse her place was not the +battle-field; but she had had a premonition of Stafford's tragedy, and +in the night had concealed herself in the blankets of an ambulance and +had been carried across the veld to that outer circle of battle where +wait those who gather up the wreckage, who provide the salvage of +war. When she was discovered there was no other course but to allow +her to remain; and so it was that as the battle moved on she made her +way to where the wounded and dead lay. + +A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured +gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of +Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come +whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the +man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like +herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose +hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that +as a brother loves so he loved her. + +Hundreds saw the two make their way across the veld, across the +lead-swept plain; but such things in the hour of battle are +commonplaces; they are taken as part of the awful game. Neither mauser +nor shrapnel nor maxim brought them down as they made their way to the +abandoned gun beside which Stafford lay. Yet only one reached +Stafford's side, where he was stretched among his dead comrades. The +surgeon stayed his course at three-quarters of the distance to care +for a gunner whose mutilations were robbed of half their horror by a +courage and a humour which brought quick tears to Al'mah's eyes. With +both legs gone the stricken fellow asked first for a match to light +his cutty pipe and then remarked: "The saint's own luck that there it +was with the stem unbroke to give me aise whin I wanted it! + +"Shure, I thought I was dead," he added as the surgeon stooped over +him, "till I waked up and give meself the lie, and got a grip o' me +pipe, glory be!" + +With great difficulty Al'mah dragged Stafford under the horseless gun, +left behind when the battery moved on. Both forces had thought that +nothing could live in that gray-brown veld, and no effort at first was +made to rescue or take it. By every law of probability Al'mah and the +young surgeon ought to be lying dead with the others who had died, +some with as many as twenty bullet wounds in their bodies, while the +gunner, who had served this gun to the last and then, alone, had stood +at attention till the lead swept him down, had thirty wounds to his +credit for England's sake. Under the gun there was some shade, for she +threw over it a piece of tarpaulin and some ragged, blood-stained +jackets lying near--jackets of men whose wounds their comrades had +tried hastily to help when the scythe of war cut them down. + +There was shade now, but there was not safety, for the ground was +spurting dust where bullets struck, and even bodies of dead men were +dishonoured by the insult of new wounds and mutilations. + +Al'mah thought nothing of safety, but only of this life which was +ebbing away beside her. She saw that a surgeon could do nothing, that +the hurt was internal and mortal; but she wished him not to die until +she had spoken with him once again and told him all there was to +tell--all that had happened after he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +She looked at the drawn and blanched face and asked herself if that +look of pain and mortal trouble was the precursor of happiness and +peace. As she bathed the forehead of the wounded man, it suddenly came +to her that here was the only tragedy connected with Stafford's going: +his work was cut short, his usefulness ended, his hand was fallen from +the lever that lifted things. + +She looked away from the blanched face to the field of battle, towards +the sky above it. Circling above were the vile aasvogels, the +loathsome birds which followed the track of war, watching, waiting +till they could swoop upon the flesh blistering in the sun. +Instinctively she drew nearer to the body of the dying man, +as though to protect it from the evil flying things. She forced +between his lips a little more water. + +"God make it easy!" she said. + +A bullet struck a wheel beside her, and with a ricochet passed through +the flesh of her forearm. A strange look came into her eyes, suffusing +them. Was her work done also? Was she here to find the solution of all +her own problems--like Stafford--like Stafford? Stooping, she +reverently kissed the bloodless cheek. A kind of exaltation possessed +her. There was no fear at all. She had a feeling that he would need +her on the journey he was about to take, and there was no one else who +could help him now. Who else was there beside herself--and Jigger? + +Where was Jigger? What had become of Jigger? He would surely have been +with Stafford if he had not been hurt or killed. It was not like +Jigger to be absent when Stafford needed him. + +She looked out from under the gun, as though expecting to find him +coming--to see him somewhere on this stricken plain. As she did so she +saw the young surgeon, who had stayed to help the wounded gunner, +stumbling and lurching towards the gun, hands clasping his side, and +head thrust forward in an attitude of tense expectation, as though +there was a goal which must be reached. + +An instant later she was outside hastening towards him. A bullet spat +at her feet, another cut the skirt of her dress, but all she saw was +the shambling figure of the man who, but a few minutes before, was so +flexible and alert with life, eager to relieve the wounds of those who +had fallen. Now he also was in dire need. + +She had almost reached him when, with a stiff jerk sideways and an +angular artion of the figure, he came to the ground like a log, +ungainly and rigid. + +"They got me! I'm hit--twice," he said, with grey lips; with eyes that +stared at her and through her to something beyond; but he spoke in an +abrupt, professional, commonplace tone. "Shrapnel and mauler," he +added, his hands protecting the place where the shrapnel had found +him. His staring blue eyes took on a dull cloud, and his whole figure +seemed to sink and shrink away. As though realizing and resisting, if +not resenting this dissolution of his forces, his voice rang out +querulously, and his head made dogmatic emphasis. + +"They oughtn't to have done it," the petulant voice insisted. "I +wasn't fighting." Suddenly the voice trailed away, and all emphasis, +accent, and articulation passed from the sentient figure. Yet his lips +moved once again. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace--first floor," he said +mechanically, and said no more. + +As mechanically as he had spoken, Al'mah repeated the last +words. "Ninety-nine Adelphi Terrace, first floor," she said slowly. + +They were chambers next to those where Adrian Fellowes had lived and +died. She shuddered. + +"So he was not married," she said reflectively, as she left the +lifeless body and went back to the gun where Stafford lay. + +Her arm through which the bullet had passed was painful, but she took +no heed of it. Why should she? Hundreds, maybe thousands, were being +killed off there in the hills. She saw nothing except the debris of +Ian Stafford's life drifting out to the shoreless sea. + +He lived still, but remained unconscious, and she did not relax her +vigil. As she watched and waited the words of the young surgeon kept +ringing in her ears, a monotonous discord, "Ninety-nine Adelphi +Terrace--first floor!" Behind it all was the music of the song she had +sung at Rudyard Byng's house the evening of the day Adrian Fellowes +had died--"More was lost at Mohacksfield." + +The stupefaction that comes with tragedy crept over her. As the victim +of an earthquake sits down amid vast ruins, where the dead lie +unnumbered, speechless, and heedless, so she sat and watched the face +of the man beside her, and was not conscious that the fire of the +armies was slackening, that bullets no longer spattered the veld or +struck the gun where she sat; that the battle had been carried over +the hills. + +In time help would come, so she must wait. At least she had kept +Stafford alive. So far her journey through Hades had been +justified. He would have died had it not been for the water and brandy +she had forced between his lips, for the shade in which he lay beneath +the gun. In the end they would come and gather the dead and +wounded. When the battle was over they would come, or, maybe, before +it was over. + +But through how many hours had there been the sickening monotony of +artillery and rifle-fire, the bruit of angry metal, in which the roar +of angrier men was no more than a discord in the guttural harmony. Her +senses became almost deadened under the strain. Her cheeks grew +thinner, her eyes took on a fixed look. She seemed like one in a +dream. She was only conscious in an isolated kind of way. Louder than +all the noises of the clanging day was the beating of her heart. Her +very body seemed to throb, the pulses in her temples were like hammers +hurting her brain. + +At last she was roused by the sound of horses' hoofs. + +So the service-corps were coming at last to take up the wounded and +bury the dead. There were so many dead, so few wounded! + +The galloping came nearer and nearer. It was now as loud as thunder +almost. It stopped short. She gave a sigh of relief. Her vigil was +ended. Stafford was still alive. There was yet a chance for him to +know that friends were with him at the last, and also what had +happened at Brinkwort's Farm after he had left yesterday. + +She leaned out to see her rescuers. A cry broke from her. Here was one +man frantically hitching a pair of artillery-horses to the gun and +swearing fiercely in the Taal as he did so. + +The last time she had seen that khaki hat, long, threadbare +frock-coat, huge Hessian boots and red neckcloth was at Brinkwort's +Farm. The last time she had seen that malevolent face was when its +owner was marched away from Brinkwort's Farm yesterday. + +It was Krool. + +An instant later she had dragged Stafford out from beneath the gun, +for it was clear that the madman intended to ride off with it. + +When Krool saw her first he was fastening the last hook of the traces +with swift, trained fingers. He stood dumfounded for a moment. The +superstitious, half-mystical thing in him came trembling to his eyes; +then he saw Stafford's body, and he realized the situation. A look of +savage hatred came into his face, and he made a step forward with +sudden impulse, as though he would spring upon Stafford. His hand was +upon a knife at his belt. But the horses plunged and strained, and he +saw in the near distance a troop of cavalry. + +With an obscene malediction at the body, he sprang upon a horse. A +sjambok swung, and with a snort, which was half a groan, the trained +horses sprang forward. + +"The Rooinek's gun for Oom Paul!" he shouted back over his shoulder. + +Most prisoners would have been content to escape and save their skins, +but a more primitive spirit lived in Krool. Escape was not enough for +him. Since he had been foiled at Brinkwort's Farm and could not reach +Rudyard Byng; since he would be shot the instant he was caught after +his escape--if he was caught--he would do something to gall the pride +of the verdomde English. The gun which the Boers had not dared to +issue forth and take, which the British could not rescue without heavy +loss while the battle was at its height--he would ride it over the +hills into the Boers' camp. + +There was something so grotesque in the figure of the half-caste, with +his copper-coat flying behind him as the horses galloped away, that a +wan smile came to Al'mah's lips. With Stafford at her feet in the +staring sun she yet could not take her eyes from the man, the horses, +and the gun. And not Al'mah alone shaded and strained eyes to follow +the tumbling, bouncing gun. Rifles, maxims, and pom-poms opened fire +upon it. It sank into a hollow and was partially lost to sight; it +rose again and jerked forward, the dust rising behind it like surf. It +swayed and swung, as the horses wildly took the incline of the hills, +Krool's sjambok swinging above them; it struggled with the forces that +dragged it higher and higher up, as though it were human and +understood that it was a British gun being carried into the Boer +lines. + +At first a battery of the Boers, fighting a rear-guard action, had +also fired on it, but the gunners saw quickly that a single British +gun was not likely to take up an advance position and attack alone, +and their fire died away. Thinking only that some daring Boer was +doing the thing with a thousand odds against him, they roared approval +as the gun came nearer and nearer. + +Though the British poured a terrific fire after the flying battery of +one gun, there was something so splendid in the episode; the horses +were behaving so gallantly,--horses of one of their own batteries +daringly taken by Krool under the noses of the force--that there was +scarcely a man who was not glad when, at last, the gun made a sudden +turn at a kopje, and was lost to sight within the Boer lines, leaving +behind it a little cloud of dust. + +Tommy Atkins had his uproarious joke about it, but there was one man +who breathed a sigh of relief when he heard of it. That was Barry +Whalen. He had every reason to be glad that Krool was out of the way, +and that Rudyard Byng would see him no more. Sitting beside the still +unconscious Ian Stafford on the veld, Al'mah's reflections were much +the same as those of Barry Whalen. + +With the flight of Krool and the gun came the end of Al'mah's +vigil. The troop of cavalry which galloped out to her was followed by +the Red Cross wagons. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVIII + +"PHEIDIPPIDES" + + +At dawn, when the veld breathes odours of a kind pungency and +fragrance, which only those know who have made it their bed and +friend, the end came to the man who had lain under the gun. + +"Pheidippides!" the dying Stafford said, with a grim touch of the +humour which had ever been his. He was thinking of the Greek runner +who brought the news of victory to Athens and fell dead as he told it. + +It almost seemed from the look on Stafford's face that, in very truth, +he was laying aside the impedimenta of the long march and the battle, +to carry the news to that army of the brave in Walhalla who had died +for England before they knew that victory was hers. + +"Pheidippides," he repeated, and Rudyard Byng, whose eyes were so much +upon the door, watching and waiting for some one to come, pressed his +hand and said: "You know the best, Stafford. So many didn't. They had +to go before they knew." + +"I have my luck," Stafford replied, but yet there was a wistful look +in his face. + +His eyes slowly closed, and he lay so motionless that Al'mah and +Rudyard thought he had gone. He scarcely seemed to notice when Al'mah +took the hand that Rudyard had held, and the latter, with quick, +noiseless steps, left the room. + +What Rudyard had been watching and waiting for was come. + +Jasmine was at the door. His message had brought her in time. + +"Is it dangerous?" she asked, with a face where tragedy had written +self-control. + +"As bad as can be," he answered. "Go in and speak to him, Jasmine. It +will help him." + +He opened the door softly. As Jasmine entered, Al'mah with a glance of +pity and friendship at the face upon the bed, passed into another +room. + +There was a cry in Jasmine's heart, but it did not reach her lips. + +She stole to the bed and laid her fingers upon the hand lying white +and still upon the coverlet. + +At once the eyes of the dying man opened. This was a touch that would +reach to the farthest borders of his being--would bring him back from +the Immortal Gates. Through the mist of his senses he saw her. He half +raised himself. She pillowed his head on her breast. He smiled. A +light transfigured his face. + +"All's well," he said, with a long sigh, and his body sank slowly +down. + +"Ian! Ian!" she cried, but she knew that he could not hear. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIX + +"THE ROAD IS CLEAR" + + +The Army had moved on over the hills, into the valley of death and +glory, across the parched veld to the town of Lordkop, where an +emaciated, ragged garrison had kept faith with all the heroes from +Caractacus to Nelson. Courageous legions had found their way to the +petty dorp, with its corrugated iron roofs, its dug-outs, its +improvised forts, its fever hospitals, its Treasure House of Britain, +where she guarded the jewels of her honour. + +The menace of the hills had passed, heroes had welcomed heroes and +drunk the cup of triumph; but far back in the valleys beyond the hills +from which the army had come, there were those who must drink the cup +of trembling, the wine of loss. + +As the trumpets of victory attended the steps of those remnants of +brigades which met the remnants of a glorious garrison in the streets +of Lordkop, drums of mourning conducted the steps of those who came to +bury the dust of one who had called himself Pheidippides as he left +the Day Path and took the Night Road. + +Gun-carriage and reversed arms and bay charger, faithful comrades with +bent heads, the voice of victory over the grave--"I am the +resurrection and the life"--the volleys of honour, the proud salut of +the brave to the vanished brave, the quivering farewells of the few +who turn away from the fresh-piled earth with their hearts dragging +behind--all had been; and all had gone. Evening descended upon the +veld with a golden radiance which soothed like prayer. + +By the open window at the foot of a bed in the Stay Awhile Hospital a +woman gazed into the saffron splendour with an intentness which seemed +to make all her body listen. Both melancholy and purpose marked the +attitude of the figure. + +A voice from the bed at the foot of which she stood drew her gaze away +from the sunset sky to meet the bright, troubled eyes. + +"What is it, Jigger?" the woman asked gently, and she looked to see +that the framework which kept the bedclothes from a shattered leg was +properly in its place. + +"'E done a lot for me," was the reply. "A lot 'e done, and I dunno how +I'll git along now." + +There was great hopelessness in the tone. + +"He told me you would always have enough to help you get on, +Jigger. He thought of all that." + +"'Ere, oh, 'ere it ain't that," the lad said in a sudden passion of +protest, the tears standing in his eyes. "It ain't that! Wot's money, +when your friend wot give it ain't 'ere! I never done nothing for +'im--that's wot I feel. Nothing at all for 'im." + +"You are wrong," was the soft reply. "He told me only a few days ago +that you were like a loaf of bread in the cupboard--good for all the +time." + +The tears left the wide blue eyes. "Did 'e say that--did 'e?" he +asked, and when she nodded and smiled, he added, "'E's 'appy now, +ain't 'e?" His look questioned her eagerly. + +For an instant she turned and gazed at the sunset, and her eyes took +on a strange mystical glow. A colour came to her face, as though from +strong flush of feeling, then she turned to him again, and answered +steadily: + +"Yes, he is happy now." + +"How do you know?" the lad asked with awe in his face, for he believed +in her utterly. Then, without waiting for her to answer, he added: "Is +it, you hear him say so, as I hear you singin' in my sleep +sometimes--singin', singin', as you did at Glencader, that first time +I ever 'eerd you? Is it the same as me in my sleep?" + +"Yes, it is like that--just like that," she answered, taking his hand, +and holding it with a motherly tenderness. + +"Ain't you never goin' to sing again?" he added. + +She was silent, looking at him almost abstractedly. + +"This war'll be over pretty soon now," he continued, "and we'll all +have to go back to work." + +"Isn't this work?" Al'mah asked with a smile, which had in it +something of her old whimsical self. + +"It ain't play, and it ain't work," he answered with a sage frown of +intellectual effort." It's a cut above 'em both--that's my fancy." + +"It would seem like that," was the response. "What are you going to do +when you get back to England?" she inquired. + +"I thought I'd ask you that," he replied anxiously. "Couldn't I be a +scene-shifter or somefink at the opery w'ere you sing?" + +"I'm going to sing again, am I?" she asked. + +"You'd have to be busy," he protested admiringly. + +"Yes, I'll have to be busy," she replied, her voice ringing a little, +"and we'll have to find a way of being busy together." + +"His gryce'd like that," he responded. + +She turned her face slowly to the evening sky, where grey clouds +became silver and piled up to a summit of light. She was silent for a +long time. + +"If work won't cure, nothing will," she said in a voice scarce above a +whisper. Her body trembled a little, and her eyes closed, as though to +shut out something that pained her sight. + +"I wish you'd sing somethin'--same as you did that night at Glencader, +about the green hill far away," whispered the little trumpeter from +the bed. + +She looked at him for a moment meditatively, then shook her head, and +turned again to the light in the evening sky. + +"P'raps she's makin' up a new song," Jigger said to himself. + +On a kopje overlooking the place where Ian Stafford had been laid to +sleep to the call of the trumpets, two people sat watching the sun go +down. Never in the years that had gone had there been such silence +between them as they sat together. Words had been the clouds in which +the lightning of their thoughts had been lost; they had been the +disguises in which the truth of things masqueraded. They had not dared +to be silent, lest the truth should stalk naked before them. Silence +would have revealed their unhappiness; they would not have dared to +look closely and deeply into each other's face, lest revelation should +force them to say, "It has been a mistake; let us end it." So they had +talked and talked and acted, and yet had done nothing and been +nothing. + +Now they were silent, because they had tossed into the abyss of Time +the cup of trembling, and had drunk of the chalice of peace. Over the +grave into which, this day, they had thrown the rock-roses and sprigs +of the karoo bush, they had, in silence, made pledges to each other, +that life's disguises should be no more for them; that the door should +be wide open between the chambers where their souls dwelt, each in its +own pension of being, with its own individual sense, but with the same +light, warmth, and nutriment, and with the free confidence which +exempts life from its confessions. There should be no hidden things +any more. + +There was a smile on the man's face as he looked out over the +valley. With this day had come triumph for the flag he loved, for the +land where he was born, and also the beginning of peace for the land +where he had worked, where he had won his great fortune. He had helped +to make this land what it was, and in battle he had helped to save it +from disaster. + +But there had come another victory--the victory of Home. The +coincidence of all the vital values had come in one day, almost in one +hour. + +Smiling, he laid his hand upon the delicate fingers of the woman +beside him, as they rested on her knee. She turned and looked at him +with an understanding which is the beginning of all happiness; and a +colour came to her cheeks such as he had not seen there for more days +than he could count. Her smile answered his own, but her eyes had a +sadness which would never wholly leave them. When he had first seen +those eyes he had thought them the most honest he had ever +known. Looking at them now, with confidence restored, he thought again +as he did that night at the opera the year of the Raid. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said with a ring of purpose +and a great gentleness in his tone. + +Her hand trembled, the shadows deepened in her eyes, but determination +gathered at her lips. + +Some deep-cherished, deferred resolve reasserted itself. + +"But I cannot--I cannot go on until you know all, Rudyard, and then +you may not wish to go on," she said. Her voice shook, and the colour +went from her lips. "I must be honest now--at last, about +everything. I want to tell you--" + +He got to his feet. Stooping, he raised her, and looked her squarely +in the eyes. + +"Tell me nothing, Jasmine," he said. Then he added in a voice of +finality, "There is nothing to tell." Holding both her hands tight in +one of his own, he put his fingers on her lips. + +"A fresh start for a long race--the road is clear," he said firmly. + +Looking into his eyes, she knew that he read her life and soul, that +in his deep primitive way he understood her as she had been and as she +was, and yet was content to go on. Her head drooped upon his breast. + +A trumpet-call rang out piercingly sweet across the valley. It echoed +and echoed away among the hills. + +He raised his head to listen. Pride, vision and power were in his +eyes. + +"It's all before us still, Jasmine," he said again. + +Her fingers tightened on his. + +THE END + + + +GLOSSARY: + +AASVOGEL Vulture. + +ALFALFA Lucerne. + +BILTONG Strips of dried meat. + +DISSELBOOM The single shaft of an ox-wagon. + +DONGA A gulley or deep fissure in the soil. + +DOPPER A dissenter from the Dutch Reformed Church, but generally +applied to Dutchmen in South Africa. + +DORP Settlement or town. + +KAROO The highlands of the interior of South Africa. + +KOPJE A rounded hillock. + +KLOOF A gap or pass in mountains. + +KRAAL Native hut; also a walled inclosure for cattle. + +KRANZES Rocky precipices. + +MEERKAT A species of ichneumon. + +ROOINEK Literally, "red-neck"; term applied to British soldiers by the +Boers. + +SCHANSES Intrenchments (or fissures on hills). + +SJAMBOK A stick or whip made from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide. + +SPRUIT A small stream. + +STOEP Veranda of a Dutch house. + +TAAL South African Dutch. + +TREK To move from place to place with belongings. + +VELD An open grassy plain. + +VELDSCHOEN Rough untanned leather shoes. + +VERDOMDE Damned. + +VIERKLEUR The national flag (four colours) of the late South African +Republics. + +VOORTREKKER Pioneer. + +VROUW Wife. + + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE JUDGMENT HOUSE, BY PARKER *** + +********* This file should be named jhous11.txt or jhous11.zip ********* + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, jhous12.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, jhous11a.txt + +This etext was produced by Juli Rew (juliana@ucar.edu). + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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