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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Daireen, by Frank Frankfort Moore
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
-
-Title: Daireen
-       Volume 2 of 2
-
-Author: Frank Frankfort Moore
-
-Release Date: May 2, 2016 [EBook #51937]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAIREEN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-DAIREEN
-
-Volume 2 of 2
-
-By Frank Frankfort Moore
-
-
-(Transcriber's Note: Chapters XX to XXIV were taken from a print
-copy of a different edition as these chapters were missing from the 1889
-print edition from which the rest of the Project Gutenberg edition was
-taken. In the inserted four chapters it will be noted that the normal
-double quotation marks were printed as single quote marks.)
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIII.
-
-
-```I have heard of your paintings too.=
-
-``_Hamlet_. His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
-
-```Would make them capable. Do not look upon me,
-
-```Lest... what I have to do
-
-```Will want true colour....
-
-````Do you see nothing there?=
-
-``_Queen_. No, nothing but ourselves.=
-
-``_Hamlet_. Why, look you there...
-
-```Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal.
-
-`````_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|I AM so glad to be beside some one who can tell me all I want to know'
-said Lottie, looking up to Colonel Gerald's bronzed face when Mrs.
-Crawford and Markham had walked on.
-
-'My dear Lottie, you know very well that you know as much as I do,' he
-answered, smiling down at her.
-
-'Oh, Colonel Gerald, how can you say such a thing?' she cried
-innocently. 'You know I am always getting into scrapes through my
-simplicity.'
-
-'You have managed to get out of a good many in your time, my dear. Is it
-by the same means you got out of them, Lottie-your simplicity?'
-
-'Oh, you are as amusing as ever,' laughed the young thing. 'But you must
-not be hard upon poor little me, now that I want to ask you so much.
-Will you tell me, like a dear good colonel--I know you can if you
-choose--what is the mystery about this Mr. Markham?'
-
-'Mystery? I don't hear of any mystery about him.'
-
-'Why, all your friends came out in the some steamer as he did. They must
-have told you. Everybody here is talking about him. That's why I want
-him for our theatricals: everyone will come to see him.'
-
-'Well, if the mystery, whatever it may be, remains unrevealed up to the
-night of the performance, you will have a house all the more crowded.'
-
-'But I want to know all about it for myself. Is it really true that he
-had fallen overboard from another ship, and was picked up after being
-several weeks at sea?'
-
-'You would be justified in calling that a mystery, at any rate,' said
-Colonel Gerald.
-
-'That is what some people here are saying, I can assure you,' she cried
-quickly. 'Others say that he was merely taken aboard the steamer at St.
-Helena, after having been wrecked; but that is far too unromantic.'
-
-'Oh, yes, far too unromantic.'
-
-'Then you do know the truth? Oh, please tell it to me. I have always
-said I was sure it was true that a girl on the steamer saw him floating
-on the horizon with an unusually powerful pilot-glass.'
-
-'Rather mysterious for a fellow to be floating about on the horizon with
-a pilot-glass, Lottie.'
-
-'What a shame to make fun of me, especially as our performance is in
-the cause of charity, and I want Mr. Markham's name to be the particular
-attraction! Do tell me if he was picked up at sea.'
-
-'I believe he was.'
-
-'How really lovely! Floating about on a wreck and only restored after
-great difficulty! Our room should be filled to the doors. But what I
-can't understand, Colonel Gerald, is where he gets the money he lives
-on here. He could not have had much with him when he was picked up. But
-people say he is very rich.'
-
-'Then no doubt people have been well informed, my dear. But all I know
-is that this Mr. Markham was on his way from New Zealand, or perhaps
-Australia, and his vessel having foundered, he was picked up by the
-"Cardwell Castle" and brought to the Cape. He had a note for a few
-hundred pounds in his pocket which he told me he got cashed here without
-any difficulty, and he is going to England in a short time. Here we are
-at the room where these pictures are said to be hanging. Be sure you
-keep up the mystery, Lottie.'
-
-'Ah, you have had your little chat, I hope,' said Mrs. Crawford, waiting
-at the door of Government House until Colonel Gerald and Lottie had come
-up.
-
-'A delightful little chat, as all mine with Colonel Gerald are,' said
-Lottie, passing over to Mr. Markham. 'Are you going inside to see the
-pictures, Mrs. Crawford?'
-
-'Not just yet, my dear; we must find Miss Gerald,' said Mrs. Crawford,
-who had no particular wish to remain in close attachment to Miss Vincent
-for the rest of the evening.
-
-'Mr. Markham and I are going in,' said Lottie. 'I do so dote upon
-pictures, and Mr. Markham can explain them I know; so _au revoir_.'
-
-She kissed the dainty tips of her gloves and passed up to the small
-piazza at the House, near where Major Crawford and some of the old
-Indians were sitting drinking their brandy and soda and revolving many
-memories.
-
-'Let us not go in for a while, Mr. Markham,' she said. 'Let us stay here
-and watch them all. Isn't it delightfully cool here? How tell me all
-that that dreadful old Mrs. Crawford was saying to you about me.'
-
-'Upon my word,' said Markham smiling, 'it _is_ delightfully cool up
-here.'
-
-'I know she said ever so much; she does so about everyone who has at any
-time run against her and her designs. She's always designing.'
-
-'And you ran against her, you think?'
-
-'Of course I did,' cried Lottie, turning round and giving an almost
-indignant look at the man beside her. 'And she has been saying nasty
-things about me ever since; only of course they have never injured me,
-as people get to understand her in a very short time. But what did she
-say just now?'
-
-'Nothing, I can assure you, that was not very much in favour of the
-theatrical idea I have just promised to work out with you, Miss Vincent:
-she told me you were a--a capital actress.'
-
-'She said that, did she? Spiteful old creature! Just see how she is all
-smiles and friendliness to Mr. Harwood because she thinks he will say
-something about her husband's appointment and the satisfaction it is
-giving in the colony in his next letter to the "Trumpeter." That is
-Colonel Gerald's daughter with them now, is it not?'
-
-'Yes, that is Miss Gerald,' answered Markham, looking across the lawn
-to where Daireen was standing with Mr. Harwood and some of the
-tennis-players as Mrs. Crawford and her companion came up with Mr.
-Glaston, whom they had discovered and of whom the lady had taken
-possession. The girl was standing beneath the broad leaf of a plantain
-with the red sunlight falling behind her and lighting up the deep ravine
-of the mountain beyond. Oswin thought he had never before seen her look
-so girlishly lovely.
-
-'How people here do run after every novelty!' remarked Miss Vincent, who
-was certainly aware that she herself was by no means a novelty. 'Just
-because they never happen to have seen that girl before, they mob her
-to death. Isn't it too bad? What extremes they go to in their delight at
-having found something new! I actually heard a gentleman say to-day that
-he thought Miss Geralds face perfect. Could anything be more absurd,
-when one has only to see her complexion to know that it is extremely
-defective, while her nose is--are you going in to the pictures so soon?'
-
-'Well, I think so,' said Markham. 'If we don't see them now it will be
-too dark presently.'
-
-'Why, I had no idea you were such a devotee of Art,' she cried. 'Just
-let me speak to papa for a moment and I will submit myself to your
-guidance.' And she tripped away to where the surgeon-general was smoking
-among the old Indians.
-
-Oswin Markham waited at the side of the balcony, and then Mrs. Crawford
-with her entire party came up, Mr. Glaston following with Daireen, who
-said, just as she was beside Mr. Markham, 'We are all going to view the
-pictures, Mr. Markham; won't you join us?'
-
-'I am only waiting for Miss Vincent,' he answered. Then Daireen and her
-companion passed into the room containing the four works meant to be
-illustrative of that perfect conception of a subject, and of the only
-true method of its treatment, which were the characteristics assigned
-to themselves by a certain section of painters with whom Mr. Glaston
-enjoyed communion.
-
-The pictures had, by Mr. Glaston's direction, been hung in what would
-strike an uncultured mind as being an eccentric fashion. But, of course,
-there was a method in it. Each painting was placed obliquely at a
-window; the natural view which was to be obtained at a glance outside
-being supposed to have a powerful influence upon the mind of a spectator
-in preparing him to receive the delicate symbolism of each work.
-
-'One of our theories is, that a painting is not merely an imitation of
-a part of nature, but that it becomes, if perfectly worked out in its
-symbolism, a pure creation of Nature herself,' said Mr. Glaston airily,
-as he condescended to explain his method of arrangement to his immediate
-circle. There were only a few people in the room when Mrs. Crawford's
-party entered. Mr. Glaston knew, of course, that Harwood was there,
-but he felt that he could, with these pictures about him, defy all the
-criticism of the opposing school.
-
-'It is a beautiful idea,' said Mrs. Crawford; 'is it not, Colonel
-Gerald?'
-
-'Capital idea,' said the colonel.
-
-'Rubbish!' whispered Harwood to Markham, who entered at this moment with
-Lottie Vincent.
-
-'The absurdity--the wickedness--of hanging pictures in the popular
-fashion is apparent to every thoughtful mind,' said the prophet of Art.
-'Putting pictures of different subjects in a row and asking the public
-to admire them is something too terrible to think about. It is the act
-of a nation of barbarians. To hold a concert and perform at the same
-instant selections from Verdi, Wagner, Liszt, and the Oxford music-hall
-would be as consistent with the principles of Art as these Gallery
-exhibitions of pictures.'
-
-'How delightful!' cried Lottie, lifting up her four-buttoned gloves in
-true enthusiasm. 'I have often thought exactly what he says, only I have
-never had courage to express myself.'
-
-'It needs a good deal of courage,' remarked Harwood.
-
-'What a pity it is that people will continue to be stupid!' said Mrs.
-Crawford. 'For my own part, I will never enter an Academy exhibition
-again. I am ashamed to confess that I have never missed a season when I
-had the chance, but now I see the folly of it all. What a lovely scene
-that is in the small black frame! Is it not, Daireen?'
-
-'Ah, you perceive the Idea?' said Mr. Glaston as the girl and Mrs.
-Crawford stood before a small picture of a man and a woman in a
-pomegranate grove in a grey light, the man being in the act of plucking
-the fruit. 'You understand, of course, the symbolism of the pomegranate
-and the early dawn-light among the boughs?'
-
-'It is a darling picture,'said Lottie effusively.
-
-'I never saw such carelessness in drawing before,' said Harwood so soon
-as Mr. Glaston and his friends had passed on to another work.
-
-'The colour is pretty fair, but the drawing is ruffianly.'
-
-'Ah, you terrible critic!' cried Lottie.
-
-'You spoil one's enjoyment of the pictures. But I quite agree with you;
-they are fearful daubs,' she added in a whisper. 'Let us stay here and
-listen to the gushing of that absurd old woman; we need not be in the
-back row in looking at that wonderful work they are crowding about.'
-
-'I am not particularly anxious to stand either in the front or the
-second row,' said Harwood. 'The pavement in the picture is simply an
-atrocity. I saw the thing before.'
-
-So Harwood, Lottie, and Markham stood together at one of the open
-windows, through which were borne the brazen strains of the distant
-band, and the faint sounds of the laughter of the lawn-tennis players,
-and the growls of the old Indians on the balcony. Daireen and the rest
-of the party had gone to the furthest window from which at an oblique
-angle one of the pictures was placed. Miss Vincent and Harwood soon
-found themselves chatting briskly; but Markham stood leaning against the
-wall behind them, with his eyes fixed upon Daireen, who was looking in
-a puzzled way at the picture. Markham wondered what was the element that
-called for this puzzled--almost troubled expression upon her face, but
-he could not see anything of the work.
-
-'How very fine, is it not, George?' said Mrs. Crawford to Colonel Gerald
-as they stood back to gaze upon the painting.
-
-'I think I'll go out and have a smoke,' replied the colonel smiling.
-
-Mrs. Crawford cast a reproachful glance towards him as he turned away,
-but Mr. Glaston seemed oblivious to every remark.
-
-'Is it not wonderful, Daireen?' whispered Mrs. Crawford to the girl.
-
-'Yes,' said Daireen, 'I think it is--wonderful,' and the expression upon
-her face became more troubled still.
-
-The picture was composed of a single figure--a half-naked, dark-skinned
-female with large limbs and wild black hair. She was standing in a
-high-roofed oriental kiosk upon a faintly coloured pavement, gazing
-with fierce eyes upon a decoration of the wall, representing a battle
-in which elephants and dromedaries were taking part. Through one of
-the arched windows of the building a purple hill with a touch of sunset
-crimson upon its ridge was seen, while the Evening Star blazed through
-the dark blue of the higher heaven.
-
-Daireen looked into the picture, and when she saw the wild face of the
-woman she gave a shudder, though she scarcely knew why.
-
-'All but the face,' she said. 'It is too terrible--there is nothing of a
-woman about it.'
-
-'My dear child, that is the chief wonder of the picture,' said Mr.
-Glaston. 'You recognise the subject, of course?'
-
-'It might be Cleopatra,' said Daireen dubiously.
-
-'Oh, hush, hush! never think of such a thing again,' said Mr. Glaston
-with an expression that would have meant horror if it had not been
-tempered with pity. 'Cleopatra is vulgar--vulgar--popular. That is
-Aholibah.'
-
-'You remember, of course, my dear,' said Mrs. Crawford; 'she is a young
-woman in the Bible--one of the old parts--Daniel or Job or Hezekiah, you
-know. She was a Jewess or an Egyptian or something of that sort, like
-Judith, the young person who drove a nail into somebody's brain--they
-were always doing disagreeable things in those days. I can't recollect
-exactly what this dreadful creature did, but I think it was somehow
-connected with the head of John the Baptist.'
-
-'Oh, no, no,' said Daireen, still keeping her eyes fixed upon the face
-of the figure as though it had fascinated her.
-
-'Aholibah the painter has called it,' said
-
-Mr. Glaston. 'But it is the symbolism of the picture that is most
-valuable. Wonderful thought that is of the star--Astarte, you know
---shedding the light by which the woman views the picture of one of her
-lovers.'
-
-'Oh!' exclaimed Mrs. Crawford in a shocked way, forgetting for the
-moment that they were talking on Art. Then she recollected herself and
-added apologetically, 'They were dreadful young women, you know, dear.'
-
-'Marvellous passion there is in that face,' continued the young man.
-'It contains a lifetime of thought--of suffering. It is a poem--it is a
-precious composition of intricate harmonies.'
-
-'Intricate! I should think it is,' said Harwood to Lottie, in the
-distant window.
-
-'Hush!' cried the girl, 'the high-priest is beginning to speak.'
-
-'The picture is perhaps the only one in existence that may be said to be
-the direct result of the three arts as they are termed, though we prefer
-to think that there is not the least distinction between the methods of
-painting, poetry, and music,' said Mr. Glaston. 'I chanced to drop in to
-the studio of my friend who painted this, and I found him in a sad state
-of despondency. He had nearly all of the details of the picture filled
-in; the figure was as perfect as it is at present--all except the
-expression of the face. "I have been thinking about it for days,"
-said the poor fellow, and I could see that his face was haggard with
-suffering; "but only now and again has the expression I want passed
-across my mind, and I have been unable to catch it." I looked at the
-unfinished picture,' continued Mr. Glaston, 'and I saw what he wanted.
-I stood before the picture in silence for some time, and then I composed
-and repeated a sonnet which I fancied contained the missing expression
-of passion. He sprang up and seized my hand, and his face brightened
-with happiness: I had given him the absent idea, and I left him painting
-enthusiastically. A few days after, however, I got a line from him
-entreating me to come to him. I was by his side in an hour, and I found
-him in his former state of despondency. "It has passed away again,"
-he said, "and I want you to repeat your sonnet." Unfortunately I had
-forgotten every line of the sonnet, and when I told him so he was in
-agony. But I begged of him not to despair. I brought the picture and
-placed it before me on a piano. I looked at it and composed an impromptu
-that I thought suggested the exact passion he wanted for the face. The
-painter stood listening with his head bowed down to his hands. When I
-ended he caught up the picture. "I see it all clearly," he cried; "you
-have saved me--you have saved the picture." Two days afterwards he sent
-it to me finished as it is now.'
-
-'Wonderful! is it not, Daireen?' said Mrs. Crawford, as the girl turned
-away after a little pause.
-
-'The face,' said Daireen gently; 'I don't want ever to see it again. Let
-us look at something else.'
-
-They turned away to the next picture; but Markham, who had been
-observing the girl's face, and had noticed that little shudder come over
-her, felt strangely interested in the painting, whatever it might be,
-that had produced such an impression upon her. He determined to go
-unobserved over to the window where the work was hanging so soon as
-everyone would have left it.
-
-'It requires real cleverness to compose such a story as that of Mr.
-Glaston's,' said Lottie Vincent to Mr. Harwood.
-
-'It sounded to me all along like a clever bit of satire, and I daresay
-it was told to him as such,' said Harwood. 'It only needed him to
-complete the nonsense by introducing another of the fine arts in the
-working out of that wonderfully volatile expression.'
-
-'Which is that?' said Lottie; 'do tell me, like a good fellow,' and she
-laid the persuasive finger of a four-buttoned glove upon his arm.
-
-'Certainly. I will finish the story for you,' said Harwood, giving the
-least little imitation of the lordly manner of Mr. Glaston. 'Yes,
-my friend the painter sent a telegram to me a few years after I had
-performed that impromptu, and I was by his side in an hour. I found him
-at least twenty years older in appearance, and he was searching with
-a lighted candle in every corner of the studio for that expression of
-passion which had once more disappeared.
-
-What could I do? I had exhausted the auxiliaries of poetry and music,
-but fortunately another art remained to me; you have heard of the poetry
-of motion? In an instant I had mounted the table and had gone through a
-breakdown of the most æsthetic design, when I saw his face lighten--his
-grey hairs turned once more to black--long artistic oily black. "I have
-found it," he cried, seizing the hearthbrush and dipping it into the
-paint just as I completed the final attitude: it was found--but--what
-is the matter, Miss Vincent?'
-
-'Look!' she whispered. 'Look at Mr. Markham.'
-
-'Good heavens!' cried Harwood, starting up, 'is he going to fall? No, he
-has steadied himself by the window. I thought he was beside us.'
-
-'He went over to the picture a second ago, and I saw that pallor come
-over him,' said Lottie.
-
-Harwood hastened to where Oswin Markham was standing, his white face
-turned away from the picture, and his hand clutching the rail of a
-curtain.
-
-'What is the matter, Markham?' said Harwood quietly. 'Are you faint?'
-
-Markham turned his eyes upon him with a startled expression, and a smile
-that was not a smile came upon his face.
-
-'Faint? yes,' he said. 'This room after the air. I'll be all right.
-Don't make a scene, for God's sake.'
-
-'There is no need,' said Harwood. 'Sit down here, and I'll get you a
-glass of brandy.'
-
-'Not here,' said Markham, giving the least little side glance towards
-the picture. 'Not here, but at the open window.'
-
-Harwood helped him over to the open window, and he fell into a seat
-beside it and gazed out at the lawn-tennis players, quite regardless of
-Lottie Vincent standing beside him and enquiring how he felt.
-
-In a few minutes Harwood returned with some brandy in a glass.
-
-'Thanks, my dear fellow,' said the other, drinking it off eagerly. 'I
-feel better now--all right, in fact.'
-
-'This, of course, you perceive,' came the voice of Mr. Glaston from the
-group who were engrossed over the wonders of the final picture,--'This
-is an exquisite example of a powerful mind endeavouring to subdue the
-agony of memory. Observe the symbolism of the grapes and vine leaves.'
-
-In the warm sunset light outside the band played on, and Miss Vincent
-flitted from group to group with the news that this Mr. Markham had
-added to the romance which was already associated with his name, by
-fainting in the room with the pictures. She was considerably surprised
-and mortified to see him walking with Miss Gerald to the colonel's
-carriage in half an hour afterwards.
-
-'I assure you,' she said to some one who was laughing at her,--'I
-assure you I saw him fall against the window at the side of one of the
-pictures. If he was not in earnest, he will make our theatricals a great
-success, for he must be a splendid actor.'
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIV.
-
-
-````Rightly to be great
-
-```Is not to stir without great argument.=
-
-````So much was our love
-
-```We would not understand what was most fit.=
-
-```She is so conjunctive to my life and soul
-
-```That, as the star moves not but in his sphere,
-
-```I could not but by her.=
-
-```How should I your true love know
-
-````From another one?--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|ALL was not well with Mr. Standish MacDermot in these days. He was
-still a guest at that pleasant little Dutch cottage of Colonel Gerald's
-at Mowbray, and he received invitations daily to wherever Daireen
-and her father were going. This was certainly all that he could have
-expected to make him feel at ease in the strange land; but somehow he
-did not feel at ease. He made himself extremely pleasant everywhere he
-went, and he was soon a general favourite, though perhaps the few words
-Mrs. Crawford now and again let fall on the subject of his parentage had
-as large an influence as his own natural charm of manner in making the
-young Irishman popular. Ireland was a curious place most of the people
-at the Cape thought. They had heard of its rebellions and of its
-secret societies, and they had thus formed an idea that the island was
-something like a British colony of which the aborigines had hardly been
-subdued. The impression that Standish was the son of one of the kings of
-the land, who, like the Indian maharajahs, they believed, were allowed
-a certain revenue and had their titles acknowledged by the British
-Government, was very general; and Standish had certainly nothing
-to complain of as to his treatment. But still all was not well with
-Standish.
-
-He had received a letter from his father a week after his arrival
-imploring him to return to the land of his sires, for The MacDermot
-had learned from the ancient bard O'Brian, in whom the young man had
-confided, that Standish's destination was the Cape, and so he had been
-able to write to some address. The MacDermot promised to extend his
-forgiveness to his son, and to withdraw his threat of disinheritance, if
-he would return; and he concluded his letter by drawing a picture of
-the desolation of the neighbourhood owing to the English projectors of
-a railway and a tourists' hotel having sent a number of surveyors to
-the very woods of Innishdermot to measure and plan and form all sorts of
-evil intentions about the region. Under these trying circumstances, The
-Mac-Dermot implored his son to grant him the consolation of his society
-once more. What was still more surprising to Standish was the enclosure
-in the letter of an order for a considerable sum of money, for he
-fancied that his father had previously exhausted every available system
-of leverage for the raising of money.
-
-But though it was very sad for Standish to hear of the old man sitting
-desolate beside the lonely hearth of Innishdermot castle, he made up his
-mind not to return to his home. He had set out to work in the world, and
-he would work, he said. He would break loose from this pleasant life
-he was at present leading, and he would work. Every night he made this
-resolution, though as yet the concrete form of the thought as to what
-sort of work he meant to set about had not suggested itself. He would
-work nobly and manfully for her, he swore, and he would never tell her
-of his love until he could lay his work at her feet and tell her that it
-had been done all for her. Meantime he had gone to that garden party at
-Government House and to several other entertainments, while nearly every
-day he had been riding by the side of Daireen over The Flats or along
-the beautiful road to Wynberg.
-
-And all the time that Standish was resolving not to open his lips in an
-endeavour to express to Daireen all that was in his heart, another man
-was beginning to feel that it would be necessary to take some step to
-reveal himself to the girl. Arthur Harwood had been analyzing his own
-heart every day since he had gazed out to the far still ocean from the
-mountain above Funchal with Daireen beside him, and now he fancied he
-knew every thought that was in his heart.
-
-He knew that he had been obliged to deny himself in his youth the luxury
-of love. He had been working himself up to his present position by his
-own industry and the use of the brains that he felt must be his capital
-in life, and he knew he dared not even think of falling in love. But,
-when he had passed the age of thirty and had made a name and a place for
-himself in the world, he was aware that he might let his affections
-go fetterless; but, alas, it seemed that they had been for too long in
-slavery: they refused to taste the sweets of freedom, and it appeared
-that his nature had become hard and unsympathetic. But it was neither,
-he knew in his own soul, only he had been standing out of the world of
-softness and of sympathy, and had built up for himself unconsciously an
-ideal whose elements were various and indefinable, his imagination only
-making it a necessity that not one of these elements of his ideal should
-be possible to be found in the nature of any of the women with whom he
-was acquainted and whom he had studied.
-
-When he had come to know Daireen Gerald--and he fancied he had come to
-know her--he felt that he was no longer shut out from the world of love
-with his cold ideal. He had thought of her day by day aboard the steamer
-as he had thought of no girl hitherto in his life, and he had waited
-for her to think of him and to become conscious that he loved her.
-Considering that one of the most important elements of his vague ideal
-was a complete and absolute unconsciousness of any passion, it was
-scarcely consistent for him now to expect that Daireen should ever
-perceive the feeling of his secret heart.
-
-He had, however, made up his mind to remain at the Cape instead of going
-on to the Castaway Islands; and he had written long and interesting
-letters to the newspaper which he represented, on the subject of the
-attitude of the Kafir chief who, he heard, had been taking an attitude.
-Then he had had several opportunities of riding the horse that Colonel
-Gerald had placed at his disposal; but though he had walked and
-conversed frequently with the daughter of Colonel Gerald, he felt that
-it would be necessary for him to speak more directly what he at least
-fancied was in his heart; so that while poor Standish was swearing every
-night to keep his secret, Mr. Harwood was thinking by what means he
-could contrive to reveal himself and find out what were the girl's
-feelings with regard to himself.
-
-In the firmness of his resolution Standish was one afternoon, a few days
-after the garden party, by the side of Daireen on the furthest extremity
-of The Flats, where there was a small wood of pines growing in a sandy
-soil of a glittering whiteness. They pulled up their horses here amongst
-the trees, and Daireen looked out at the white plain beyond; but poor
-Standish could only gaze upon her wistful face.
-
-'I like it,' she said musingly. 'I like that snow. Don't you think it is
-snow, Standish?'
-
-'It is exactly the same,' he answered. 'I can feel a chill pass over me
-as I look upon it. I hate it.'
-
-'Oh!' cried the girl, 'don't say that when I have said I like it.'
-
-'Why should that matter?' he said sternly, for he was feeling his
-resolution very strong within him.
-
-She laughed. 'Why, indeed? Well, hate it as much as you wish, Standish,
-it won't interfere with my loving it, and thinking of how I used to
-enjoy the white winters at home. Then, you know, I used to be thinking
-of places like this--places with plants like those aloes that the sun is
-glittering over.'
-
-'And why I hate it,' said Standish, 'is because it puts me in mind of
-the many wretched winters I spent in the miserable idleness of my
-home. While others were allowed some chance of making their way in the
-world--making names for themselves--there was I shut up in that gaol.
-I have lost every chance I might have had--everyone is before me in the
-race.'
-
-'In what race, Standish? In the race for fame?'
-
-'Yes, for fame,' cried Standish; 'not that I value fame for its own
-sake,' he added. 'No, I don't covet it, except that--Daireen, I think
-there is nothing left for me in the world--I am shut out from every
-chance of reaching anything. I was wretched at home, but I feel even
-more wretched here.'
-
-'Why should you do that, Standish?' she asked, turning her eyes upon
-him. 'I am sure everyone here is very kind.'
-
-'I don't want their kindness, Daireen; it is their kindness that makes
-me feel an impostor. What right have I to receive their kindness? Yes, I
-had better take my father's advice and return by next mail. I am useless
-in the world--it doesn't want me.'
-
-'Don't talk so stupidly--so wickedly,' said the girl gravely. 'You are
-not a coward to set out in the world and turn back discouraged even
-before you have got anything to discourage you.'
-
-'I am no coward,' he said; 'but everything has been too hard for me. I
-am a fool--a wretched fool to have set my heart--my soul, upon an object
-I can never reach.'
-
-'What do you mean, Standish? You haven't set your heart upon anything
-that you may not gain in time. You will, I know, if you have courage,
-gain a good and noble name for yourself.'
-
-'Of what use would it be to me, Daireen? It would only be a mockery to
-me--a bitter mockery unless--Oh, Daireen, it must come, you have forced
-it from me--I will tell you and then leave you for ever--Daireen, I
-don't care for anything in the world but to have you love me--a little,
-Daireen. What would a great name be to me unless----'
-
-'Hush, Standish,' said the girl with her face flushed and almost angry.
-'Do not ever speak to me like this again. Why should all our good
-friendship come to an end?' She had softened towards the close of her
-sentence, and she was now looking at him in tenderness.
-
-'You have forced me to speak,' he said. 'God knows how I have struggled
-to hold my secret deep down in my heart--how I have sworn to hold it,
-but it forced itself out--we are not masters of ourselves, Daireen. Now
-tell me to leave you--I am prepared for it, for my dream, I knew, was
-bound to vanish at a touch.'
-
-'Considering that I am four miles from home and in a wood, I cannot
-tell you to do that,' she said with a laugh, for all her anger had been
-driven away. 'Besides that, I like you far too well to turn you away;
-but, Standish, you must never talk so to me again. Now, let us return.'
-
-'I know I must not, because I am a beggar,' he said almost madly. 'You
-will love some one who has had a chance of making a name for himself in
-the world. I have had no chance.'
-
-'Standish, I am waiting for you to return.'
-
-'Yes, I have seen them sitting beside you aboard the steamer,' continued
-Standish bitterly, 'and I knew well how it would be.' He looked at her
-almost fiercely. 'Yes, I knew it--you have loved one of them.'
-
-Daireen's face flushed fearfully and then became deathly pale as she
-looked at him. She did not utter a word, but looked into his face
-steadily with an expression he had never before seen upon hers. He
-became frightened.
-
-'Daireen--dearest Daireen, forgive me,' he cried. I am a fool--no,
-worse--I don't know what I say. Daireen, pity me and forgive me. Don't
-look at me that way, for God's sake. Speak to me.'
-
-'Come away,' she said gently. 'Come away, Standish.'
-
-'But tell me you forgive me, Daireen,' he pleaded.
-
-'Come away,' she said.
-
-She turned her horse's head towards the track which was made through
-that fine white sand and went on from amongst the pines. He followed her
-with a troubled mind, and they rode side by side over the long flats
-of heath until they had almost reached the lane of cactus leading to
-Mowbray. In a few minutes they would be at the Dutch cottage, and yet
-they had not interchanged a word. Standish could not endure the silence
-any longer. He pulled up his horse suddenly.
-
-'Daireen,' he said. 'I have been a fool--a wicked fool, to talk to you
-as I did. I cannot go on until you say you forgive me.'
-
-Then she turned round and smiled on him, holding out her hand.
-
-'We are very foolish, Standish,' she said. 'We are both very foolish.
-Why should I think anything of what you said? We are still good friends,
-Standish.'
-
-'God bless you!' he cried, seizing her hand fervently. 'I will not make
-myself a fool again.' 'And I,' said the girl, 'I will not be a fool
-again.'
-
-So they rode back together. But though Standish had received forgiveness
-he was by no means satisfied with the girl's manner. There was an
-expression that he could not easily read in that smile she had given
-him. He had meant to be very bitter towards her, but had not expected
-her to place him in a position requiring forgiveness. She had forgiven
-him, it was true, but then that smile of hers--what was that sad wistful
-expression upon her face? He could not tell, but he felt that on the
-whole he had not gained much by the resolutions he had made night
-after night. He was inclined to be dissatisfied with the result of his
-morning's ride, nor was this feeling perceptibly decreased by seeing
-beneath one of the broad-leaved trees that surrounded the cottage the
-figure of Mr. Arthur Harwood by the side of Colonel Gerald.
-
-Harwood came forward as Daireen reined up on the avenue.
-
-'I have come to say good-bye to you,' he said, looking up to her face.
-
-'Good-bye?' she answered. 'Why, you haven't said good-morning yet.'
-
-Mr. Harwood was a clever man and he knew it; but his faculty for reading
-what was passing in another person's mind did not bring him happiness
-always. He had made use of what he meant to be a test sentence to
-Daireen, and the result of his observation of its effect was not wholly
-pleasant to him. He had hoped for a little flush--a little trembling of
-the hand, but neither had come; a smile was on her face, and the pulses
-of the hand she held out to him were unruffled. He knew then that the
-time had not yet come for him to reveal himself.
-
-But why should you say good-bye?' she asked after she had greeted him.
-
-'Well, perhaps I should only say _au revoir_, though, upon my word, the
-state of the colony is becoming so critical that one going up country
-should always say good-bye. Yes, my duties call me to leave all this
-pleasant society, Miss Gerald. I am going among the Zulus for a while.'
-
-'I have every confidence in you, Mr. Harwood,' she said. 'You will
-return in safety. We will miss you greatly, but I know how much the
-people at home will be benefited by hearing the result of your visit; so
-we resign ourselves to your absence. But indeed we shall miss you.'
-
-'And if a treacherous assegai should transfix me, I trust my fate will
-draw a single tear,' he said.
-
-There was a laugh as Daireen rode round to dismount and Harwood went
-in to lunch. It was very pleasant chat he felt, but he was as much
-dissatisfied with her laugh as Standish had been with her smile.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXV.
-
-
-```Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,
-
-```Looking before and after, gave us not
-
-```That capability and godlike reason
-
-```To fust in us unused.=
-
-`````Yet do I believe
-
-```The origin and commencement of his grief
-
-```Sprung from neglected love.=
-
-````... he repulsed--a short tale to make--
-
-```Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
-
-```Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
-
-```Thence to a lightness; and by this declension
-
-```Into the madness.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|THE very pleasantness of the lunch Harwood had at the Dutch cottage
-made his visit seem more unsatisfactory to him. He had come up to the
-girl with that sentence which should surely have sounded pathetic even
-though spoken with indifference. He was beside her to say good-bye. He
-had given her to understand that he was going amongst the dangers of a
-disturbed part of the country, but the name of the barbarous nation had
-not made her cheek pale. It was well enough for himself to make light
-of his adventurous undertaking, but he did not think that her smiles in
-telling him that she would miss him were altogether becoming.
-
-Yes, as he rode towards Cape Town he felt that the time had not yet
-come for him to reveal himself to Daireen Gerald. He would have to be
-patient, as he had been for years.
-
-Thus far he had found out negatively how Daireen felt towards himself:
-she liked him, he knew, but only as most women liked him, because
-he could tell them in an agreeable way things that they wanted to
-know--because he had travelled everywhere and had become distinguished.
-He was not a conceited man, but he knew exactly how he stood in the
-estimation of people, and it was bitter for him to reflect that he
-did not stand differently with regard to Miss Gerald. But he had not
-attempted to discover what were Daireen's feelings respecting any one
-else. He was well aware that Mrs. Crawford was anxious to throw Mr.
-Glaston in the way of the girl as much as possible; but he felt that it
-would take a long time for Mr. Glaston to make up his mind to sacrifice
-himself at Daireen's feet, and Daireen was far too sensible to be
-imposed upon by his artistic flourishes. As for this young Mr. Standish
-Macnamara, Harwood saw at once that Daireen regarded him with a
-friendliness that precluded the possibility of love, so he did not fear
-the occupation of the girl's heart by Standish. But when Harwood began
-to think of Oswin Markham--he heard the sound of a horse's hoofs behind
-him, and Oswin Markham himself trotted up, looking dusty and fatigued.
-
-"I thought I should know your animal," said Markham, "and I made an
-effort to overtake you, though I meant to go easily into the town."
-
-Harwood looked at him and then at his horse.
-
-"You seem as if you owed yourself a little ease," he said. "You
-must have done a good deal in the way of riding, judging from your
-appearance."
-
-"A great deal too much," replied Markham. "I have been on the saddle
-since breakfast."
-
-"You have been out every morning for the past three days before I have
-left my room. I was quite surprised when I heard it, after the evidence
-you gave at the garden party of your weakness."
-
-"Of my weakness, yes," said Markham, with a little laugh. "It was
-wretchedly weak to allow myself to be affected by the change from the
-open air to that room, but it felt stifling to me."
-
-"I didn't feel the difference to be anything considerable," said
-Harwood; "so the fact of your being overcome by it proves that you are
-not in a fit state to be playing with your constitution. Where did you
-ride to-day?"
-
-"Where? Upon my word I have not the remotest idea," said Markham. "I
-took the road out to Simon's Bay, but I pulled up at a beach on the
-nearer side of it, and remained there for a good while."
-
-"Nothing could be worse than riding about in this aimless sort of way.
-Here you are completely knocked up now, as you have been for the past
-three evenings. Upon my word, you seem indifferent as to whether or not
-you ever leave the colony alive. You are simply trifling with yourself."
-
-"You are right, I suppose," said Markham wearily. "But what is a fellow
-to do in Cape Town? One can't remain inactive beyond a certain time."
-
-"It is only within the past three days you have taken up this roving
-notion," said Harwood. "It is in fact only since that Government House
-affair." Markham turned and looked at him eagerly for a moment. "Yes,
-since your weakness became apparent to yourself, you have seemed bound
-to prove your strength to the furthest. But you are pushing it too far,
-my boy. You'll find out your mistake."
-
-"Perhaps so," laughed the other. "Perhaps so. By the way, is it true
-that you are going up country, Harwood?"
-
-"Quite true. The fact is that affairs are becoming critical with regard
-to our relations with the Zulus, and unless I am greatly mistaken, this
-colony will be the centre of interest before many months have passed."
-
-"There is nothing I should like better than to go up with you, Harwood."
-
-Harwood shook his head. "You are not strong enough, my boy," he said.
-
-There was a pause before Markham said slowly:
-
-"No, I am not strong enough."
-
-Then they rode into Cape Town together, and dismounted at their hotel;
-and, certainly, as he walked up the stairs to his room, Oswin Markham
-looked anything but strong enough to undertake a journey into the Veldt.
-Doctor Campion would probably have spoken unkindly to him had he seen
-him now, haggard and weary, with his day spent on an exposed road
-beneath a hot sun.
-
-"He is anything but strong enough," said Harwood to himself as he
-watched the other man; and then he recollected the tone in which Markham
-had repeated those words, "I am not strong enough." Was it possible, he
-asked himself, that Markham meant that his strength of purpose was not
-sufficiently great? He thought over this question for some time, and the
-result of his reflection was to make him wish that he had not thought
-the conduct of that defiant chief of such importance as demanded the
-personal observation of the representative of the _Dominant Trumpeter_.
-He felt that he would like to search out the origin of the weakness of
-Mr. Oswin Markham.
-
-But all the time these people were thinking their thoughts and making
-their resolutions upon various subjects, Mr. Algernon Glaston was
-remaining in the settled calm of artistic rectitude. He was awaiting
-with patience the arrival of his father from the Salamander Archipelago,
-though he had given the prelate of that interesting group to understand
-that circumstances would render it impossible for his son to remain
-longer than a certain period at the Cape, so that if he desired the
-communion of his society it would be necessary to allow the mission work
-among the Salamanders to take care of itself. For Mr. Glaston was by no
-means unaware of the sacrifice he was in the habit of making annually
-for the sake of passing a few weeks with his father in a country far
-removed from all artistic centres. The Bishop of the Calapash Islands
-and Metropolitan of the Salamander Archipelago had it several times
-urged upon him that his son was a marvel of filial duty for undertaking
-this annual journey, so that he, no doubt, felt convinced of the fact;
-and though this visit added materially to the expenses of his son's mode
-of life, which, of course, were defrayed by the bishop, yet the bishop
-felt that this addition was, after all, trifling compared with the value
-of the sentiment of filial affection embodied in the annual visit to the
-Cape.
-
-Mr. Glaston had allowed his father a margin of three weeks for any
-impediments that might arise to prevent his leaving the Salamanders, but
-a longer space he could not, he assured his father, remain awaiting his
-arrival from the sunny islands of his see. Meantime he was dining out
-night after night with his friends at the Cape, and taking daily drives
-and horse-exercise for the benefit of his health. Upon the evening when
-Harwood and Markham entered the hotel together, Mr. Glaston was just
-departing to join a dinner-party which was to assemble at the house of
-a certain judge, and as Harwood was also to be a guest, he was compelled
-to dress hastily.
-
-Oswin Markham was not, however, aware of the existence of the hospitable
-judge, so he remained in the hotel. He was tired almost to a point of
-prostration after his long aimless ride, but a bath and a dinner revived
-him, and after drinking his coffee he threw himself upon a sofa and
-slept for some hours. When he awoke it was dark, and then lighting a
-cigar he went out to the balcony that ran along the upper windows, and
-seated himself in the cool air that came landwards from the sea.
-
-He watched the soldiers in white uniform crossing the square; he saw
-the Malay population who had been making a holiday, returning to their
-quarter of the town, the men with their broad conical straw hats, the
-women with marvellously coloured shawls; he saw the coolies carrying
-their burdens, and the Hottentots and the Kafirs and all the races
-blended in the motley population of Cape Town. He glanced listlessly at
-all, thinking his own thoughts undisturbed by any incongruity of tongues
-or of races beneath him, and he was only awakened from the reverie into
-which he had fallen by the opening of one of the windows near him and
-the appearance on the balcony of Algernon Glaston in his dinner dress
-and smoking a choice cigar.
-
-The generous wine of the generous judge had made Mr. Glaston
-particularly courteous, for he drew his chair almost by the side of
-Markham's and inquired after his health.
-
-"Harwood was at that place to-night," he said, "and he mentioned
-that you were killing yourself. Just like these newspaper fellows to
-exaggerate fearfully for the sake of making a sensation. You are all
-right now, I think."
-
-"Quite right," said Markham. "I don't feel exactly like an elephant
-for vigour, but you know what it is to feel strong without having any
-particular strength. I am that way."
-
-"Dreadfully brutal people I met to-night," continued Mr. Glaston
-reflectively. "Sort of people Harwood could get on with. Talking
-actually about some wretched savage--some Zulu chief or other from whom
-they expect great things; as if the action of a ruffianly barbarian
-could affect any one. It was quite disgusting talk. I certainly would
-have come away at once only I was lucky enough to get by the side of a
-girl who seems to know something of Art--a Miss Vincent--she is quite
-fresh and enthusiastic on the subject--quite a child indeed."
-
-Markham thought it prudent to light a fresh cigar from the end of the
-one he had smoked, at the interval left by Mr. Glaston for his comment,
-so that a vague "indeed" was all that came through his closed lips.
-
-"Yes, she seems rather a tractable sort of little thing. By the way, she
-mentioned something about your having become faint at Government House
-the other day, before you had seen all my pictures."
-
-"Ah, yes," said Markham. "The change from the open air to that room."
-
-"Ah, of course. Miss Vincent seems to understand something of the
-meaning of the pictures. She was particularly interested in one of them,
-which, curiously enough, is the most wonderful of the collection. Did
-you study them all?"
-
-"No, not all; the fact was, that unfortunate weakness of mine interfered
-with my scrutiny," said Markham. "But the single glance I had at one
-of the pictures convinced me that it was a most unusual work. I felt
-greatly interested in it."
-
-"That was the Aholibah, no doubt."
-
-"Yes, I heard your description of how if came to be painted."
-
-"Ah, but that referred only to the marvellous expression of the face--so
-saturate--so devoured--with passion. You saw how Miss Gerald turned away
-from it with a shudder?"
-
-"Why did she do that?" said Markham.
-
-"Heaven knows," said Glaston, with a little sneer.
-
-"Heaven knows," said Markham, after a pause and without any sneer.
-
-"She could not understand it," continued Glaston. "All that that face
-means cannot be apprehended in a glance. It has a significance of its
-own--it is a symbol of a passion that withers like a fire--a passion
-that can destroy utterly all the beauty of a life that might have been
-intense with beauty. You are not going away, are you?"
-
-Markham had risen from his seat and turned away his head, grasping the
-rail of the balcony. It was some moments before he started and looked
-round at the other man. "I beg your pardon," he said; "I'm not going
-away, I am greatly interested. Yes, I caught a glimpse of the expression
-of the face."
-
-"It is a miracle of power," continued Glaston. "Miss Gerald felt, but
-she could not understand why she should feel, its power."
-
-There was a long pause, during which Markham stared blankly across the
-square, and the other leant back in his chair and watched the curling of
-his cigar clouds through the still air. From the garrison at the castle
-there came to them the sound of a bugle-call.
-
-"I am greatly interested in that picture," said Markham at length. "I
-should like to know all the details of its working out."
-
-"The expression of the face----"
-
-"Ah, I know all of that. I mean the scene--that hill seen through the
-arch--the pavement of the oriental apartment--the--the figure--how did
-the painter bring them together?"
-
-"That is of little consequence in the study of the elements of the
-symbolism," said Mr. Glaston.
-
-"Yes, of course it is; but still I should like to know."
-
-"I really never thought of putting any question to the painter about
-these matters," replied Glaston. "He had travelled in the East, and the
-kiosk was amongst his sketches; as for the model of the figure, if I do
-not mistake, I saw the study for the face in an old portfolio of his he
-brought from Sicily."
-
-"Ah, indeed."
-
-"But these are mere accidents in the production of the picture. The
-symbolism is the picture."
-
-Again there was a pause, and the chatter of a couple of Malays in the
-street became louder, and then fainter, as the speakers drew near and
-passed away.
-
-"Glaston," said Markham at length, "did you remove the pictures from
-Government House?"
-
-"They are in one of my rooms," said Glaston. "Would you think it a piece
-of idle curiosity if I were to step upstairs and take a look at that
-particular work?"
-
-"You could not see it by lamplight. You can study them all in the
-morning."
-
-"But I feel in the mood just now, and you know how much depends upon the
-mood."
-
-"My room is open," said Glaston. "But the idea that has possessed you is
-absurd."
-
-"I dare say, I dare say, but I have become interested in all that you
-have told me; I must try and--and understand the symbolism."
-
-He left the balcony before Mr. Glaston had made up his mind as to
-whether there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice uttering the final
-sentence.
-
-"Not worse than the rest of the uneducated world," murmured the Art
-prophet condescendingly.
-
-But in Mr. Glaston's private room upstairs Oswin Markham was standing
-holding a lighted lamp up to that interesting picture and before that
-wonderful symbolic expression upon the face of the figure; the rest of
-the room was in darkness. He looked up to the face that the lamplight
-gloated over. The remainder of the picture was full of reflections of
-the light.
-
-"A power that can destroy utterly all the beauty of a life," he said,
-repeating the analysis of Mr. Glaston. He continued looking at it before
-he repeated another of that gentleman's sentences--"She felt, but could
-not understand, its power." He laid the lamp on the table and walked
-over to the darkened window and gazed out. But once more he returned
-to the picture. "A passion that can destroy utterly all the beauty of
-life," he said again. "Utterly! that is a lie!" He remained with his
-eyes upon the picture for some moments, then he lifted the lamp and went
-to the door. At the door he stopped, glanced at the picture and laughed.
-
-In the Volsunga Saga there is an account of how a jealous woman listens
-outside the chamber where a man whom she once loved is being murdered in
-his wife's arms; hearing the cry of the wife in the chamber the woman at
-the door laughs. A man beside her says, "Thou dost not laugh because thy
-heart is made glad, or why moves that pallor upon thy face?"
-
-Oswin Markham left the room and thanked Mr. Glaston for having gratified
-his whim.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVI.
-
-
-``... What he spake, though it lacked form a little,
-
-``Was not like madness. There's something in his soul
-
-``O'er which his melancholy sits on brood.=
-
-``Purpose is but the slave to memory.
-
-``Most necessary 'tis that we forget.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|THE long level rays of the sun that was setting in crimson splendour
-were touching the bright leaves of the silver-fir grove on one side of
-the ravine traversing the slope of the great peaked hill which makes
-the highest point of Table Mountain, but the other side was shadowy. The
-flat face of the precipice beneath the long ridge of the mountain was
-full of fantastic gleams of red in its many crevices, and far away a
-thin waterfall seemed a shimmering band of satin floating downwards
-through a dark bed of rocks. Table Bay was lying silent and with hardly'
-a sparkle upon its ripples from where the outline of Robbin Island was
-seen at one arm of its crescent to the white sand of the opposite shore.
-The vineyards of the lower slope, beneath which the red road crawled,
-were dim and colourless, for the sunset bands had passed away from them
-and flared only upon the higher slopes.
-
-Upon the summit of the ridge of the silver-fir ravine Daireen Gerald sat
-looking out to where the sun was losing itself among the ridges of the
-distant kloof, and at her feet was Oswin Markham. Behind them rose the
-rocks of the Peak with their dark green herbage. Beneath them the soft
-rustle of a songless bird was heard through the foliage.
-
-But it remains to be told how those two persons came to be watching
-together the phenomenon of sunset from the slope.
-
-It was Mrs. Crawford who had upon the very day after the departure of
-Arthur Harwood organised one of those little luncheon parties which are
-so easily organised and give promise of pleasures so abundant. She had
-expressed to Mr. Harwood the grief she felt at his being compelled by
-duty to depart from the midst of their circle, just as she had said to
-Mr. Markham how bowed down she had been at the reflection of his leaving
-the steamer at St. Helena; and Harwood had thanked her for her kind
-expressions, and made a mental resolve that he would say something
-sarcastic regarding the Army Boot Commission in his next communication
-to the _Dominant Trumpeter_. But the hearing of the gun of the mail
-steamer that was to convey the special correspondent to Natal was the
-pleasantest sensation Mrs. Crawford had experienced for long. She had
-been very anxious on Harwood's account for some time. She did not by
-any means think highly of the arrangement which had been made by Colonel
-Gerald to secure for one of his horses an amount of exercise by allowing
-Mr. Harwood to ride it; for she was well aware that Mr. Harwood would
-think it quite within the line of his duty to exercise the animal at
-times when Miss Gerald would be riding out. She knew that most girls
-liked Mr. Harwood, and whatever might be Mr. Harwood's feelings towards
-the race that so complimented him, she could not doubt that he admired
-to a perilous point the daughter of Colonel Gerald. If, then, the girl
-would return his feeling, what would become of Mrs. Crawford's hopes for
-Mr. Glaston?
-
-It was the constant reflection upon this question that caused the sound
-of the mail gun to fall gratefully upon the ears of the major's wife.
-Harwood was to be away for more than a month at any rate, and in a month
-much might be accomplished, not merely by a special correspondent, but
-by a lady with a resolute mind and a strategical training. So she had
-set her mind to work, and without delay had organised what gave promise
-of being a delightful little lunch, issuing half a dozen invitations
-only three days in advance.
-
-Mr. Algernon Glaston had, after some persuasion, promised to join the
-party. Colonel Gerald and his daughter expressed the happiness they
-would have at being present, and Mr. Standish Macnamara felt certain
-that nothing could interfere with his delight. Then there were the two
-daughters of a member of the Legislative Council who were reported to
-look with fond eyes upon the son of one of the justices of the Supreme
-Court, a young gentleman who was also invited. Lastly, by what Mrs.
-Crawford considered a stroke of real constructive ability, Mr. Oswin
-Markham and Miss Lottie Vincent were also begged to allow themselves to
-be added to the number of the party. Mrs. Crawford disliked Lottie,
-but that was no reason why Lottie should not exercise the tactics Mrs.
-Crawford knew she possessed, to take care of Mr. Oswin Markham for the
-day.
-
-They would have much to talk about regarding the projected dramatic
-entertainment of the young lady, so that Mr. Glaston should be left
-solitary in that delightful listless after-space of lunch, unless
-indeed--and the contingency was, it must be confessed, suggested to the
-lady--Miss Gerald might chance to remain behind the rest of the party;
-in that case it would not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that the
-weight of Mr. Glaston's loneliness would be endurable.
-
-Everything had been carried out with that perfect skill which can be
-gained only by experience. The party had driven from Mowbray for a
-considerable way up the hill. The hampers had been unpacked and the
-lunch partaken of in a shady nook which was supposed to be free from the
-venomous reptiles that make picnics somewhat risky enjoyments in sunny
-lands; and then the young people had trooped away to gather Venus-hair
-ferns at the waterfall, or silver leaves from the grove, or bronze-green
-lizards, or some others of the offspring of nature which have come into
-existence solely to meet the requirements of collectors. Mr. Glaston and
-Daireen followed more leisurely, and Mrs. Crawford's heart was happy.
-The sun would be setting in an hour, she reflected, and she had great
-confidence in the effect of fine sunsets upon the hearts of lovers--.
-nay, upon the raw material that might after a time develop into the
-hearts of lovers. She was quite satisfied seeing the young people
-depart, for she was not aware how much more pleasant than Oswin Markham
-Lottie Vincent had found Mr. Glaston at that judge's dinner-party a
-few evenings previous, nor how much more plastic than Miss Gerald Mr.
-Glaston had found Lottie Vincent upon the same occasion.
-
-Mrs. Crawford did not think it possible that Lottie could be so clever,
-even if she had had the inclination, as to effect the separation of
-the party as it had been arranged. But Lottie had by a little manouvre
-waited at the head of the ravine until Mr. Glaston and Daireen had
-come up, and then she had got into conversation with Mr. Glaston upon a
-subject that was a blank to the others, so that they had walked quietly
-on together until that pleasant space at the head of the ravine was
-reached. There Daireen had seated herself to watch the west become
-crimson with sunset, and at her feet Oswin had cast himself to watch her
-face.
-
-Had Mrs. Crawford been aware of this, she would scarcely perhaps have
-been so pleasant to her friend Colonel Gerald, or to her husband far
-down on the slope.
-
-It was very silent at the head of that ravine. The delicate splash of
-the water that trickled through the rocks far away was distinctly heard.
-The rosy bands that had been about the edges of the silver leaves had
-passed off. Daireen's face was at last left in shadow, and she turned to
-watch the rays move upwards, until soon only the dark Peak was enwound
-in the red light that made its forehead like the brows of an ancient
-Bacchanal encircled with a rose-wreath. Then quickly the red dwindled
-away, until only a single rose-leaf was upon the highest point; an
-instant more and it had passed, leaving the hill dark and grim in
-outline against the pale blue.
-
-Then succeeded that time of silent conflict between light and
-darkness--a time of silence and of wonder.
-
-Upon the slope of the Peak it was silent enough. The girl's eyes went
-out across the shadowy plain below to where the water was shining in its
-own gray light, but she uttered not a word. The man leant his head upon
-his hand as he looked up to her face.
-
-"What is the 'Ave' you are breathing to the sunset, Miss Gerald?" he
-said at length, and she gave a little start and looked at him. "What is
-the vesper hymn your heart has been singing all this time?"
-
-She laughed. "No hymn, no song."
-
-"I saw it upon your face," he said. "I saw its melody in your eyes; and
-yet--yet I cannot understand it--I am too gross to be able to translate
-it. I suppose if a man had sensitive hearing the wind upon the blades
-of grass would make good music to him, but most people are dull to
-everything but the rolling of barrels and such-like music."
-
-"I had not even a musical thought," said the girl. "I am afraid that if
-all I thought were translated into words, the result would be a jumble:
-you know what that means."
-
-"Yes. Heaven is a jumble, isn't it? A bit of wonderful blue here, and
-a shapeless cloud there--a few faint breaths of music floating about a
-place of green, and an odour of a field of flowers. Yes, all dreams are
-jumbles."
-
-"And I was dreaming?" she said. "Yes, I dare say my confusion of thought
-without a single idea may be called by courtesy a dream."
-
-"And now have you awakened?"
-
-"Dreams must break and dissolve some time, I suppose, Mr. Markham."
-
-"They must, they must," he said. "I wonder when will my awaking come."
-
-"Have you a dream?" she asked, with a laugh.
-
-"I am living one," he answered.
-
-"Living one?"
-
-"Living one. My life has become a dream to me. How am I beside you? How
-is it possible that I could be beside you? Either of two things must
-be a dream--either my past life is a dream, or I am living one in this
-life."
-
-"Is there so vast a difference between them?" she asked, looking at him.
-His eyes were turned away from her.
-
-"Vast? Vast?" he repeated musingly. Then he rose to his feet and looked
-out oceanwards. "I don't know what is vast," he said. Then he looked
-down to her. "Miss Gerald, I don't believe that my recollection of my
-past is in the least correct. My memory is a falsehood utterly. For it
-is quite impossible that this body of mine--this soul of mine--could
-have passed through such a change as I must have passed through if
-my memory has got anything of truth in it. My God! my God! The
-recollections that come to me are, I know, impossible."
-
-"I don't understand you, Mr. Markham," said Daireen.
-
-Once more he threw himself on the short tawny herbage beside her.
-
-"Have you not heard of men being dragged back when they have taken a
-step beyond the barrier that hangs between life and death--men who have
-had one foot within the territory of death?"
-
-"I have heard of that."
-
-"And you know it is not the same old life that a man leads when he
-is brought from that dominion of death. He begins life anew. He knows
-nothing of the past. He laughs at the faces that were once familiar to
-him; they mean nothing to him. His past is dead. Think of me, child.
-Day by day I suffered all the agonies of death and hell, and shall I not
-have granted to me that most righteous gift of God? Shall not my past
-be utterly blotted out? Yes, these vague memories that I have are the
-memories of a dream. God has not been so just to me as to others, for
-there are some realities of the past still with me I know, and thus I am
-at times led to think it might be possible that all my recollections are
-true--but no, it is impossible--utterly impossible." Again he leapt to
-his feet and clasped his hands over his head. "Child--child, if you knew
-all, you would pity me," he said, in a tone no louder than a whisper.
-
-She had never heard anything so pitiful before. Seeing the agony of the
-man, and hearing him trying to convince himself of that at which his
-reason rebelled, was terribly pitiful to her. She never before that
-moment knew how she felt towards this man to whom she had given life.
-
-"What can I say of comfort to you?" she said. "You have all the sympathy
-of my heart. Why will you not ask me to help you? What is my pity?"
-
-He knelt beside her. "Be near me," he said. "Let me look at you now. Is
-there not a bond between us?--such a bond as binds man to his God? You
-gave me my life as a gift, and it will be a true life now. God had no
-pity for me, but you have more than given me your pity. The life you
-have given me is better than the life given me by God."
-
-"Do not say that," she said. "Do not think that I have given you
-anything. It is your God who has changed you through those days of
-terrible suffering."
-
-"Yes, the suffering is God's gift," he cried bitterly. "Torture of days
-and nights, and then not utter forgetfulness. After passing through
-the barrier of death, I am denied the blessings that should come with
-death."
-
-"Why should you wish to forget anything of the past?" she asked. "Has
-everything been so very terrible to you?"
-
-"Terrible?" he said, clasping his hands over one of his knees and gazing
-out to the conflict of purple and shell-pink in the west. "No, nothing
-was terrible. I am no Corsair with a hundred romantic crimes to give
-me so much remorseful agony as would enable me to act the part of Count
-Lara with consistency. I am no Lucifer encircled with a halo of splendid
-wickedness. It is only the change that has passed over me since I felt
-myself looking at you that gives me this agony of thought. Wasted time
-is my only sin--hours cast aside--years trampled upon. I lived for
-myself as I had a chance--as thousands of others do, and it did not seem
-to me anything terrible that I should make my father's days miserable to
-him. I did not feel myself to be the curse to him that I now know myself
-to have been. I was a curse to him. He had only myself in the world--no
-other son, and yet I could leave him to die alone--yes, and to die
-offering me his forgiveness--offering it when it was not in my power
-to refuse to accept it. This is the memory that God will not take away.
-Nay, I tell you it seems that instead of being blotted out by my days of
-suffering it is but intensified."
-
-He had bowed down his face upon his hands as he sat there. Her eyes were
-full of tears of sympathy and compassion--she felt with him, and his
-sufferings were hers.
-
-"I pity you--with all my soul I pity you," she said, laying her hand
-upon his shoulder.
-
-He turned and took her hand, holding it not with a fervent grasp; but in
-his face that looked up to her tearful eyes there was a passion of love
-and adoration.
-
-"As a man looks to his God I look to you," he said. "Be near me that the
-life you have given me may be good. Let me think of you, and the dead
-Past shall bury its dead."
-
-What answer could she make to him? The tears continued to come to her
-eyes as she sat while he looked into her face.
-
-"You know," she said--"you know I feel for you. You know that I
-understand you."
-
-"Not all," he said slowly. "I am only beginning to understand myself; I
-have never done so in all my life hitherto."
-
-Then they watched the delicate shadowy dimness--not gray, but full of
-the softest azure--begin to swathe the world beneath them. The waters
-of the bay were reflecting the darkening sky, and out over the ocean
-horizon a single star was beginning to breathe through the blue.
-
-"Daireen," he said at length, "is the bond between us one of love?"
-
-There was no passion in his voice, nor was his hand that held hers
-trembling as he spoke. She gave no start at his words, nor did she
-withdraw her hand. Through the silence the splash of the waterfall above
-them was heard clearly. She looked at him through the long pause.
-
-"I do not know," she said. "I cannot answer you yet----No, not yet--not
-yet."
-
-"I will not ask," he said quietly. "Not yet--not yet." And he dropped
-her hand.
-
-Then he rose and looked out to that star, which was no longer smothered
-in the splendid blue of the heavens, but was glowing in passion until
-the waters beneath caught some of its rays.
-
-There was a long pause before a voice sounded behind them on the
-slope--the musical voice of Miss Lottie Vincent.
-
-"Did you ever see such a sentimental couple?" she cried, raising her
-hands with a very pretty expression of mock astonishment. "Watching the
-twilight as if you were sitting for your portraits, while here we have
-been searching for you over hill and dale. Have we not, Mr. Glaston?"
-
-Mr. Glaston thought it unnecessary to corroborate a statement made with
-such evident ingenuousness.
-
-"Well, your search met with its reward, I hope, Miss Vincent," said
-Oswin.
-
-"What, in finding you?"
-
-"I am not so vain as to fancy it possible that you should accept that as
-a reward, Miss Vincent," he replied.
-
-The young lady gave him a glance that was meant to read his inmost soul.
-Then she laughed.
-
-"We must really hasten back to good Mamma Crawford," she said, with a
-seriousness that seemed more frivolous than her frivolity. "Every one
-will be wondering where we have been."
-
-"Lucky that you will be able to tell them," remarked Oswin.
-
-"How?" she said quickly, almost apprehensively.
-
-"Why, you know you can say 'Over hill, over dale,' and so satisfy even
-the most sceptical in a moment."
-
-Miss Lottie made a little pause, then laughed again; she did not think
-it necessary to make any reply.
-
-And so they all went down by the little track along the edge of the
-ravine, and the great Peak became darker above them as the twilight
-dwindled into evening.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVII.
-
-
-````I have remembrances of yours--
-
-```... words of so sweet breath composed
-
-```As made the things more rich.=
-
-``Hamlet.... You do remember all the circumstance?
-
-``Horatio. Remember it, my lord?
-
-``Hamlet. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
-
-```That would not let me sleep.=
-
-`````... poor Ophelia,
-
-``Divided from herself and her fair judgment.=
-
-````Sleep rock thy brain,
-
-``And never come mischance.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|MRS. Crawford was not in the least apprehensive of the safety of the
-young people who had been placed under her care upon this day. She had
-been accustomed in the good old days at Arradambad, when the scorching
-inhabitants had lifted their eyes unto the hills, and had fled to their
-cooling slopes, to organise little open-air tiffins for the benefit of
-such young persons as had come out to visit the British Empire in the
-East under the guidance of the major's wife, and the result of her
-experience went to prove that it was quite unnecessary to be in the
-least degree nervous regarding the ultimate welfare of the young persons
-who were making collections of the various products of Nature. It was
-much better for the young persons to learn self-dependence, she thought,
-and though many of the maidens under her care had previously, through
-long seasons at Continental watering-places, become acquainted with
-a few of the general points to be observed in maintaining a course of
-self-dependence, yet the additional help that came to them from the
-hills was invaluable.
-
-As Mrs. Crawford now gave a casual glance round the descending party,
-she felt that her skill as a tactician was not on the wane. They were
-walking together, and though Lottie was of course chatting away as
-flippantly as ever, yet both Markham and Mr. Glaston was very silent,
-she saw, and her conclusions were as rapid as those of an accustomed
-campaigner should be. Mr. Glaston had been talking to Daireen in the
-twilight, so that Lottie's floss-chat was a trouble to him; while Oswin
-Markham was wearied with having listened for nearly an hour to her
-inanities, and was seeking for the respite of silence.
-
-"You naughty children, to stray away in that fashion!" she cried. "Do
-you fancy you had permission to lose yourselves like that?"
-
-"Did we lose ourselves, Miss Vincent?" said Markham.
-
-"We certainly did not," said Lottie, and then Mrs. Crawford's first
-suggestions were confirmed: Lottie and Markham spoke of themselves,
-while Daireen and Mr. Glaston were mute.
-
-"It was very naughty of you," continued the matron. "Why, in India, if
-you once dared do such a thing----"
-
-"We should do it for ever," cried Lottie. "Now, you know, my dear good
-Mrs. Crawford, I have been in India, and I have had experience of
-your picnics when we were at the hills--oh, the most delightful little
-affairs--every one used to look forward to them."
-
-Mrs. Crawford laughed gently as she patted Lottie on the cheek. "Ah,
-they were now and again successes, were they not? How I wish Daireen had
-been with us."
-
-"Egad, she would not be with us now, my dear," said the major. "Eh,
-George, what do you say, my boy?"
-
-"For shame, major," cried Mrs. Crawford, glancing towards Lottie.
-
-"Eh, what?" said the bewildered Boot Commissioner, who meant to be very
-gallant indeed. It was some moments before he perceived how Miss Vincent
-could construe his words, and then he attempted an explanation, which
-made matters worse. "My dear, I assure you I never meant that your
-attractions were not--not--ah--most attractive, they were, I assure
-you--you were then most attractive."
-
-"And so far from having waned," said Colonel Gerald, "it would seem that
-every year has but----"
-
-"Why, what on earth is the meaning of this raid of compliments on poor
-little me?" cried the young lady in the most artless manner, glancing
-from the major to the colonel with uplifted hands.
-
-"Let us hasten to the carriages, and leave these old men to talk their
-nonsense to each other," said Mrs. Crawford, putting her arm about one
-of the daughters of the member of the Legislative Council--a young lady
-who had found the companionship of Standish Macnamara quite as pleasant
-as her sister had the guidance of the judge's son up the ravine--and so
-they descended to where the carriages were waiting to take them towards
-Cape Town. Daireen and her father were to walk to the Dutch cottage,
-which was but a short distance away, and with them, of course, Standish.
-
-"Good-bye, my dear child," said Mrs. Crawford, embracing Daireen, while
-the others talked in a group. "You are looking pale, dear, but never
-mind; I will drive out and have a long chat with you in a couple of
-days," she whispered, in a way she meant to be particularly impressive.
-
-Then the carriage went off, and Daireen put her hand through her
-father's arm, and walked silently in the silent evening to the house
-among the aloes and Australian oaks, through whose leaves the fireflies
-were flitting in myriads.
-
-"She is a good woman," said Colonel Gerald. "An exceedingly good woman,
-only her long experience of the sort of girls who used to be sent out to
-her at India has made her rather misjudge the race, I think."
-
-"She is so good," said Daireen. "Think of all the trouble she was at
-to-day for our sake."
-
-"Yes, for our sake," laughed her father. "My dear Dolly, if you could
-only know the traditions our old station retains of Mrs. Crawford, you
-would think her doubly good. The trouble she has gone to for the sake of
-her friends--her importations by every mail--is simply astonishing. But
-what did you think of that charming Miss Van der Veldt you took such
-care of, Standish, my boy? Did you make much progress in Cape Dutch?"
-
-But Standish could not answer in the same strain of pleasantry. He was
-thinking too earnestly upon the visions his fancy had been conjuring up
-during the entire evening--visions of Mr. Glaston sitting by the side
-of Daireen gazing out to that seductive, though by no means uncommon,
-phenomenon of sunset. He had often wished, when at the waterfall
-gathering Venus-hair for Miss Van der Veldt, that he could come into
-possession of the power of Joshua at the valley of Gibeon to arrest
-the descent of the orb. The possibly disastrous consequences to
-the planetary system seemed to him but trifling weighed against the
-advantages that would accrue from the fact of Mr. Glaston's being
-deprived of a source of conversation that was both fruitful and
-poetical. Standish knew well, without having read Wordsworth, that the
-twilight was sovereign of one peaceful hour; he had in his mind quite a
-store of unuttered poetical observations upon sunset, and he felt that
-Mr. Glaston might possibly be possessed of similar resources which he
-could draw upon when occasion demanded such a display. The thought of
-Mr. Glaston sitting at the feet of Daireen, and with her drinking in of
-the glory of the west, was agonising to Standish, and so he could not
-enter into Colonel Gerald's pleasantry regarding the attractive daughter
-of the member of the Legislative Council.
-
-When Daireen had shut the door of her room that night and stood alone in
-the darkness, she found the relief that she had been seeking since she
-had come down from the slope of that great Peak--relief that could not
-be found even in the presence of her father, who had been everything to
-her a few days before. She found relief in being alone with her thoughts
-in the silence of the night. She drew aside the curtains of her window,
-and looked out up to that Peak which was towering amongst the brilliant
-stars. She could know exactly the spot upon the edge of the ravine where
-she had been sitting--where they had been sitting. What did it all mean?
-she asked herself. She could not at first recollect any of the words
-she had heard upon that slope, she could not even think what they should
-mean, but she had a childlike consciousness of happiness mixed with
-fear. What was the mystery that had been unfolded to her up there? What
-was the revelation that had been made to her? She could not tell. It
-seemed wonderful to her how she could so often have looked up to that
-hill without feeling anything of what she now felt gazing up to its
-slope.
-
-It was all too wonderful for her to understand. She had a consciousness
-of nothing but that all was wonderful. She could not remember any of his
-words except those he had last uttered. The bond between them--was it
-of love? How could she tell? What did she know of love? She could not
-answer him when he had spoken to her, nor was she able even now, as she
-stood looking out to those brilliant stars that crowned the Peak and
-studded the dark edges of the slope which had been lately overspread
-with the poppy-petals of sunset. It was long before she went into her
-bed, but she had arrived at no conclusion to her thoughts--all that
-had happened seemed mysterious; and she knew not whether she felt happy
-beyond all the happiness she had ever known, or sad beyond the sadness
-of any hour of her life. Her sleep swallowed up all her perplexity.
-
-But the instant she awoke in the bright morning she went softly over to
-the window and looked out from a corner of her blind to that slope and
-to the place where they had sat. No, it was not a dream. There shone
-the silver leaves and there sparkled the waterfall. It was the loveliest
-hill in the world, she felt--lovelier even than the purple heather-clad
-Slieve Docas. This was a terrible thought to suggest itself to her mind,
-she felt all the time she was dressing, but still it remained with her
-and refused to be shaken off.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXVIII.
-
-
-```Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
-
-`````... her election
-
-```Hath sealed thee for herself.=
-
-```Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.=
-
-```Yea, from the table of my memory
-
-```I'll wipe away all trivial fond records...
-
-```That youth and observation copied there,
-
-```And thy commandment all alone shall live
-
-```Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven!--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|COLONEL Gerald was well aware of Mrs. Crawford's strategical skill, and
-he had watched its development and exercise during the afternoon of that
-pleasant little luncheon party on the hill. He remembered what she had
-said to him so gravely at the garden-party at Government House regarding
-the responsibility inseparable from the guardianship of Daireen at the
-Cape, and he knew that Mrs. Crawford had in her mind, when she organised
-the party to the hill, such precepts as she had previously enunciated.
-He had watched and admired her cleverness in arranging the collecting
-expeditions, and he felt that her detaining of Mr. Glaston as she had
-under some pretext until all the others but Daireen had gone up
-the ravine was a master stroke. But at this point Colonel Gerald's
-observation ended. His imagination had been much less vivid than either
-Mrs. Crawford's or Standish's. He did not attribute any subtle influence
-to the setting sun, nor did he conjure up any vision of Mr. Glaston
-sitting at the feet of Daireen and uttering words that the magic of the
-sunset glories alone could inspire.
-
-The fact was that he knew much better than either Mrs. Crawford or
-Standish how his daughter felt towards Mr. Glaston, and he was not in
-the least concerned in the result of her observation of the glowing west
-by the side of the Art prophet. When Mrs. Crawford looked narrowly into
-the girl's face on her descent Colonel Gerald had only laughed; he did
-not feel any distressing weight of responsibility on the subject of the
-guardianship of his daughter, for he had not given a single thought
-to the accident of his daughter's straying up the ravine with Algernon
-Glaston, nor was he impressed by his daughter's behaviour on the day
-following. They had driven out together to pay some visits, and she had
-been even more affectionate to him than usual, and he justified
-Mrs. Crawford's accusation of his ignorance and the ignorance of men
-generally, by feeling, from this fact, more assured that Daireen had
-passed unscathed through the ordeal of sunset and the drawing on of
-twilight on the mount.
-
-On the next day to that on which they had paid their visits, however,
-Daireen seemed somewhat abstracted in her manner, and when her father
-asked her if she would ride with him and Standish to The Flats she, for
-the first time, brought forward a plea--the plea of weariness--to be
-allowed to remain at home.
-
-Her father looked at her, not narrowly nor with the least glance of
-suspicion, only tenderly, as he said:
-
-"Certainly, stay at home if you wish, Dolly. You must not overtax
-yourself, or we shall have to get a nurse for you."
-
-He sat by her side on the chair on the stoep of the Dutch cottage and
-put his arm about her. In an instant she had clasped him round the neck
-and had hidden her face upon his shoulder in something like hysterical
-passion. He laughed and patted her on the back in mock protest at her
-treatment. It was some time before she unwound her arms and he got upon
-his feet, declaring that he would not submit to such rough handling.
-But all the same he saw that her eyes were full of tears; and as he rode
-with Standish over the sandy plain made bright with heath, he thought
-more than once that there was something strange in her action and still
-stranger in her tears.
-
-Standish, however, felt equal to explaining everything that seemed
-unaccountable. He felt there could be no doubt that Daireen was wearying
-of these rides with him: he was nothing more than a brother--a dull,
-wearisome, commonplace brother to her, while such fellows as Glaston,
-who had made fame for themselves, having been granted the opportunity
-denied to others, were naturally attractive to her. Feeling this,
-Standish once more resolved to enter upon that enterprise of work which
-he felt to be ennobling. He would no longer linger here in silken-folded
-idleness, he would work--work--work--steadfastly, nobly, to win her who
-was worth all the labour of a man's life. Yes, he would no longer
-remain inactive as he had been, he would--well, he lit another cigar and
-trotted up to the side of Colonel Gerald.
-
-But Daireen, after the departure of her father and Standish, continued
-sitting upon the chair under the lovely creeping plants that twined
-themselves around the lattice of the projecting roof. It was very cool
-in the gracious shade while all the world outside was red with heat. The
-broad leaves of the plants in the garden were hanging languidly, and the
-great black bees plunged about the mighty roses that were bursting into
-bloom with the first breath of the southern summer. From the brink of
-the little river at the bottom of the avenue of Australian oaks the
-chatter of the Hottentot washerwomen came, and across the intervening
-space of short tawny grass a Malay fruitman passed, carrying his baskets
-slung on each end of a bamboo pole across his shoulders.
-
-She looked out at the scene--so strange to her even after the weeks she
-had been at this place; all was strange to her--as the thoughts that
-were in her mind. It seemed to her that she had been but one day at this
-place, and yet since she had heard the voice of Oswin Markham how great
-a space had passed! All the days she had been here were swallowed up in
-the interval that had elapsed since she had seen this man--since she had
-seen him? Why, there he was before her very eyes, standing by the side
-of his horse with the bridle over his arm. There he was watching her
-while she had been thinking her thoughts.
-
-She stood amongst the blossoms of the trellis, white and lovely as a
-lily in a land of red sun. He felt her beauty to be unutterably gracious
-to look upon. He threw his bridle over a branch and walked up to her.
-
-"I have come to say good-bye," he said as he took her hand.
-
-These were the same words that she had heard from Harwood a few days
-before and that had caused her to smile. But now the hand Markham was
-not holding was pressed against her heart. Now she knew all. There
-was no mystery between them. She knew why her heart became still after
-beating tumultuously for a few seconds; and he, though he had not
-designed the words with the same object that Harwood had, and though
-he spoke them without the same careful observance of their effect, in
-another instant had seen what was in the girl's heart.
-
-"To say good-bye?" she repeated mechanically.
-
-"For a time, yes; for a long time it will seem to me--for a month."
-
-He saw the faint smile that came to her face, and how her lips parted as
-a little sigh of relief passed through them.
-
-"For a month?" she said, and now she was speaking in her own voice,
-and sitting down. "A month is not a long time to say good-bye for, Mr.
-Markham. But I am so sorry that papa is gone out for his ride on The
-Flats."
-
-"I am fortunate in finding even you here, then," he said.
-
-"Fortunate! Yes," she said. "But where do you mean to spend this month?"
-she continued, feeling that he was now nothing more than a visitor.
-
-"It is very ridiculous--very foolish," he replied. "I promised, you
-know, to act in some entertainment Miss Vincent has been getting up, and
-only yesterday her father received orders to proceed to Natal; but as
-all the fellows who had promised her to act are in the company of the
-Bayonetteers that has also been ordered off, no difference will be
-made in her arrangements, only that the performance will take place at
-Pietermaritzburg instead of at Cape Town. But she is so unreasonable
-as to refuse to release me from my promise, and I am bound to go with
-them."
-
-"It is a compliment to value your services so highly, is it not?"
-
-"I would be glad to sacrifice all the gratification I find from thinking
-so for the sake of being released. She is both absurd and unreasonable."
-
-"So it would certainly strike any one hearing only of this," said
-Daireen. "But it will only be for a month, and you will see the place."
-
-"I would rather remain seeing this place," he said. "Seeing that hill
-above us." She flushed as though he had told her in those words that he
-was aware of how often she had been looking up to that slope since they
-had been there together----
-
-There was a long pause, through which the voices and laughter of the
-women at the river-bank were heard.
-
-"Daireen," said the man, who stood up bareheaded before her. "Daireen,
-that hour we sat up there upon that slope has changed all my thoughts
-of life. I tell you the life which you restored to me a month ago I
-had ceased to regard as a gift. I had come to hope that it would end
-speedily. You cannot know how wretched I was."
-
-"And now?" she said, looking up to him. "And now?"
-
-"Now," he answered. "Now--what can I tell you? If I were to be cut off
-from life and happiness now, I should stand before God and say that I
-have had all the happiness that can be joined to one life on earth. I
-have had that one hour with you, and no God or man can take it from me:
-I have lived that hour, and none can make me unlive it. I told you I
-would say no word of love to you then, but I have come to say the word
-now. Child, I dared not love you as I was--I had no thought worthy to
-be devoted to loving you. God knows how I struggled with all my soul to
-keep myself from doing you the injustice of thinking of you; but that
-hour at your feet has given me something of your divine nature, and with
-that which I have caught from you, I can love you. Daireen, will you
-take the love I offer you? It it yours--all yours."
-
-He was not speaking passionately, but when she looked up and saw his
-face haggard with earnestness she was almost frightened--she would
-have been frightened if she had not loved him as she now knew she did.
-"Speak," he said, "speak to me--one word."
-
-"One word?" she repeated. "What one word can I say?"
-
-"Tell me all that is in your heart, Daireen."
-
-She looked up to him again. "All?" she said with a little smile. "All?
-No, I could never tell you all. You know a little of it. That is the
-bond between us."
-
-He turned away and actually took a few steps from her. On his face was
-an expression that could not easily have been read. But in an instant he
-seemed to recover himself. He took her hand in his.
-
-"My darling," he said, "the Past has buried its dead. I shall make
-myself worthy to think of you--I swear it to you. You shall have a true
-man to love." He was almost fierce in his earnestness, and her hand that
-he held was crushed for an instant. Then he looked into her face with
-tenderness. "How have you come to answer my love with yours?" he said
-almost wonderingly. "What was there in me to make you think of my
-existence for a single instant?"
-
-She looked at him. "You were--_you_," she said, offering him the only
-explanation in her power. It had seemed to her easy enough to explain as
-she looked at him. Who else was worth loving with this love in all the
-world, she thought. He alone was worthy of all her heart.
-
-"My darling, my darling," he said, "I am unworthy to have a single
-thought of you."
-
-"You are indeed if you continue talking so," she said with a laugh, for
-she felt unutterably happy.
-
-"Then I will not talk so. I will make myself worthy to think of you
-by--by--thinking of you. For a month, Daireen,--for a month we can only
-think of each other. It is better that I should not see you until the
-last tatter of my old self is shred away."
-
-"It cannot be better that you should go away," she said. "Why should you
-go away just as we are so happy?"
-
-"I must go, Daireen," he said. "I must go--and now. I would to God I
-could stay! but believe me, I cannot, darling; I feel that I must go."
-
-"Because you made that stupid promise?" she said.
-
-"That promise is nothing. What is such a promise to me now? If I had
-never made it I should still go."
-
-He was looking down at her as he spoke. "Do not ask me to say anything
-more. There is nothing more to be said. Will you forget me in a month,
-do you think?"
-
-Was it possible that there was a touch of anxiety in the tone of his
-question? she thought for an instant. Then she looked into his face and
-laughed.
-
-"God bless you, Daireen!" he said tenderly, and there was sadness rather
-than passion in his voice.
-
-"God keep you, Daireen! May nothing but happiness ever come to you!"
-
-He held out his hand to her, and she laid her own trustfully in his.
-
-"Do not say good-bye," she pleaded. "Think that it is only for a
-month--less than a month, it must be. You can surely be back in less
-than a month."
-
-"I can," he replied; "I can, and I will be back within a month, and
-then---- God keep you, Daireen, for ever!"
-
-He was holding her hand in his own with all gentleness. His face was
-bent down close to hers, but he did not kiss her face, only her hand.
-He crushed it to his lips, and then dropped it. She was blinded with
-her tears, so that she did not see him hasten away through the avenue of
-oaks. She did not even hear his horse's tread, nor could she know that
-he had not once turned round to give her a farewell look.
-
-It was some minutes before she seemed to realise that she was alone. She
-sprang to her feet and stood looking out over those deathly silent
-broad leaves, and those immense aloes, that seemed to be the plants in
-a picture of a strange region. She heard the laughter of the Hottentot
-women at the river, and the unmusical shriek of a bird in the distance.
-She clasped her hands over her head, looking wistfully through the
-foliage of the oaks, but she did not utter a word. He was gone, she knew
-now, for she felt a loneliness that overwhelmed every other feeling.
-She seemed to be in the middle of a bare and joyless land. The splendid
-shrubs that branched before her eyes seemed dead, and the silence of the
-warm scented air was a terror to her.
-
-He was gone, she knew, and there was nothing left for her but this
-loneliness. She went into her room in the cottage and seated herself
-upon her little sofa, hiding her face in her hands, and she felt it good
-to pray for him--for this man whom she had come to love, she knew not
-how. But she knew she loved him so that he was a part of her own life,
-and she felt that it would always be so. She could scarcely think what
-her life had been before she had seen him. How could she ever have
-fancied that she loved her father before this man had taught her what it
-was to love? Now she felt how dear beyond all thought her father was to
-her. It was not merely love for himself that she had learnt from Oswin
-Markham, it was the power of loving truly and perfectly that he had
-taught her.
-
-Thus she dreamed until she heard the pleasant voice of her friend Mrs.
-Crawford in the hall. Then she rose and wondered if every one would not
-notice the change that had passed over her. Was it not written upon her
-face? Would not every touch of her hand--every word of her voice, betray
-it?
-
-Then she lifted up her head and felt equal to facing even Mrs. Crawford,
-and to acknowledging all that she believed the acute observation of that
-lady would read from her face as plainly as from the page of a book.
-
-But it seemed that Mrs. Crawford's eyes were heavy this afternoon,
-for though she looked into Daireen's face and kissed her cheek
-affectionately, she made no accusation.
-
-"I am lucky in finding you all alone, my dear," she said. "It is so
-different ashore from aboard ship. I have not really had one good chat
-with you since we landed. George is always in the way, or the major, you
-know--ah, you think I should rather say the colonel and Jack, but indeed
-I think of your father only as Lieutenant George. And you enjoyed our
-little lunch on the hill, I hope? I thought you looked pale when you
-came down. Was it not a most charming sunset?"
-
-"It was indeed," said Daireen, straining her eyes to catch a glimpse
-through the window of the slope where the red light had rested.
-
-"I knew you would enjoy it, my dear. Mr. Glaston is such good
-company--ah, that is, of course, to a sympathetic mind. And I don't
-think I am going too far, Daireen, when I say that I am sure he was in
-company with a sympathetic mind the evening before last."
-
-Mrs. Crawford was smiling as one smiles passing a graceful compliment.
-
-"I think he was," said Daireen. "Miss Vincent and he always seemed
-pleased with each other's society."
-
-"Miss Vincent?--Lottie Vincent?" cried the lady in a puzzled but
-apprehensive way. "What do you mean, Daireen? Lottie Vincent?"
-
-"Why, you know Mr. Glaston and Miss Vincent went away from us, among the
-silver leaves, and only returned as we were coming down the hill."
-
-Mrs. Crawford was speechless for some moments. Then she looked at the
-girl, saying, "_We_,--who were _we?_"
-
-"Mr. Markham and myself," replied Daireen without faltering.
-
-"Ah, indeed," said the other pleasantly. Then there was a pause before
-she added, "That ends my association with Lottie Vincent. The artful,
-designing little creature! Daireen, you have no idea what good nature it
-required on my part to take any notice of that girl, knowing so much as
-I do of her; and this is how she treats me! Never mind; I have done with
-her." Seeing the girl's puzzled glance, Mrs. Crawford began to recollect
-that it could not be expected that Daireen should understand the nature
-of Lottie's offence; so she added, "I mean, you know, dear, that that
-girl is full of spiteful, designing tricks upon every occasion. And
-yet she had the effrontery to come to me yesterday to beg of me to take
-charge of her while her father would be at Natal. But I was not quite so
-weak. Never mind; she leaves tomorrow, thank goodness, and that is the
-last I mean to see of her. But about Mr. Markham: I hope you do not
-think I had anything to say in the matter of letting you be with him,
-Daireen. I did not mean it, indeed."
-
-"I am sure of it," said Daireen quietly--so quietly that Mrs. Crawford
-began to wonder could it be possible that the girl wished to show that
-she had been aware of the plans which had been designed on her behalf.
-Before she had made up her mind, however, the horses of Colonel Gerald
-and Standish were heard outside, and in a moment afterwards the colonel
-entered the room.
-
-"Papa," said Daireen almost at once, "Mr. Markham rode out to see you
-this afternoon."
-
-"Ah, indeed? I am sorry I missed him," he said quietly. But Mrs.
-Crawford stared at the girl, wondering what was coming.
-
-"He came to say good-bye, papa."
-
-Mrs. Crawford's heart began to beat again.
-
-"What, is he returning to England?" asked the colonel.
-
-"Oh, no; he is only about to follow Mr. Harwood's example and go up to
-Natal."
-
-"Then he need not have said good-bye, anymore than Harwood," remarked
-the colonel; and his daughter felt it hard to restrain herself from
-throwing her arms about his neck.
-
-"Ah," said Mrs. Crawford, "Miss Lottie has triumphed! This Mr. Markham
-will go up in the steamer with her, and will probably act with her in
-this theatrical nonsense she is always getting up."
-
-"He is to act with her certainly," said Daireen. "Ah! Lottie has made
-a success at last," cried the elder lady. "Mr. Markham will suit her
-admirably. They will be engaged before they reach Algoa Bay."
-
-"My dear Kate, why will you always jump at conclusions?" said the
-colonel. "Markham is a fellow of far too much sense to be in the least
-degree led by such a girl as Lottie."
-
-Daireen had hold of her father's arm, and when he had spoken she turned
-round and kissed him. But it was not at all unusual for her to kiss him
-in this fashion on his return from a ride.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXIX.
-
-
-```Haply the seas and countries different
-
-```With variable objects shall expel
-
-```This something-settled matter in his heart,
-
-```Whereon his brain still beating puts him thus
-
-```From fashion of himself.--_Hamlet_
-
-
-|HE had got a good deal to think about, this Mr. Oswin Markham, as he
-stood on the bridge of the steamer that was taking him round the coast
-to Natal, and looked back at that mountain whose strange shape had never
-seemed stranger than it did from the distance of the Bay.
-
-Table Mountain was of a blue dimness, and the white walls of the houses
-at its base were quite hidden; Robbin Island lighthouse had almost
-dwindled out of sight; and in the water, through the bright red gold
-shed from a mist in the west that the falling sun saturated with light,
-were seen the black heads of innumerable seals swimming out from the
-coastway of rocks. Yes, Mr. Oswin Markham had certainly a good deal
-to think about as he looked back to the flat-ridged mountain, and,
-mentally, upon all that had taken place since he had first seen its
-ridges a few weeks before.
-
-He had thought it well to talk of love to that girl who had given him
-the gift of the life he was at present breathing--to talk to her of love
-and to ask her to love him. Well, he had succeeded; she had put her hand
-trustfully in his and had trusted him with all her heart, he knew; and
-yet the thought of it did not make him happy. His heart was not the
-heart of one who has triumphed. It was only full of pity for the girl
-who had listened to him and replied to him.
-
-And for himself he felt what was more akin to shame than any other
-feeling--shame, that, knowing all he did of himself, he had still spoken
-those words to the girl to whom he owed the life that was now his.
-
-"God! was it not forced upon me when I struggled against it with all my
-soul?" he said, in an endeavour to strangle his bitter feeling. "Did not
-I make up my mind to leave the ship when I saw what was coming upon me,
-and was I to be blamed if I could not do so? Did not I rush away from
-her without a word of farewell? Did not we meet by chance that night in
-the moonlight? Were those words that I spoke to her thought over?
-Were not they forced from me against my own will, and in spite of my
-resolution?" There could be no doubt that if any one acquainted with
-all the matters to which he referred had been ready to answer him,
-a satisfactory reply would have been received by him to each of his
-questions. But though, of course, he was aware of this, yet he seemed to
-find it necessary to alter the ground of the argument he was advancing
-for his own satisfaction. "I have a right to forget the wretched past,"
-he said, standing upright and looking steadfastly across the glowing
-waters. "Have not I died for the past? Is not this life a new one? It
-is God's justice that I am carrying out by forgetting all. The past is
-past, and the future in all truth and devotion is hers."
-
-There were, indeed, some moments of his life--and the present was one of
-them--when he felt satisfied in his conscience by assuring himself, as
-he did now, that as God had taken away all remembrance of the past
-from many men who had suffered the agonies of death, he was therefore
-entitled to let his past life and its recollections drift away on that
-broken mast from which he had been cut in the middle of the ocean; but
-the justice of the matter had not occurred to him when he got that bank
-order turned into money at the Cape, nor at the time when he had written
-to the agents of his father's property in England, informing them of
-his escape. He now stood up and spoke those words of his, and felt their
-force, until the sun, whose outline had all the afternoon been undefined
-in the mist, sank beneath the horizon, and the gorgeous colours drifted
-round from his sinking place and dwindled into the dark green of the
-waters. He watched the sunset, and though Lottie Vincent came to his
-side in her most playful mood, her fresh and artless young nature found
-no response to its impulses in him. She turned away chilled, but no more
-discouraged than a little child, who, desirous of being instructed
-on the secret of the creative art embodied in the transformation of a
-handkerchief into a rabbit, finds its mature friend reflecting upon a
-perplexing point in the theory of Unconscious Cerebration. Lottie knew
-that her friend Mr. Oswin Markham sometimes had to think about matters
-of such a nature as caused her little pleasantries to seem incongruous.
-She thought that now she had better turn to a certain Lieutenant
-Clifford, who, she knew, had no intricate mental problems to work out;
-and she did turn to him, with great advantage to herself, and, no doubt,
-to the officer as well. However forgetful Oswin Markham may have been
-of his past life, he could still recollect a few generalities that had
-struck him in former years regarding young persons of a nature similar
-to this pretty little Miss Vincent's. She had insisted on his fulfilling
-his promise to act with her, and he would fulfil it with a good grace;
-but at this point his contract terminated; he would not be tempted into
-making another promise to her which he might find much more embarrassing
-to carry out with consistency.
-
-It had been a great grief to Lottie to be compelled, through the
-ridiculous treatment of her father by the authorities in ordering him
-to Natal, to transfer her dramatic entertainment from Cape Town to
-Pietermaritzburg. However, as she had sold a considerable number of
-tickets to her friends, she felt that "the most deserving charity," the
-augmentation of whose funds was the avowed object of the entertainment,
-would be benefited in no inconsiderable degree by the change of venue.
-If the people of Pietermaritzburg would steadfastly decline to supply
-her with so good an audience as the Cape Town people, there still would
-be a margin of profit, since her friends who had bought tickets on the
-understanding that the performance would take place where it was at
-first intended, did not receive their money back. How could they expect
-such a concession, Lottie asked, with innocent indignation; and begged
-to be informed if it was her fault that her father was ordered to Natal.
-Besides this one unanswerable query, she reminded those who ventured to
-make a timid suggestion regarding the returns, that it was in aid of a
-most deserving charity the tickets had been sold, so that it would be an
-act of injustice to give back a single shilling that had been paid for
-the tickets. Pursuing this very excellent system, Miss Lottie had to the
-credit of the coming performance a considerable sum which would provide
-against the contingencies of a lack of dramatic enthusiasm amongst the
-inhabitants of Pietermaritzburg.
-
-It was at the garden-party at Government House that Markham had by
-accident mentioned to Lottie that he had frequently taken part in
-dramatic performances for such-like objects as Lottie's was designed to
-succour, and though he at first refused to be a member, of her company,
-yet at Mrs. Crawford's advocacy of the claims of the deserving object,
-he had agreed to place his services and experience at the disposal of
-the originator of the benevolent scheme.
-
-At Cape Town he had not certainly thrown himself very heartily into the
-business of creating a part in the drama which had been selected. He was
-well aware that if a good performance of the nature designed by Lottie
-is successful, a bad performance is infinitely more so; and that any
-attempt on the side of an amateur to strike out a new character from an
-old part is looked upon with suspicion, and is generally attended with
-disaster; so he had not given himself any trouble in the matter.
-
-"My dear Miss Vincent," he had said in reply to a pretty little
-remonstrance from the young lady, "the department of study requiring
-most attention in a dramatic entertainment of this sort is the
-financial. Sell all the tickets you can, and you will be a greater
-benefactress to the charity than if you acted like a Kemble."
-
-Lottie had taken his advice; but still she made up her mind that Mr.
-Markham's name should be closely associated with the entertainment, and
-consequently, with her own name. Had she not been at pains to put into
-circulation certain stories of the romance surrounding him, and
-thus disposed of an unusual number of stalls? For even if one is not
-possessed of any dramatic inclinations, one is always ready to pay a
-price for looking at a man who has been saved from a shipwreck, or who
-has been the co-respondent in some notorious law case.
-
-When the fellows of the Bayonetteers, who had been indulging in a number
-of surmises regarding Lottie's intentions with respect to Markham,
-heard that the young lady's father had been ordered to proceed to
-Natal without delay, the information seemed to give them a good deal
-of merriment. The man who offered four to one that Lottie should not be
-able to get any lady friend to take charge of her in Cape Town until her
-father's return, could get no one to accept his odds; but his proposal
-of three to one that she would get Markham to accompany her to Natal was
-eagerly taken up; so that there were several remarks made at the mess
-reflecting upon the acuteness of Mr. Markham's perception when it was
-learned that he was going with the young lady and her father.
-
-"You see," remarked the man who had laid the odds, "I knew something of
-Lottie in India, and I knew what she was equal to."
-
-"Lottie is a devilish smart child, by Jove," said one of the losers
-meditatively.
-
-"Yes, she has probably cut her eye-teeth some years ago," hazarded
-another subaltern.
-
-There was a considerable pause before a third of this full bench
-delivered final judgment as the result of the consideration of the case.
-
-"Poor beggar!" he remarked; "poor beggar! he's a finished coon."
-
-And that Mr. Oswin Markham was, indeed, a man whose career had been
-defined for him by another in the plainest possible manner, no member of
-the mess seemed to doubt.
-
-During the first couple of days of the voyage round the coast, when Miss
-Lottie would go to the side of Mr. Markham for the purpose of consulting
-him on some important point of detail in the intended performance,
-the shrewd young fellows of the regiment of Bayonetteers pulled their
-phantom shreds of moustaches, and brought the muscles of their faces
-about the eyes into play to a remarkable extent, with a view of assuring
-one another of the possession of an unusual amount of sagacity by
-the company to which they belonged. But when, after the third day
-of rehearsals. Lottie's manner of gentle persuasiveness towards them
-altered to nasty bitter upbraidings of the young man who had committed
-the trifling error of overlooking an entire scene here and there in
-working out the character he was to bring before the audience, and to a
-most hurtful glance of scorn at the other aspirant who had marked off in
-the margin of his copy of the play all the dialogue he was to speak,
-but who, unfortunately, had picked up a second copy belonging to a young
-lady in which another part had been similarly marked, so that he had,
-naturally enough, perfected himself in the dialogue of the lady's rôle
-without knowing a letter of his own--when, for such trifling slips as
-these, Lottie was found to be so harsh, the deep young fellows made
-their facial muscles suggest a doubt as to whether it might not be
-possible that Markham was of a sterner and less malleable nature then
-they had at first believed him.
-
-The fact was that since Lottie had met with Oswin Markham she had been
-in considerable perplexity of mind. She had found out that he was in by
-no means indigent circumstances; but even with her guileless, careless
-perceptions, she was not long in becoming aware that he was not likely
-to be moulded according to her desires; so, while still behaving in a
-fascinating manner towards him, she had had many agreeable half-hours
-with Mr. Glaston, who was infinitely more plastic, she could see; but
-so soon as the order had come for her father to go up to Natal she had
-returned in thought to Oswin Markham, and had smiled to see the grins
-upon the expressive faces of the officers of the Bayonetteers when
-she found herself by the side of Oswin Markham. She rather liked these
-grins, for she had an idea--in her own simple way, of course--that there
-is a general tendency on the part of young people to associate when
-their names have been previously associated. She knew that the fact of
-her having persuaded this Mr. Markham to accompany her to Natal would
-cause his name to be joined with hers pretty frequently, and in her
-innocence she had no objection to make to this.
-
-As for Markham himself, he knew perfectly well what remarks people would
-make on the subject of his departure in the steamer with Lottie Vincent;
-he knew before he had been a day on the voyage that the Bayonetteers
-regarded him as somewhat deficient in firmness; but he felt that there
-was no occasion for him to be utterly broken down in spirit on account
-of this opinion being held by the Bayonetteers. He was not so blind but
-that he caught a glimpse now and again of a facial distortion on the
-part of a member of the company. He felt that it was probable these
-far-seeing fellows would be disappointed at the result of their
-surmises.
-
-And indeed the fellows of the regiment were beginning, before the voyage
-was quite over, to feel that this Mr. Oswin Markham was not altogether
-of the yielding nature which they had ascribed to him on the grounds of
-his having promised Lottie Vincent to accompany her and her father
-to Natal at this time. About Lottie herself there was but one opinion
-expressed, and that was of such a character as any one disposed to
-ingratiate himself with the girl by means of flattery would hardly have
-hastened to communicate to her; for the poor little thing had been so
-much worried of late over the rehearsals which she was daily conducting
-aboard the steamer, that, failing to meet with any expression of
-sympathy from Oswin Markham, she had spoken very freely to some of the
-company in comment upon their dramatic capacity, and not even an amateur
-actor likes to receive unreserved comment of an unfavourable character
-upon his powers.
-
-"She is a confounded little humbug," said one of the subalterns to Oswin
-in confidence on the last day of the voyage. "Hang me if I would have
-had anything to say to this deuced mummery if I had known what sort of a
-girl she was. By George, you should hear the stories Kirkham has on his
-fingers' ends about her in India."
-
-Oswin laughed quietly. "It would be rash, if not cruel, to believe all
-the stories that are told about girls in India," he said. "As for Miss
-Vincent, I believe her to be a charming girl--as an actress."
-
-"Yes," said the lieutenant, who had not left his grinder on English
-literature long enough to forget all that he had learned of the
-literature of the past century--"yes; she is an actress among girls, and
-a girl among actresses."
-
-"Good," said Oswin; "very good. What is it that somebody or other
-remarked about Lord Chesterfield as a wit?"
-
-"Never mind," said the other, ceasing the laugh he had commenced. "What
-I say about Lottie is true."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXX.
-
-
-```This world is not for aye, nor'tis not strange
-
-```That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
-
-```For'tis a question left us yet to prove,
-
-```Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.=
-
-````Diseases desperate grown
-
-```By desperate appliance are relieved,
-
-```Or not at all.
-
-````... so you must take your husbands.=
-
-```It is our trick. Nature her custom holds
-
-```Let shame say what it will: when these are gone
-
-```The woman will be out.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|OF course," said Lottie, as she stood by the side of Oswin Markham
-when the small steamer which had been specially engaged to take the
-field-officers of the Bayonetteers over the dreaded bar of Durban
-harbour was approaching the quay--"of course we shall all go together up
-to Pietermaritzburg. I have been there before, you know. We shall have a
-coach all to ourselves from Durban." She looked up to his face with only
-the least questioning expression upon her own. But Mr. Markham thought
-that he had made quite enough promises previously: it would be unwise
-to commit himself even in so small a detail as the manner of the journey
-from the port of Durban to the garrison town of Pietermaritzburg, which
-he knew was at a distance of upwards of fifty miles.
-
-"I have not the least idea what I shall do when we land," he said. "It
-is probable that I shall remain at the port for some days. I may as well
-see all that there is on view in this part of the colony."
-
-This was very distressing to the young lady.
-
-"Do you mean to desert me?" she asked somewhat reproachfully.
-
-"Desert you?" he said in a puzzled way. "Ah, those are the words in a
-scene in your part, are they not?"
-
-Lottie became irritated almost beyond the endurance of a naturally
-patient soul.
-
-"Do you mean to leave me to stand alone against all my difficulties, Mr.
-Markham?"
-
-"I should be sorry to do that, Miss Vincent. If you have difficulties,
-tell me what they are; and if they are of such a nature that they can be
-curtailed by me, you may depend upon my exerting myself."
-
-"You know very well what idiots these Bayonetteers are," cried Lottie.
-
-"I know that most of them have promised to act in your theatricals,"
-replied Markham quietly; and Lottie tried to read his soul in another of
-her glances to discover the exact shade of the meaning of his words, but
-she gave up the quest.
-
-"Of course you can please yourself, Mr. Markham," she said, with a
-coldness that was meant to appal him.
-
-"And I trust that I may never be led to do so at the expense of
-another," he remarked.
-
-"Then you will come in our coach?" she cried, brightening up.
-
-"Pray do not descend to particulars when we are talking in this vague
-way on broad matters of sentiment, Miss Vincent."
-
-"But I must know what you intend to do at once."
-
-"At once? I intend to go ashore, and try if it is possible to get a
-dinner worth eating. After that--well, this is Tuesday, and on Thursday
-week your entertainment will take place; before that day you say
-you want three rehearsals, then I will agree to be by your side at
-Pietermaritzburg on Saturday next."
-
-This business-like arrangement was not what Lottie on leaving Cape Town
-had meant to be the result of the voyage to Natal. There was a slight
-pause before she asked:
-
-"What do you mean by treating me in this way? I always thought you were
-my friend. What will papa say if you leave me to go up there alone?"
-
-This was a very daring bit of dialogue on the part of Miss Lottie, but
-they were nearing the quay where she knew Oswin would be free; aboard
-the mail steamer of course he was--well, scarcely free. But Mr. Markham
-was one of those men who are least discomfited by a daring stroke. He
-looked steadfastly at the girl so soon as she uttered her words.
-
-"The problem is too interesting to be allowed to pass, Miss Vincent," he
-said. "We shall do our best to have it answered. By Jove, doesn't that
-man on the quay look like Harwood? It is Harwood indeed, and I thought
-him among the Zulus."
-
-The first man caught sight of on the quay was indeed the special
-correspondent of the _Dominant Trumpeter_. Lottie's manner changed
-instantly on seeing him, and she gave one of her girlish laughs on
-noticing the puzzled expression upon his face as he replied to her
-salutations while yet afar. She was very careful to keep by the side
-of Oswin until the steamer was at the quay; and when at last Harwood
-recognised the features of the two persons who had been saluting him,
-she saw him look with a little smile first to herself, then to Oswin,
-and she thought it prudent to give a small guilty glance downwards and
-to repeat her girlish laugh.
-
-Oswin saw Harwood's glance and heard Lottie's laugh. He also heard the
-young lady making an explanation of certain matters, to which Harwood
-answered with a second little smile.
-
-"Kind? Oh, exceedingly kind of him to come so long a distance for the
-sake of assisting you. Nothing could be kinder."
-
-"I feel it to be so indeed," said Miss Vincent. "I feel that I can never
-repay Mr. Markham."
-
-Again that smile came to Mr. Harwood as he said: "Do not take such a
-gloomy view of the matter, my dear Miss Vincent; perhaps on reflection
-some means may be suggested to you."
-
-"What can you mean?" cried the puzzled little thing, tripping away.
-
-"Well, Harwood, in spite of your advice to me, you see I am here not
-more than a week behind yourself."
-
-"And you are looking better than I could have believed possible for any
-one in the condition you were in when I left," said Harwood. "Upon my
-word, I did not expect much from you as I watched you go up the stairs
-at the hotel after that wild ride of yours to and from no place in
-particular. But, of course, there are circumstances under which fellows
-look knocked up, and there are others that combine to make them seem
-quite the contrary; now it seems to me you are subject to the influence
-of the latter just at present." He glanced as if by accident over to
-where Lottie was making a pleasant little fuss about some articles of
-her luggage.
-
-"You are right," said Markham--"quite right. I have reason to be
-particularly elated just now, having got free from that steamer and my
-fellow-passengers."
-
-"Why, the fellows of the Bayonetteers struck me as being particularly
-good company," said Harwood.
-
-"And so they were. Now I must look after this precious portmanteau of
-mine."
-
-"And assist that helpless little creature to look after hers," muttered
-Harwood when the other had left him. "Poor little Lottie! is it possible
-that you have landed a prize at last? Well, no one will say that you
-don't deserve something for your years of angling."
-
-Mr. Harwood felt very charitably inclined just at this instant, for his
-reflections on the behaviour of Markham during the last few days they
-had been at the same hotel at Cape Town had not by any means been
-quieted since they had parted. He was sorry to be compelled to leave
-Cape Town without making any discovery as to the mental condition of
-Markham. Now, however, he knew that Markham had been strong enough to
-come on to Natal, so that the searching out of the problem of his former
-weakness would be as uninteresting as it would be unprofitable. If
-there should chance to be any truth in that vague thought which had been
-suggested to him as to the possibility of Markham having become attached
-to Daireen Gerald, what did it matter now? Here was Markham, having
-overcome his weakness, whatever it may have been, by the side of Lottie
-Vincent; not indeed appearing to be in great anxiety regarding the
-welfare of the young lady's luggage which was being evil-treated, but
-still by her side, and this made any further thought on his behalf
-unnecessary.
-
-Mr. Markham had given his portmanteau into the charge of one of the
-Natal Zulus, and then he turned to Harwood.
-
-"You don't mind my asking you what you are doing at Durban instead of
-being at the other side of the Tugela?" he said.
-
-"The Zulus of this province require to be treated of most carefully
-in the first instance, before the great question of Zulus in their own
-territory can be fully understood by the British public," replied the
-correspondent. "I am at present making the Zulu of Durban my special
-study. I suppose you will be off at once to Pietermaritzburg?"
-
-"No," said Markham. "I intend remaining at Durban to study the--the Zulu
-characteristics for a few days."
-
-"But Lottie--I beg your pardon--Miss Vincent is going on at once."
-
-There was a little pause, during which Markham stared blankly at his
-friend.
-
-"What on earth has that got to say to my remaining here?" he said.
-
-Harwood looked at him and felt that Miss Lottie was right, even on
-purely artistic grounds, in choosing Oswin Markham as one of her actors.
-
-"Nothing--nothing of course," he replied to Markham's question.
-
-But Miss Lottie had heard more than a word of this conversation. She
-tripped up to Mr. Harwood.
-
-"Why don't you make some inquiry about your old friends, you most
-ungrateful of men?" she cried. "Oh, I have such a lot to tell you.
-Dear old Mrs. Crawford was in great grief about your going away, you
-know--oh, such great grief that she was forced to give a picnic the
-second day after you left, for fear we should all have broken down
-utterly."
-
-"That was very kind of Mrs. Crawford," said Harwood; "and it only
-remains for me to hope fervently that the required effect was produced."
-
-"So far as I was concerned, it was," said Lottie. "But it would never do
-for me to speak for other people."
-
-"Other people?"
-
-"Yes, other people--the charming Miss Gerald, for instance; I cannot
-speak for her, but Mr. Markham certainly can, for he lay at her feet
-during the entire of the afternoon when every one else had wandered
-away up the ravine. Yes, Mr. Markham will tell you to a shade what her
-feelings were upon that occasion. Now, bye-bye. You will come to our
-little entertainment next week, will you not? And you will turn up on
-Saturday for rehearsal?" she added, smiling at Oswin, who was looking
-more stern than amused. "Don't forget--Saturday. You should be very
-grateful for my giving you liberty for so long."
-
-Both men went ashore together without a word; nor did they fall at once
-into a fluent chat when they set out for the town, which was more than
-two miles distant; for Mr. Harwood was thinking out another of the
-problems which seemed to suggest themselves to him daily from the fact
-of his having an acute ear for discerning the shades of tone in which
-his friends uttered certain phrases. He was just now engaged linking
-fancy unto fancy, thinking if it was a little impulse of girlish
-jealousy, meant only to give a mosquito-sting to Oswin Markham, that had
-caused Miss Lottie Vincent to make that reference to Miss Gerald, or if
-it was a piece of real bitterness designed to wound deeply. It was
-an interesting problem, and Mr. Harwood worked at its solution very
-patiently, weighing all his recollections of past words and phrases that
-might tend to a satisfactory result.
-
-But the greatest amount of satisfaction was not afforded to Mr. Harwood
-by the pursuit of the intricacies of the question he had set himself
-to work out, but by the reflection that at any rate Markham's being at
-Natal and not within easy riding distance of a picturesque Dutch cottage
-at Mowbray, was a certain good. What did it signify now if Markham had
-previously been too irresolute to tear himself away from the association
-of that cottage? Had he not afterwards proved himself sufficiently
-strong? And if this strength had come to him through any conversation
-he might have had with Miss Gerald on the hillside to which Lottie
-had alluded, or elsewhere, what business was it to anybody? Here was
-Markham--there was Durban, and this was satisfactory. Only--what did
-Lottie mean exactly by that little bit of spitefulness or bitterness?
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXI.
-
-
-``_Polonius_. The actors are come hither, my lord.=
-
-``_Hamlet_. Buz, buz.=
-
-``_Polonius_. Upon my honour.=
-
-``_Hamlet. Then came each actor on his ass._=
-
-``_Polonious_. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy,
-history, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, scene individable or
-poem unlimited... these are the only men.=
-
-```Being thus benetted round with villanies,--
-
-```Or I could make a prologue to my brains,
-
-```They had begun the play,--I sat me down.
-
-````... Wilt thou know
-
-```The effect...?--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|UPON the evening of the Thursday week after the arrival of that
-steamer with two companies of the Bayonetteers at Durban, the town of
-Pietermaritzburg was convulsed with the prospect of the entertainment
-that was to take place in its midst, for Miss Lottie Vincent had not
-passed the preceding week in a condition of dramatic abstraction.
-She was by no means so wrapped up in the part she had undertaken
-to represent as to be unable to give the necessary attention to the
-securing of an audience.
-
-It would seem to a casual _entrepreneur_ visiting Pietermaritzburg that
-a large audience might be assured for an entertainment possessing even
-the minimum of attractiveness, for the town appears to be of an immense
-size--that is, for a South African town. The colonial Romulus and
-Remus have shown at all times very lordly notions on the subject of
-boundaries, and, being subject to none of those restrictions as to
-the cost of every square foot of territory which have such a cramping
-influence upon the founders of municipalities at home, they exercise
-their grand ideas in the most extensive way. The streets of an early
-colonial town are broad roads, and the spaces between the houses are so
-great as almost to justify the criticism of those narrow-minded visitors
-who call the town straggling. At one time Pietermaritzburg may have been
-straggling, but it certainly did not strike Oswin Markham as being so
-when he saw it now for the first time on his arrival. He felt that it
-had got less of a Dutch look about it than Cape Town, and though that
-towering and overshadowing impression which Table Mountain gives to Cape
-Town was absent, yet the circle of hills about Pietermaritzburg seemed
-to him--and his fancy was not particularly original--to give the town
-almost that nestling appearance which by tradition is the natural
-characteristic of an English village.
-
-But if an _entrepreneur_ should calculate the probable numerical value
-of an audience in Pietermaritzburg from a casual walk through the
-streets, he would find that his assumption had been founded upon
-an erroneous basis. The streets are long and in fact noble, but the
-inhabitants available for fulfilling the duties of an audience at a
-dramatic entertainment are out of all proportion few. Two difficulties
-are to be contended with in making up audiences in South Africa: the
-first is getting the people in, and the second is keeping people out. As
-a rule the races of different colour do not amalgamate with sufficient
-ease to allow of a mixed audience being pervaded with a common sympathy.
-A white man seated between a Hottentot and a Kafir will scarcely be
-brought to admit that he has had a pleasant evening, even though the
-performance on the stage is of a choice character. A single Zulu will
-make his presence easily perceptible in a room full of white people,
-even though he should remain silent and in a secluded corner; while a
-Hottentot, a Kafir, and a Zulu constitute a _bouquet d'Afrique_, the
-savour of which is apt to divert the attention of any one in their
-neighbourhood from the realistic effect of a garden scene upon the
-stage.
-
-Miss Lottie, being well aware that the audience-forming material in the
-town was small in proportion to the extent of the streets, set herself
-with her usual animation about the task of disposing of the remaining
-tickets. She fancied that she understood something of the system to be
-pursued with success amongst the burghers. She felt it to be her duty to
-pay a round of visits to the houses where she had been intimate in the
-days of her previous residence at the garrison; and she contrived to
-impress upon her friends that the ties of old acquaintance should be
-consolidated by the purchase of a number of her tickets. She visited
-several families who, she knew, had been endeavouring for a long time
-to work themselves into the military section of the town's society, and
-after hinting to them that the officers of the Bayonetteers would
-remain in the lowest spirits until they had made the acquaintance of the
-individual members of each of those families, she invariably disposed of
-a ticket to the individual member whose friendship was so longed for at
-the garrison. As for the tradesmen of the town, she managed without any
-difficulty, or even without forgetting her own standing, to make them
-aware of the possible benefits that would accrue to the business of the
-town under the patronage of the officers of the Bayonetteers; and so,
-instead of having to beg of the tradesmen to support the deserving
-charity on account of which she was taking such a large amount of
-trouble, she found herself thanked for the permission she generously
-accorded to these worthy men to purchase places for the evening.
-
-She certainly deserved well of the deserving charity, and the old
-field-officers, who rolled their eyes and pulled their moustaches,
-recollecting the former labours of Miss Lottie, had got as imperfect
-a knowledge of the proportions of her toil and reward as the less
-good-natured of their wives who alluded to the trouble she was taking as
-if it was not wholly disinterested. Lottie certainly took a vast amount
-of trouble, and if Oswin Markham only appeared at the beginning of each
-rehearsal and left at the conclusion, the success of the performance was
-not at all jeopardised by his action.
-
-For the entire week preceding the evening of the performance little
-else was talked about in all sections of Maritzburgian society but the
-prospects of its success. The ladies in the garrison were beginning
-to be wearied of the topic of theatricals, and the colonel of the
-Bayonetteers was heard to declare that he would not submit any longer to
-have the regimental parades only half-officered day by day, and that
-the plea of dramatic study would be insufficient in future to excuse
-an absentee. But this vigorous action was probably accelerated by the
-report that reached him of a certain lieutenant, who had only four lines
-to speak in the play, having escaped duty for the entire week on the
-grounds of the necessity for dramatic study.
-
-At last the final nail was put in the fastenings of the scenery on the
-stage, which a number of the Royal Engineers, under the guidance of
-two officers and a clerk of the works, had erected; the footlights were
-after considerable difficulty coaxed into flame. The officers of the
-garrison and their wives made an exceedingly good front row in the
-stalls, and a number of the sergeants and privates filled up the back
-seats, ready to applaud, without reference to their merits at the
-performance, their favourite officers when they should appear on the
-stage; the intervening seats were supposed to be booked by the general
-audience, and their punctuality of attendance proved that Lottie's
-labours had not been in vain.
-
-Mr. Harwood having tired of Durban, had been some days in the town, and
-he walked from the hotel with Markham; for Mr. Markham, though the part
-he was to play was one of most importance in the drama, did not think
-it necessary to hang about the stage for the three hours preceding the
-lifting of the curtain, as most of the Bayonetteers who were to act
-believed to be prudent. Harwood took a seat in the second row of stalls,
-for he had promised Lottie and one of the other young ladies who was
-in the cast, to give each of them a candid opinion upon their
-representations. For his own part he would have preferred giving his
-opinion before seeing the representations, for he knew what a strain
-would be put upon his candour after they were over.
-
-When the orchestra--which was a great feature of the performance--struck
-up an overture, the stage behind the curtain was crowded with figures
-in top-boots and with noble hats encircled with ostrich feathers--the
-element of brigandage entering largely into the construction of the
-drama of the evening. Each of the figures carried a small pamphlet which
-he studied every now and again, for in spite of the many missed parades,
-a good deal of uncertainty as to the text of their parts pervaded the
-minds of the histrionic Bayonetteers. Before the last notes of the
-overture had crashed, Lottie Vincent, radiant in pearl powder and
-pencilled eyebrows, wearing a plain muslin dress and white satin shoes,
-her fair hair with a lovely white rose shining amongst its folds,
-tripped out. Her character in the first act being that of a simple
-village maiden, she was dressed with becoming consistency, every detail
-down to those white satin shoes being, of course, in keeping with the
-ordinary attire of simple village maidens wherever civilisation has
-spread.
-
-"For goodness' sake leave aside your books," she said to the young men
-as she came forward. "Do you mean to bring them out with you and read
-from them? Surely after ten rehearsals you might be perfect."
-
-"Hang me, if I haven't a great mind not to appear at all in this rot,"
-said one of the gentlemen in the top-boots to his companions. He had
-caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror a minute previously and he did
-not like the picture. "If it was not for the sake of the people who have
-come I'd cut the whole affair."
-
-"She has done nothing but bully," remarked a second of these desperadoes
-in top-boots.
-
-"All because that fellow Markham has shown himself to be no idiot," said
-a third.
-
-"Count Rodolph loves her, but I'll spare him not: he dies to-night,"
-remarked another, but he was only refreshing his memory on the dialogue
-he was to speak.
-
-When the gentleman who was acting as prompter saw that the stage was
-cleared, he gave the signal for the orchestra to play the curtain up. At
-the correct moment, and with a perfection of stage management that would
-have been creditable to any dramatic establishment in the world, as
-one of the Natal newspapers a few days afterwards remarked with great
-justice, the curtain was raised, and an excellent village scene was
-disclosed to the enthusiastic audience. Two of the personages came on
-at once, and so soon as their identity was clearly established, the
-soldiers began to applaud, which was doubtless very gratifying to
-the two officers, from a regimental standpoint, though it somewhat
-interfered with the progress of the scene. The prompter, however,
-hastened to the aid of the young men who had lost themselves in that
-whirlwind of applause, and the dialogue began to run easily.
-
-Lottie had made for herself a little loophole in the back drop-scene
-through which she observed the audience. She saw that the place was
-crowded to the doors--English-speaking and Dutch-speaking burghers
-were in the central seats; she smiled as she noticed the aspirants to
-garrison intimacies crowding up as close as possible to the officers'
-wives in the front row, and she wondered if it would be necessary to
-acknowledge any of them for longer than a week. Then she saw Harwood
-with the faintest smile imaginable upon his face, as the young men on
-the stage repeated the words of their parts without being guilty either
-of the smallest mistake or the least dramatic spirit; and this time she
-wondered if, when she would be going through her part and she would look
-towards Harwood, she should find the same sort of smile upon his face.
-She rather thought not. Then, as the time for her call approached, she
-hastened round to her entrance, waiting until the poor stuff the two
-young men were speaking came to an end; then, not a second past her
-time, she entered, demure and ingenuous as all village maidens in satin
-slippers must surely be.
-
-She was not disappointed in her reception by the audience. The ladies
-in the front stalls who had spoken, it might be, unkindly of her in
-private, now showed their good nature in public, and the field officers
-forgot all the irregularities she had caused in the regiment and
-welcomed her heartily; while the tradesmen in the middle rows made their
-applause a matter of business. The village maiden with the satin shoes
-smiled in the timid, fluttered, dovelike way that is common amongst the
-class, and then went on with her dialogue. She felt altogether happy,
-for she knew that the young lady who was to appear in the second scene
-could not possibly meet with such an expression of good feeling as she
-had obtained from the audience.
-
-And now the play might be said to have commenced in earnest. It was by
-no means a piece of French frivolity, this drama, but a genuine work of
-English art as it existed thirty years ago, and it was thus certain to
-commend itself to the Pietermaritzburghers who liked solidity even when
-it verged upon stolidity.
-
-_Throne or Spouse_ was the title of the play, and if its incidents were
-somewhat improbable and its details utterly impossible, it was not the
-less agreeable to the audience. The two young men who had appeared in
-top-boots on the village green had informed each other, the audience
-happily overhearing, that they had been out hunting with a certain
-Prince, and that they had got separated from their companions.
-
-They embraced the moment as opportune for the discussion of a few court
-affairs, such as the illness ot the monarch, and the Prince's prospects
-of becoming his successor, and then they thought it would be as well to
-try and find their way back to the court; so off they went. Then Miss
-Vincent came on the village green and reminded herself that her name was
-Marie and that she was a simple village maiden; she also recalled the
-fact that she lived alone with her mother in Yonder Cottage. It seemed
-to give her considerable satisfaction to reflect that, though poor, she
-was, and she took it upon her to say that her mother was also, strictly
-virtuous, and she wished to state in the most emphatic terms that though
-she was wooed by a certain Count Rodolph, yet, as she did not love him,
-she would never be his. Lottie was indeed very emphatic at this part,
-and her audience applauded her determination as Marie. Curiously enough,
-she had no sooner expressed herself in this fashion than one of the
-Bayonetteers entered, and at the sight of him Lottie called out, "Ah,
-he is here! Count Rodolph!" This the audience felt was a piece of subtle
-constructive art on the part of the author. Then the new actor replied,
-"Yes, Count Rodolph is here, sweet Marie, where he would ever be, by the
-side of the fairest village maiden," etc.
-
-The new actor was attired in one of the broad hats of the
-period--whatever it may have been--with a long ostrich feather. He had
-an immense black moustache, and his eyebrows were exceedingly heavy. He
-also wore top-boots, a long sword, and a black cloak, one fold of which
-he now and again threw over his left shoulder when it worked its way
-down his arm. It was not surprising that further on in the drama
-the Count was found to be a dissembler; his costume fostered any
-proclivities in this way that might otherwise have remained dormant.
-
-The village maiden begged to know why the Count persecuted her with his
-attentions, and he replied that he did so on account of his love for
-her. She then assured him that she could never bring herself to look
-on him with favour; and this naturally drew from him the energetic
-declaration of his own passion for her. He concluded by asking her to be
-his: she cried with emphasis, "Never!" He repeated his application, and
-again she cried "Never!" and told him to begone. "You shall be mine," he
-cried, catching her by the arm. "Wretch, leave me," she said, in all her
-village-maiden dignity; he repeated his assertion, and clasped her round
-the waist with ardour. Then she shrieked for help, and a few simple
-villagers rushed hurriedly on the stage, but the Count drew his sword
-and threatened with destruction any one who might advance. The simple
-villagers thought it prudent to retire. "Ha! now, proud Marie, you are
-in my power," said the Count. "Is there no one to save me?" shrieked
-Marie. "Yes, here is some one who will save you or perish in the
-attempt," came a voice from the wings, and with an agitation pervading
-the sympathetic orchestra, a respectable young man in a green
-hunting-suit with a horn by his side and a drawn sword in his hand,
-rushed on, and was received with an outburst of applause from the
-audience who, in Pietermaritzburg, as in every place else, are ever on
-the side of virtue. This new actor was Oswin Markham, and it seemed that
-Lottie's stories regarding the romance associated with his appearance
-were successful, for not only was there much applause, but a quiet hum
-of remark was heard amongst the front stalls, and it was some moments
-before the business of the stage could be proceeded with.
-
-So soon as he was able to speak, the Count wished to know who was the
-intruder that dared to face one of the nobles of the land, and the
-intruder replied in general terms, dwelling particularly upon the
-fact that only those were noble who behaved nobly. He expressed an
-inclination to fight with the Count, but the latter declined to
-gratify him on account of the difference there was between their social
-standing, and he left the stage saying, "Farewell, proud beauty, we
-shall meet again." Then he turned to the stranger, and, laying his hand
-on his sword-hilt after he had thrown his cloak over his shoulder, he
-cried, "We too shall meet again."
-
-The stranger then made some remarks to himself regarding the manner in
-which he was stirred by Marie's beauty. He asked her who she was, and
-she replied, truthfully enough, that she was a simple village maiden,
-and that she lived in Yonder Cottage. He then told her that he was a
-member of the Prince's retinue, and that he had lost his way at the
-hunt; and he begged the girl to conduct him to Yonder Cottage. The girl
-expressed her pleasure at being able to show him some little attention,
-but she remarked that the stranger would find Yonder Cottage very
-humble. She assured him, however, of the virtue of herself, and again
-went so far as to speak for her mother. The stranger then made a nice
-little speech about the constituents of true nobility, and went out with
-Marie as the curtain fell.
-
-The next scene was laid in Yonder Cottage; the virtuous mother being
-discovered knitting, and whiling away the time by talking to herself
-of the days when she was nurse to the late Queen. Then Marie and the
-stranger entered, and there was a pleasant family party in Yonder
-Cottage. The stranger was evidently struck with Marie, and the scene
-ended by his swearing to make her his wife. The next act showed the
-stranger in his true character as the Prince; his royal father has heard
-of his attachment to Marie, and not being an enthusiast on the subject
-of simple village maidens becoming allied to the royal house, he
-threatens to cut off the entail of the kingdom--which it appeared he
-had power to do--if the Prince does not relinquish Marie, and he dies
-leaving a clause in his will to this effect.
-
-The Prince rushes to Yonder Cottage--hears that Marie is carried off
-by the Count--rescues her--marries her--and then the virtuous mother
-confesses that the Prince is her own child, and Marie is the heiress to
-the throne. No one appeared to dispute the story--Marie is consequently
-Queen and her husband King, having through his proper treatment of the
-girl gained the kingdom; and the curtain falls on general happiness,
-Count Rodolph having committed suicide.
-
-"Nothing could have been more successful," said Lottie, all tremulous
-with excitement, to Oswin, as they went off together amid a tumult of
-applause, which was very sweet to her ears.
-
-"I think it went off very well indeed," said Oswin. "Your acting was
-perfection, Miss Vincent."
-
-"Call me Marie," she said playfully. "But we must really go before the
-curtain; hear how they are applauding."
-
-"I think we have had enough of it," said Oswin.
-
-"Come along," she cried; "I dislike it above all things, but there is
-nothing for it."
-
-The call for Lottie and Oswin was determined, so after the soldiers had
-called out their favourite officers, Oswin brought the girl forward, and
-the enthusiasm was very great. Lottie then went off, and for a few
-moments Markham remained alone upon the stage. He was most heartily
-applauded, and, after acknowledging the compliment, he was just stepping
-back, when from the centre of the seats a man's voice came, loud and
-clear:
-
-"Bravo, old boy! you're a trump wherever you turn up."
-
-There was a general moving of heads, and some laughter in the front
-rows.
-
-But Oswin Markham looked from where he was standing on the stage down
-to the place whence that voice seemed to come. He neither laughed nor
-smiled, only stepped back behind the curtain.
-
-The stage was now crowded with the actors and their friends; everybody
-was congratulating everybody else. Lottie was in the highest spirits.
-
-"Could anything have been more successful?" she cried again to Oswin
-Markham. He looked at her without answering for some moments. "I don't
-know," he said at last. "Successful? perhaps so."
-
-"What on earth do you mean?" she asked; "are you afraid of the Natal
-critics?"
-
-"No, I can't say I am."
-
-"Of what then?"
-
-"There is a person at the door who wishes to speak to you, Mr. Markham,"
-said one of the servants coming up to Oswin. "He says he doesn't carry
-cards, but you will see his name here," and he handed Oswin an envelope.
-
-Oswin Markham read the name on the envelope and crushed it into his
-pocket, saying to the servant:
-
-"Show the--gentleman up to the room where I dressed."
-
-So Miss Lottie did not become aware of the origin of Mr. Markham's doubt
-as to the success of the great drama _Throne or Spouse_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXII.
-
-
-``Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely bar the
-door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend.=
-
-````... tempt him with speed aboard;
-
-```Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night.=
-
-````Indeed this counsellor
-
-```Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,
-
-```Who was in life a foolish prating knave.=
-
-```This sudden sending him away must seem
-
-```Deliberate.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|IN the room where he had assumed the dress of the part he had just
-played, Oswin Markham was now standing idle, and without making any
-attempt to remove the colour from his face or the streaks from his
-eyebrows. He was still in the dress of the Prince when the door was
-opened and a man entered the room eagerly.
-
-"By Jingo! yes, I thought you'd see me," he cried before he had closed
-the door. All the people outside--and there were a good many--who
-chanced to hear the tone of the voice knew that the speaker was the man
-who had shouted those friendly words when Oswin was leaving the stage.
-"Yes, old fellow," he continued, slapping Markham on the back and
-grasping him by the hand, "I thought I might venture to intrude upon
-you. Right glad I was to see you, though, by heavens! I thought I should
-have shouted out when I saw you--you, of all people, here. Tell us how
-it comes, Oswin. How the deuce do you appear at this place? Why, what's
-the matter with you? Have you talked so much in that tall way on the
-boards that you haven't a word left to say here? You weren't used to be
-dumb in the good old days---good old nights, my boy."
-
-"You won't give me a chance," said Oswin; and he did not even smile in
-response to the other's laughter.
-
-"There then, I've dried up," said the stranger. "But, by my soul, I tell
-you I'm glad to see you. It seems to me, do you know, that I'm drunk
-now, and that when I sleep off the fit you'll be gone. I've fancied
-queer things when I've been drunk, as you well know. But it's you
-yourself, isn't it?"
-
-"One need have no doubt about your identity," said Oswin. "You talk in
-the same infernally muddled way that ever Harry Despard used to talk."
-
-"That's like yourself, my boy," cried the man, with a loud laugh. "I'm
-beginning to feel that it's you indeed, though you are dressed up like
-a Prince--by heavens! you played the part well. I couldn't help shouting
-out what I did for a lark. I wondered what you'd think when you heard
-my voice. But how did you manage to turn up at Natal? tell me that. You
-left us to go up country, didn't you?"
-
-"It's a long story," replied Oswin. "Very long, and I am bound to change
-this dress. I can't go about in this fashion for ever."
-
-"No more you can," said the other. "And the sooner you get rid of those
-togs the better, for by God, it strikes me that they give you a wrong
-impression about yourself. You're not so hearty by a long way as you
-used to be. I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll go on to the hotel and
-wait there until you are in decent rig. I'll only be in this town until
-to-morrow evening, and we must have a night together."
-
-For the first time since the man had entered the room Oswin brightened
-up.
-
-"Only till to-morrow night, Hal?" he cried. "Then we must have a few
-jolly hours together before we part. I won't let you even go to the
-hotel now. Stay here while I change, like a decent fellow."
-
-"Now that sounds like your old form, my boy; hang me if I don't stay
-with you. Is that a flask in the portmanteau? It is, by Jingo, and
-if it's not old Irish may I be--and cigars too. Yes, I will stay, old
-fellow, for auld langsyne. This is like auld langsyne, isn't it? Why,
-where are you off to?"
-
-"I have to give a message to some one in another room," said Oswin,
-leaving the man alone. He was a tall man, apparently about the same age
-as Markham. So much of his face as remained unconcealed by a shaggy,
-tawny beard and whiskers was bronzed to a copper colour. His hair
-was short and tawny, and his mouth was very coarse. His dress was not
-shabby, but the largeness of the check on the pattern scarcely argued
-the possession of a subdued taste on the part of the wearer.
-
-He had seated himself upon a table in the room though there were plenty
-of chairs, and when Oswin went out he filled the flask cup and emptied
-it with a single jerk of his head; then he snatched up the hat which had
-been worn by Oswin on the stage; he threw it into the air and caught it
-on one of his feet, then with a laugh he kicked it across the floor.
-
-But Oswin had gone to the room where Captain Howard, who had acted as
-stage manager, was smoking after the labours of the evening. "Howard,"
-Said Markham, "I must be excused from your supper to-night."
-
-"Nonsense," said Howard. "It would be too ridiculous for us to have
-a supper if you who have done the most work to-night should be away.
-What's the matter? Have you a doctor's certificate?"
-
-"The fact is a--a--sort of friend of mine--a man I knew pretty
-intimately some time ago, has turned up here most unexpectedly."
-
-"Then bring your sort of friend with you."
-
-"Quite impossible," said Markham quickly. "He is not the kind of man who
-would make the supper agreeable either to himself or to any one else.
-You will explain to the other fellows how I am compelled to be away."
-
-"But you'll turn up some time in the course of the night, won't you?"
-
-"I am afraid to say I shall. The fact is, my friend requires a good deal
-of attention to be given to him in the course of a friendly night. If I
-can manage to clear myself of him in decent time I'll be with you."
-
-"You must manage it," said Howard as Oswin went back to the room, where
-he found his friend struggling to pull on the green doublet in which the
-Prince had appeared in the opening scene of the play.
-
-"Hang me if I couldn't do the part like one o'clock," he cried; "the
-half of it is in the togs. You weren't loud enough, Oswin, when you came
-on; you wouldn't have brought down the gods even at Ballarat. This is
-how you should have done it: 'I'll save you or----'"
-
-"For Heaven's sake don't make a fool of yourself, Hal."
-
-"I was only going to show you how it should be done to rouse the people;
-and as for making a fool of myself----"
-
-"You have done that so often you think it not worth the caution. Come
-now, stuff those things into the portmanteau, and I'll have on my mufti
-in five minutes."
-
-"And then off to the hotel, and you bet your pile, as we used to say at
-Chokeneck Gulch, we'll have more than a pint bottle of Bass. By the way,
-how about your bronze; does the good old governor still stump up?"
-
-"My allowance goes regularly to Australia," said Os win, with a stern
-look coming to his face.
-
-"And where else should it go, my boy? By the way, that's a tidy female
-that showed what neat ankles she had as Marie. By my soul, I envied you
-squeezing her. 'What right has he to squeeze her?' I said to myself, and
-then I thought if----"
-
-"But you haven't told me how you came here," said Oswin, interrupting
-him.
-
-"No more I did. It's easily told, my lad. It was getting too warm for me
-in Melbourne, and as I had still got some cash I thought I'd take a run
-to New York city--at least that's what I made up my mind to do when I
-awoke one fine morning in the cabin of the _Virginia_ brig a couple
-of hundred miles from Cape Howe. I remembered going into a saloon one
-evening and finding a lot of men giving general shouts, but beyond that
-I had no idea of anything."
-
-"That's your usual form," said Oswin. "So you are bound for New York?"
-
-"Yes, the skipper of the _Virginia_ had made Natal one of his ports,
-and there we put in yesterday, so I ran up to this town, under what you
-would call an inspiration, or I wouldn't be here now ready to slip the
-tinsel from as many bottles of genuine Moët as you choose to order. But
-you--what about yourself?"
-
-"I am here, my Hal, to order as many bottles as you can slip the tinsel
-off," cried Oswin, his face flushed more deeply than when it had been
-rouged before the footlights.
-
-"Spoken in your old form, by heavens!" cried the other, leaping from the
-table. "You always were a gentleman amongst us, and you never failed
-us in the matter of drink. Hang me if I don't let the _Virginia_
-brig--go--to--to New York without me; I'll stay here in company of my
-best friend."
-
-"Come along," said Oswin, leaving the room. "Whether you go or stay
-we'll have a night of it at the hotel."
-
-They passed out together and walked up to the hotel, hearing all the
-white population discussing the dramatic performance of the evening, for
-it had created a considerable stir in the town. There was no moon, but
-the stars were sparkling over the dark blue of the hills that almost
-encircle the town. Tall Zulus stood, as they usually do after dark,
-talking at the corners in their emphatic language, while here and there
-smaller white men speaking Cape Dutch passed through the streets smoking
-their native cigars.
-
-"Just what you would find in Melbourne or in the direction of Geelong,
-isn't it, Oswin?" said the stranger, who had his arm inside Markham's.
-
-"Yes, with a few modifications," said Oswin.
-
-"Why, hang it all, man," cried the other. "You aren't getting
-sentimental, are you? A fellow would think from the way you've been
-talking in that low, hollow, parson's tone that you weren't glad I
-turned up. If you're not, just say so. You won't need to give Harry
-Despard a nod after you've given him a wink."
-
-"What an infernal fool you do make of yourself," said Oswin. "You know
-that I'm glad to have you beside me again, old fellow,--yes, devilish
-glad. Confound it, man, do you fancy I've no feeling--no recollection?
-Haven't we stood by each other in the past, and won't we do it in the
-future?"
-
-"We will, by heavens, my lad! and hang me if I don't smash anything
-that comes on the table tonight except the sparkling. And look here, the
-_Virginia_ brig may slip her cable and be off to New York. I'll stand by
-you while you stay here, my boy. Yes, say no more, my mind is made up."
-
-"Spoken like a man!" cried Oswin, with a sudden start. "Spoken like a
-man! and here we are at the hotel. We'll have one of our old suppers
-together, Hal----"
-
-"Or perish in the attempt," shouted the other.
-
-The stranger went upstairs, while Oswin remained below to talk to the
-landlord about some matters that occupied a little time.
-
-Markham and Harwood had a sitting-room for their exclusive use in the
-hotel, but it was not into this room that Oswin brought his guest, it
-was into another apartment at a different quarter of the house. The
-stranger threw his hat into a corner and himself down upon a sofa with
-his legs upon a chair that he had tilted back.
-
-"Now we'll have a general shout," he said. "Ask all the people in the
-house what they'll drink. If you acted the Prince on the stage to-night,
-I'll act the part here now. I've got the change of a hundred samples of
-the Sydney mint, and I want to ease myself of them. Yes, we'll have a
-general shout."
-
-"A general shout in a Dutchman's house? My boy, this isn't a Ballarat
-saloon," said Oswin. "If we hinted such a thing we'd be turned into
-the street. Here is a bottle of the sparkling by way of opening the
-campaign."
-
-"I'll open the champagne and you open the campaign, good! The sight of
-you, Oswin, old fellow--well, it makes me feel that life is a joke.
-Fill up your glass and we'll drink to the old times. And now tell me all
-about yourself. How did you light here, and what do you mean to do? Have
-you had another row in the old quarter?"
-
-Oswin had drained his glass of champagne and had stretched himself upon
-the second sofa. His face seemed pale almost to ghastliness, as persons'
-faces do after the use of rouge. He gave a short laugh when the other
-had spoken.
-
-"Wait till after supper," he cried. "I haven't a word to throw to a dog
-until after supper."
-
-"Curse that Prince and his bluster on the stage; you're as hoarse as a
-rook now, Oswin," remarked the stranger.
-
-In a brief space the curried crayfish and penguins' eggs, which form
-the opening dishes of a Cape supper, appeared; and though Oswin's friend
-seemed to have an excellent appetite, Markham himself scarcely ate
-anything. It did not, however, appear that the stranger's comfort was
-wholly dependent upon companionship. He ate and drank and talked loudly
-whether Oswin fasted or remained mute; but when the supper was removed
-and he lighted a cigar, he poured out half a bottle of champagne into a
-tumbler, and cried:
-
-"Now, my gallant Prince, give us all your eventful history since you
-left Melbourne five months ago, saying you were going up country. Tell
-us how you came to this place, whatever its infernal Dutch name is."
-
-And Oswin Markham, sitting at the table, told him.
-
-But while this _tète-à-tète_ supper was taking place at the hotel, the
-messroom of the Bayonetteers was alight, and the regimental cook had
-excelled himself in providing dishes that were wholly English, without
-the least colonial flavour, for the officers and their guests, among
-whom was Harwood.
-
-Captain Howard's apology for Markham was not freely accepted, more
-especially as Markham did not put in an appearance during the entire of
-the supper. Harwood was greatly surprised at his absence, and the story
-of a friend having suddenly turned up he rejected as a thing devised as
-an excuse. He did not return to the hotel until late--more than an
-hour past midnight. He paused outside the hotel door for some moments,
-hearing the sound of loud laughter and a hoarse voice singing snatches
-of different songs.
-
-"What is the noisy party upstairs?" he asked of the man who opened the
-door.
-
-"That is Mr. Markham and his friend, sir. They have taken supper
-together," said the servant.
-
-Harwood did not express the surprise he felt. He took his candle, and
-went to his own room, and, as he smoked a cigar before going to bed, he
-heard the intermittent sounds of the laughter and the singing.
-
-"I shall have a talk with this old friend of Mr. Markham's in the
-morning," he said, after he had stated another of his problems to sleep
-over.
-
-Markham and he had been accustomed to breakfast together in their
-sitting-room since they had come up from Durban; but when Harwood awoke
-the next morning, and came in to breakfast, he found only one cup upon
-the table.
-
-"Why is there not a cup for Mr. Markham?" he asked of the servant.
-
-"Mr. Markham, sir, left with his friend for Durban at four o'clock this
-morning," said the man.
-
-"What, for Durban?"
-
-"Yes, sir. Mr. Markham had ordered a Cape cart and team to be here at
-that time. I thought you might have awakened as they were leaving."
-
-"No, I did not," said Mr. Harwood quietly; and the servant left the
-room.
-
-Here was something additional for the special correspondent of the
-_Dominant Trumpeter_ to ponder over and reduce to the terms of a
-problem. He reflected upon his early suspicions of Oswin Markham. Had
-he not even suggested that Markham's name was probably something very
-different from what he had called himself? Mr. Harwood knew well that
-men have a curious tendency to call themselves by the names of the
-persons to whom bank orders are made payable, and he believed that such
-a subtle sympathy might exist between the man who had been picked up at
-sea and the document that was found in his possession. Yes, Mr. Harwood
-felt that his instincts were not perhaps wholly in error regarding Mr.
-Oswin Markham, cleverly though he had acted the part of the Prince in
-that stirring drama on the previous evening.
-
-On the afternoon of the following day, however, Oswin Markham entered
-the hotel at Pietermaritzburg and walked into the room where Harwood
-was working up a letter for his newspaper, descriptive of life among the
-Zulus.
-
-"Good heavens!" cried the "special," starting up; "I did not expect you
-back so soon. Why, you could only have stayed a few hours at the port."
-
-"It was enough for me," said Oswin, a smile lighting up his pale face;
-"quite enough for me. I only waited to see the vessel with my friend
-aboard safely over the bar. Then I returned."
-
-"You went away from here in something of a hurry, did you not, Markham?"
-
-Oswin laughed as he threw himself into a chair.
-
-"Yes, something of a hurry. My friend is--let us say, eccentric. We left
-without going to bed the night before last. Never mind, Harwood,
-old fellow; he is gone, and here I am now, ready for anything
-you propose--an excursion across the Tugela or up to the
-Transvaal--anywhere--anywhere--I'm free now and myself again."
-
-"Free?" said Harwood curiously. "What do you mean by free?"
-
-Oswin looked at him mutely for a moment, then he laughed, saying:
-
-"Free--yes, free from that wretched dramatic affair. Thank Heaven, it's
-off my mind!"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIII.
-
-
-``_Horatio_. My lord, the King your father.
-
-``_Hamlet_. The King--my father?
-
-``_Horatio_. Season your admiration for a while.=
-
-```In what particular thought to work I know not;
-
-```But in the gross and scope of mine opinion
-
-```This bodes some strange eruption to our state.=
-
-````Our last King,
-
-```Whose image even but now appear'd to us,
-
-````... by a sealed compact
-
-```Did forfeit... all those his lands
-
-```Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror.=
-
-`````_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|MY son," said The Macnamara, "you ought to be ashamed of your
-threatment of your father. The like of your threatment was never known
-in the family of the Macnamaras, or, for that matter, of the O'Dermots.
-A stain has been thrown upon the family that centuries can't wash out."
-
-"It is no stain either upon myself or our family for me to have set
-out to do some work in the world," said Standish proudly, for he felt
-capable of maintaining the dignity of labour. "I told you that I would
-not pass my life in the idleness of Innishdermot. I-----------"
-
-"It's too much for me, Standish O'Dermot Macnamara--to hear you talk
-lightly of Innishdermot is too much for the blood of the representative
-of the ancient race. Don't, my boy, don't."
-
-"I don't talk lightly of it; when you told me it was gone from us I felt
-it as deeply as any one could feel it."
-
-"It's one more wrong added to the grievances of our thrampled counthry,"
-cried the hereditary monarch of the islands with fervour. "And yet you
-have never sworn an oath to be revenged. You even tell me that you
-mean to be in the pay of the nation that has done your family this
-wrong--that has thrampled The Macnamara into the dust. This is the
-bitterest stroke of all."
-
-"I have told you all," said Standish. "Colonel Gerald was kinder to me
-than words could express. He is going to England in two months, but only
-to remain a week, and then he will leave for the Castaway Islands.
-He has already written to have my appointment as private secretary
-confirmed, and I shall go at once to have everything ready for his
-arrival. It's not much I can do, God knows, but what I can do I will for
-him. I'll work my best."
-
-"Oh, this is bitter--bitter--to hear a Macnamara talk of work; and just
-now, too, when the money has come to us."
-
-"I don't want the money," said Standish indignantly.
-
-"Ye're right, my son, so far. What signifies fifteen thousand pounds
-when the feelings of an ancient family are outraged?"
-
-"But I can't understand how those men had power to take the land, if you
-did not wish to give it to them, for their railway and their hotel."
-
-"It's more of the oppression, my son--more of the thrampling of our
-counthry into the dust. I rejected their offers with scorn at first;
-but I found out that they could get power from the oppressors of our
-counthry to buy every foot of the ground at the price put on it by a man
-they call an arbithrator--so between thraitors and arbithrators I knew
-I couldn't hold out. With tears in my eyes I signed the papers, and now
-all the land from the mouth of Suangorm to Innishdermot is in the hands
-of the English company--all but the castle--thank God they couldn't
-wrest that from me. If you'd only been by me, Standish, I would
-have held out against them all; but think of the desolate old man
-sitting amongst the ruins of his home and the tyrants with the gold--I
-could do nothing."
-
-"And then you came out here. Well, father, I'm glad to see you, and
-Colonel Gerald will be so too, and--Daireen."
-
-"Aye," said The Macnamara. "Daireen is here too. And have you been
-talking to the lovely daughter of the Geralds, my boy? Have you been
-confessing all you confessed to me, on that bright day at Innishdermot?
-Have you----"
-
-"Look here, father," said Standish sternly; "you must never allude to
-anything that you forced me to say then. It was a dream of mine, and now
-it is past."
-
-"You can hold your head higher than that now, my boy," said The
-Macnamara proudly. "You're not a beggar now, Standish; money's in the
-family."
-
-"As if money could make any difference," said Standish.
-
-"It makes all the difference in the world, my boy," said The Macnamara;
-but suddenly recollecting his principles, he added, "That is, to some
-people; but a Macnamara without a penny might aspire to the hand of
-the noblest in the land. Oh, here she comes--the bright snowdhrop of
-Glenmara--the arbutus-berry of Craig-Innish; and her father too--oh, why
-did he turn to the Saxons?"
-
-The Macnamara, Prince of Innishdermot, Chief of the Islands and Lakes,
-and King of all Munster, was standing with his son in the coffee-room of
-the hotel, having just come ashore from the steamer that had brought him
-out to the Cape. The patriot had actually left his land for the first
-time in his life, and had proceeded to the colony in search of his son,
-and he found his son waiting for him at the dock gates.
-
-That first letter which Standish received from his father had indeed
-been very piteous, and if the young man had not been so resolute in his
-determination to work, he would have returned to Innishdermot once more,
-to comfort his father in his trials. But the next mail brought a second
-communication from The Macnamara to say that he could endure no longer
-the desolation of the lonely hearth of his ancestral castle, but would
-set out in search of his lost offspring through all the secret places
-of the earth. Considering that he had posted this letter to the definite
-address of his offspring, the effect of the vagueness of his expressed
-resolution was somewhat lessened.
-
-Standish received the letter with dismay, and Colonel Gerald himself
-felt a little uneasiness at the prospect of having The Macnamara
-quartered upon him for an uncertain period. He was well aware of the
-largeness of the ideas of The Macnamara on many matters, and in regard
-to the question of colonial hospitality he felt that the views of the
-hereditary prince would be liberal to an inconvenient degree. It was
-thus with something akin to consternation that he listened to the
-eloquent letter which Standish read with flushed face and trembling
-hands.
-
-"We shall be very pleased to see The Macnamara here," said Colonel
-Gerald; and Daireen laughed, saying she could not believe that
-Standish's father would ever bring himself to depart from his kingdom.
-It was on the next day that Colonel Gerald had an interview of
-considerable duration with Standish on a matter of business, he said;
-and when it was over and the young man's qualifications had been judged
-of, Standish found himself in a position either to accept or decline the
-office of private secretary to the new governor of the lovely Castaway
-group. With tears he left the presence of the governor, and went to
-his room to weep the fulness from his mind and to make a number of firm
-resolutions as to his future of hard work; and that very evening Colonel
-Gerald had written to the Colonial Office nominating Standish to the
-appointment; so that the matter was considered settled, and Standish
-felt that he did not fear to face his father.
-
-But when Standish had met The Macnamara on the arrival of the mail
-steamer a week after he had received that letter stating his intentions,
-the young man learned, what apparently could not be included in a letter
-without proving harassing to its eloquence, that the extensive lands
-along the coastway of the lough had been sold to an English company of
-speculators who had come to the conclusion that a railway made through
-the picturesque district would bring a fortune to every one who might be
-so fortunate as to have money invested in the undertaking. So a railway
-was to be made, and a gigantic hotel built to overlook the lough. The
-shooting and fishing rights--in fact every right and every foot of
-ground, had been sold for a large sum to the company by The Macnamara.
-And though Standish had at first felt the news as a great blow to him,
-he subsequently became reconciled to it, for his father's appearance at
-the Cape with several thousand pounds was infinitely more pleasing to
-him than if the representative of The Macnamaras had come in his former
-condition, which was simply one of borrowing powers.
-
-"It's the snowdhrop of Glenmara," said The Macnamara, kissing the hand
-of Daireen as he met her at the door of the room. "And you, George, my
-boy," he continued, turning to her father; "I may shake hands with you
-as a friend, without the action being turned to mean that I forgive the
-threatment my counthry has received from the nation whose pay you are
-still in. Yes, only as a friend I shake hands with you, George."
-
-"That is a sufficient ground for me, Macnamara," said the colonel. "We
-won't go into the other matters just now."
-
-"I cannot believe that this is Cape Town," said Daireen. "Just think of
-our meeting here to-day. Oh, if we could only have a glimpse of the dear
-old Slieve Docas!"
-
-"Why shouldn't you see it, white dove?" said The Macnamara in Irish to
-the girl, whose face brightened at the sound of the tongue that brought
-back so many pleasant recollections to her. "Why shouldn't you?" he
-continued, taking from one of the boxes of his luggage an immense bunch
-of purple heather in gorgeous bloom. "I gathered it for you from the
-slope of the mountain. It brings you the scent of the finest hill in the
-world."
-
-The girl caught the magnificent bloom in both her hands and put her face
-down to it. As the first breath of the hill she loved came to her in
-this strange land they saw her face lighten. Then she turned away and
-buried her head in the scents of the hills--in the memories of the
-mountains and the lakes, while The Macnamara spoke on in the musical
-tongue that lived in her mind associated with all the things of the land
-she loved.
-
-"And Innishdermot," said Colonel Gerald at length, "how is the seat of
-our kings?"
-
-"Alas, my counthry! thrampled on--bethrayed--crushed to the ground!"
-said The Macnamara. "You won't believe it, George--no, you won't. They
-have spoiled me of all I possessed--they have driven me out of the
-counthry that my sires ruled when the oppressors were walking about in
-the skins of wild beasts. Yes, George, Innishdermot is taken from me and
-I've no place to shelter me."
-
-Colonel Gerald began to look grave and to feel much graver even than he
-looked. The Macnamara shelterless was certainly a subject for serious
-consideration.
-
-"Yes," said Standish, observing the expression on his face, "you would
-wonder how any company could find it profitable to pay fifteen thousand
-pounds for the piece of land. That is what the new railway people paid
-my father."
-
-Once more the colonel's face brightened, but The Macnamara stood up
-proudly, saying:
-
-"Pounds! What are pounds to the feelings of a true patriot? What can
-money do to heal the wrongs of a race?"
-
-"Nothing," said the colonel; "nothing whatever. But we must hasten out
-to our cottage. I'll get a coolie to take your luggage to the railway
-station. We shall drive out. My dear Dolly, come down from yonder
-mountain height where you have gone on wings of heather. I'll take out
-the bouquet for you."
-
-"No," said Daireen. "I'll not let any one carry it for me."
-
-And they all went out of the hotel to the carriage.
-
-The _maître d'hôtel_, who had been listening to the speech of The
-Macnamara in wonder, and had been finally mystified by the Celtic
-language, hastened to the visitors' book in which The Macnamara had
-written his name; but this last step certainly did not tend to make
-everything clear, for in the book was written:
-
-"Macnamara, Prince of the Isles, Chief of Innish-dermot and the Lakes,
-and King of Munster."
-
-"And with such a nose!" said the _maître d'hôtel_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIV.
-
-
-```Tis sweet and commendable in your nature,
-
-```To give these... duties to your father.=
-
-```In that and all things we show our duty.=
-
-``_King_. What wouldst thou beg, Laertes?
-
-```What wouldst thou have?=
-
-``_Laertes_. Your leave and favour to ret urn--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|TO these four exiles from Erin sitting out on the stoep of the Dutch
-cottage after dinner very sweet it was to dream of fatherland. The soft
-light through which the broad-leaved, motionless plants glimmered was,
-of course, not to be compared with the long dwindling twilights that
-were wont to overhang the slopes of Lough Suangorm; and that mighty peak
-which towered above them, flanked by the long ridge of Table Mountain,
-was a poor thing in the eyes of those who had witnessed the glories of
-the heather-swathed Slieve Docas.
-
-The cries ot the bullock wagoners, which were faintly heard from the
-road, did not interfere with the musings of any of the party, nor with
-the harangue of The Macnamara.
-
-Very pleasant it was to hear The Macnamara talk about his homeless
-condition as attributable to the long course of oppression persisted
-in by the Saxon Monarchy--at least so Colonel Gerald thought, for in a
-distant colony a harangue on the subject of British tyranny in Ireland
-does not sound very vigorous, any more than does a burning revolutionary
-ode when read a century or so after the revolution has taken place.
-
-But poor Standish, who had spent a good many years of his life breathing
-in of the atmosphere of harangue, began to feel impatient at his sire's
-eloquence. Standish knew very well that his father had made a hard
-bargain with the railway and hotel company that had bought the land;
-nay, he even went so far as to conjecture that the affectionate yearning
-which had caused The Macnamara to come out to the colony in search
-of his son might be more plainly defined as an impulse of prudence
-to escape from certain of his creditors before they could hear of his
-having received a large sum of money. Standish wondered how Colonel
-Gerald could listen to all that his father was saying when he could not
-help being conscious of the nonsense of it all, for the young man was
-not aware of the pleasant memories of his youth that were coming back to
-the colonel under the influence of The Macnamara's speech.
-
-The next day, however, Standish had a conversation of considerable
-length with his father, and The Macnamara found that he had made rapid
-progress in his knowledge of the world since he had left his secluded
-home. In the face of his father he insisted on his father's promising to
-remove from the Dutch cottage at the end of a few days. The Macnamara's
-notions of hospitality were very large, and he could not see why Colonel
-Gerald should have the least feeling except of happiness in entertaining
-a shelterless monarch; but Standish was firm, and Colonel Gerald did not
-resist so stoutly as The Macnamara felt he should have done; so that at
-the end of the week Daireen and her father were left alone for the first
-time since they had come together at the Cape.
-
-They found it very agreeable to be able to sit together and ride
-together and talk without reserve. Standish Macnamara was, beyond doubt,
-very good company, and his father was even more inclined to be sociable,
-but no one disputed the wisdom of the young man's conduct in curtailing
-his visit and his father's to the Dutch cottage. The Macnamara had his
-pockets filled with money, and as Standish knew that this was a strange
-experience for him, he resolved that the weight of responsibility
-which the preservation of so large a sum was bound to entail, should be
-reduced; so he took a cottage at Rondebosch for his father and himself,
-and even went the length of buying a horse. The lordliness of the ideas
-of the young man who had only had a few months' experience of the world
-greatly impressed his father, and he paid for everything without a
-murmur.
-
-Standish had, at the intervals of his father's impassioned discourses,
-many a long and solitary ride and many a lengthened reverie amongst the
-pines that grow beside The Flats. The resolutions he made as to his life
-at the Castaway group were very numerous, and the visions that floated
-before his eyes were altogether very agreeable. He was beginning to feel
-that he had accomplished a good deal of that ennobling hard work in
-the world which he had resolved to set about fulfilling. His previous
-resolutions had not been made carelessly: he had grappled with adverse
-Fate, he felt, and was he not getting the better of this contrary power?
-
-But not many days after the arrival of The Macnamara another personage
-of importance made his appearance in Cape Town. The Bishop of the
-Calapash Islands and Metropolitan of the Salamander Archipelago had at
-last found a vessel to convey him to where his dutiful son was waiting
-for him.
-
-The prelate felt that he had every reason to congratulate himself upon
-the opportuneness of his arrival, for Mr. Glaston assured his father,
-after the exuberance of their meeting had passed away, that if the
-vessel had not appeared within the course of another week, he would
-have been compelled to defer the gratification of his filial desires for
-another year.
-
-"A colony is endurable for a week," said Mr. Glaston; "it is wearisome
-at the end of a fortnight; but a month spent with colonists has got a
-demoralising effect that years perhaps may fail to obliterate."
-
-The bishop felt that indeed he had every reason to be thankful that
-unfavourable winds had not prolonged the voyage of his vessel.
-
-Mrs. Crawford was, naturally enough, one of the first persons at the
-Cape to visit the bishop, for she had known him years before--she had
-indeed known most Colonial celebrities in her time--and she took the
-opportunity to explain to him that Colonel Gerald had been counting the
-moments until the arrival of the vessel from the Salamanders, so great
-was his anxiety to meet with the Metropolitan of that interesting
-archipelago, with whom he had been acquainted a good many years before.
-This was very gratifying to the bishop, who liked to be remembered by
-his friends; he had an idea that even the bishop of a distant colony
-runs a chance of being forgotten in the world unless he has written an
-heretical book, so he was glad when, a few days after his arrival at
-Cape Town, he received a visit from Colonel Gerald and an invitation to
-dinner.
-
-This was very pleasing to Mrs. Crawford, for, of course, Algernon
-Glaston was included in the invitation, and she contrived without any
-difficulty that he should be seated by the side of Miss Gerald. Her
-skill was amply rewarded, she felt, when she observed Mr. Glaston
-and Daireen engaged in what sounded like a discussion on the musical
-landscapes of Liszt; to be engaged--even on a discussion of so subtle a
-nature--was something, Mrs. Crawford thought.
-
-In the course of this evening, she herself, while the bishop was smiling
-upon Daireen in a way that had gained the hearts, if not the souls,
-of the Salamanderians, got by the side of Mr. Glaston, intent upon
-following up the advantage the occasion offered.
-
-"I am so glad that the bishop has taken a fancy to Daireen," she said.
-"Daireen is a dear good girl--is she not?"
-
-Mr. Glaston raised his eyebrows and touched the extreme point of
-his moustache before he answered a question so pronounced. "Ah, she
-is--improving," he said slowly. "If she leaves this place at once she
-may improve still."
-
-"She wants some one to be near her capable of moulding her tastes--don't
-you think?"
-
-"She _needs_ such a one. I should not like to say _wants,_" remarked Mr.
-Glaston.
-
-"I am sure Daireen would be very willing to learn, Mr. Glaston; she
-believes in you, I know," said Mrs. Crawford, who was proceeding on
-an assumption of the broad principles she had laid down to Daireen
-regarding the effect of flattery upon the race. But her words did not
-touch Mr. Glaston deeply: he was accustomed to be believed in by girls.
-
-"She has taste--some taste," he replied, though the concession was not
-forced from him by Mrs. Crawford's revelation to him. "Yes; but of what
-value is taste unless it is educated upon the true principles of Art?"
-
-"Ah, what indeed?"
-
-"Miss Gerald's taste is as yet only approaching the right tracks of
-culture. One shudders, anticipating the effect another month of life
-in such a place as this may have upon her. For my own part, I do not
-suppose that I shall be myself again for at least a year after I return.
-I feel my taste utterly demoralised through the two months of my stay
-here; and I explained to my father that it will be necessary for him
-to resign his see if he wishes to have me near him at all. It is quite
-impossible for me to come out here again. The three months' absence from
-England that my visit entails is ruinous to me."
-
-"I have always thought of your self-sacrifice as an example of true
-filial duty, Mr. Glaston. I know that Daireen thinks so as well."
-
-But Mr. Glaston did not seem particularly anxious to talk of Daireen.
-
-"Yes; my father must resign his see," he continued.
-
-"The month I have just passed has left too terrible recollections behind
-it to allow of my running a chance of its being repeated. The only
-person I met in the colony who was not hopelessly astray was that Miss
-Vincent."
-
-"Oh!" cried Mrs. Crawford, almost shocked. "Oh, Mr. Glaston! you surely
-do not mean that! Good gracious!--Lottie Vincent!"
-
-"Miss Vincent was the only one who, I found, had any correct idea of
-Art; and yet, you see, how she turned out."
-
-"Turned out? I should think so indeed. Lottie Vincent was always turning
-out since the first time I met her."
-
-"Yes; the idea of her acting in company of such a man as this Markham--a
-man who had no hesitation in going to view a picture by candlelight--it
-is too distressing."
-
-"My dear Mr. Glaston, I think they will get on very well together. You
-do not know Lottie Vincent as I know her. She has behaved with the most
-shocking ingratitude towards me. But we are parted now, and I shall take
-good care she does not impose upon me again."
-
-"It scarcely matters how one's social life is conducted if one's
-artistic life is correct," said Mr. Glaston.
-
-At this assertion, which she should have known to be one of the articles
-of Mr. Glaston's creed, Mrs. Crawford gave a little start. She thought
-it better, however, not to question its soundness. As a matter of fact,
-the bishop himself, if he had heard his son enunciate such a precept,
-would not have questioned its soundness; for Mr. Glaston spake as one
-having authority, and most people whose robustness was not altogether
-mental, believed his Gospel of Art.
-
-"No doubt what you say is--ah--very true," said Mrs. Crawford. "But I
-do wish, Mr. Glaston, that you could find time to talk frequently to
-Daireen on these subjects. I should be so sorry if the dear child's
-ideas were allowed to run wild. Your influence might work wonders with
-her. There is no one here now who can interfere with you."
-
-"Interfere with me, Mrs. Crawford?"
-
-"I mean, you know, that Mr. Harwood, with his meretricious cleverness,
-might possibly--ah--well, you know how easily girls are led."
-
-"If there would be a possibility of Miss Gerald's being influenced in a
-single point by such a man as that Mr. Harwood, I fear not much can be
-hoped for her," said Mr. Glaston.
-
-"We should never be without hope," said Mrs. Crawford. "For my own
-part, I hope a great deal--a very great deal--from your influence over
-Daireen; and I am exceedingly happy that the bishop seems so pleased
-with her."
-
-The good bishop was indeed distributing his benedictory smiles freely,
-and Daireen came in for a share of his favours. Her father wondered at
-the prodigality of the churchman's smiles; for as a chaplain he was not
-wont to be anything but grave. The colonel did not reflect that while
-smiling may be a grievous fault in a chaplain, it can never be anything
-but ornamental to a bishop.
-
-A few days afterwards Mrs. Crawford called upon the bishop, and had an
-interesting conversation with him on the subject of his son's future--a
-question to which of late the bishop himself had given a good deal
-of thought; for in the course of his official investigations on the
-question of human existence he had been led to believe that the
-duration of life has at all times been uncertain; he had more than
-once communicated this fact to dusky congregations, and by reducing the
-application of the painful truth, he had come to feel that the life of
-even a throned bishop is not exempt from the fatalities of mankind.
-
-As the bishop's son was accustomed to spend half of the revenues of
-his father's see, his father was beginning to have an anxiety about the
-future of the young man; for he did not think that his successor to
-the prelacy of the Calapash Islands would allow Mr. Glaston to draw,
-as usual, upon the income accruing to the office. The bishop was not
-so utterly unworldly in his notions but that he knew there exist other
-means of amassing wealth than by writing verses in a pamphlet-magazine,
-or even composing delicate impromptus in minor keys for one's own
-hearing, His son had not felt it necessary to occupy his mind with any
-profession, so that his future was somewhat difficult to foresee with
-any degree of clearness.
-
-Mrs. Crawford, however, spoke many comforting words to the bishop
-regarding a provision for his son's future. Daireen Gerald, she assured
-him, besides being one of the most charming girls in the world, was
-the only child of her father, and her father's estates in the South of
-Ireland were extensive and profitable.
-
-When Mrs. Crawford left him, the bishop felt glad that he had smiled
-so frequently upon Miss Gerald. He had heard that no kindly smile was
-bestowed in vain, but the truth of the sentiment had never before so
-forced itself upon his mind. He smiled again in recollection of his
-previous smiles. He felt that indeed Miss Gerald was a charming girl,
-and Mrs. Crawford was most certainly a wonderful woman; and it can
-scarcely be doubted that the result of the bishop's reflections proved
-the possession on his part of powerful mental resources, enabling him to
-arrive at subtle conclusions on questions of perplexity.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXV.
-
-
-```Too much of water had'st thou, poor Ophelia.=
-
-```How can that be unless she drowned herself?=
-
-``If the man go to this water... it is, will he, nill he, he goes; mark
-you that.--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|STANDISH Macnamara had ridden to the Dutch cottage, but he found it
-deserted. Colonel Gerald, one of the servants informed him, had early in
-the day driven to Simon's Town, and had taken Miss Gerald with him, but
-they would both return in the evening. Sadly the young man turned away,
-and it is to be feared that his horse had a hard time of it upon The
-Flats. The waste of sand was congenial with his mood, and so was the
-rapid motion.
-
-But while he was riding about in an aimless way, Daireen and her father
-were driving along the lovely road that runs at the base of the low
-hills which form a mighty causeway across the isthmus between Table
-Bay and Simon's Bay. Colonel Gerald had received a message that the
-man-of-war which had been stationed at the chief of the Castaway group
-had called at Simon's Bay; he was anxious to know how the provisional
-government was progressing under the commodore of those waters whose
-green monotony is broken by the gentle cliff's of the Castaways, and
-Daireen had been allowed to accompany her father to the naval station.
-
-The summer had not yet advanced sufficiently far to make tawny the dark
-green coarse herbage of the hillside, and the mass of rich colouring
-lent by the heaths and the prickly-pear hedges made Daireen almost
-jealous for the glories of the slopes of Glenmara. For some distance
-over the road the boughs of Australian oaks in heavy foilage were
-leaning; but when Constantia and its evenly set vineyards were passed
-some distance, Daireen heard the sound of breaking waves, and in an
-instant afterwards the road bore them down to the water's edge at Kalk
-Bay, a little rocky crescent enclosing green sparkling waves. Upon a
-pebbly beach a few fishing-boats were drawn up, and the outlying spaces
-were covered with drying nets, the flavour of which was much preferable
-to that of the drying fish that were near.
-
-On still the road went until it lost itself upon the mighty beaches of
-False Bay. Down to the very brink of the great green waves that burst
-in white foam and clouds of mist upon the sand the team of the wagonette
-was driven, and on along the snowy curve for miles until Simon's Bay
-with its cliffs were reached, and the horses were pulled up at the hotel
-in the single street of Simon's Town at the base of the low ridge of the
-purple hill.
-
-"You will not be lonely, Dolly," said Colonel Gerald as he left the
-hotel after lunch to meet the commander of the man-of-war of which the
-yellow-painted hull and long streaming pennon could be seen from the
-window, opposite the fort at the farthest arm of the bay.
-
-"Lonely?" said the girl. "I hope I may, for I feel I would like a little
-loneliness for a change. I have not been lonely since I was at Glenmara
-listening to Murrough O'Brian playing a dirge. Run away now, papa, and
-you can tell me when we are driving home what the Castaways are really
-like."
-
-"I'll make particular inquiries as to the possibilities of lawn-tennis,"
-said her father, as he went down the steps to the red street.
-
-Daireen saw a sergeant's party of soldiers carry arms to the colonel,
-though he wore no uniform and had not been at this place for years; but
-even less accustomed observers than the men would have known that he was
-a soldier. Tall, straight, and with bright gray eyes somewhat hollower
-than they had been twenty years before, he looked a soldier in every
-point--one who had served well and who had yet many years of service
-before him.
-
-How noble he looked, Daireen thought, as he kissed his hand up to her.
-And then she thought how truly great his life had been. Instead of
-coming home after his time of service had expired, he had continued at
-his post in India, unflinching beneath the glare of the sun overhead
-or from the scorching of the plain underfoot; and here he was now, not
-going home to rest for the remainder of his life, but ready to face
-an arduous duty on behalf of his country. She knew that he had
-been striving through all these years to forget in the work he was
-accomplishing the one grief of his life. She had often seen him gazing
-at her face, and she knew why he had sighed as he turned away.
-
-She had not meant to feel lonely in her father's absence, but her
-thoughts somehow were not of that companionable kind which, coming to
-one when alone, prevent one's feeling lonely.
-
-She picked up the visitors' book and read all the remarks that had been
-written in English for the past years; but even the literature of an
-hotel visitor's book fails at some moments to relieve a reader's mind.
-She turned over the other volumes, one of which was the Commercial
-Code of Signals, and the other a Dutch dictionary. She read one of Mr.
-Harwood's letters in a back number of the _Dominant Trumpeter_, and she
-found that she could easily recall the circumstances under which, in
-various conversations, he had spoken to her every word of that column
-and a quarter. She wondered if special correspondents write out every
-night all the remarks that they have heard during the day. But even the
-attempt to solve this problem did not make her feel brisk.
-
-What was the thought which was hovering about her, and which she was
-trying to avoid by all the means in her power? She could not have
-defined it. The boundaries of that thought were too vague to be outlined
-by words.
-
-She glanced out of the window for a while, and then walked to the door
-and looked over the iron balcony at the head of the steps. Only a few
-people were about the street. Gazing out seawards, she saw a signal
-flying from the peak of the man-of-war, and in a few minutes she saw a
-boat put off and row steadily for the shore near the far-off fort at the
-headland. She knew the boat was to convey her father aboard the vessel.
-She stood there watching it until it had landed and was on its way back
-with her father in the stern.
-
-Then she went along the road until she had left the limits of the town,
-and was standing between the hill and the sea. Very lovely the sea
-looked from where it was breaking about the rocks beneath her, out to
-the horizon which was undefined in the delicate mist that rose from the
-waters.
-
-She stood for a long time tasting of the freshness of the breeze. She
-could see the man-of-war's boat making its way through the waves until
-it at last reached the ship, and then she seemed to have lost the object
-of her thoughts. She turned off the road and got upon the sloping beach
-along which she walked some distance.
-
-She had met no one since she had left the hotel, and the coast of the
-Bay round to the farthest headland seemed deserted; but somehow her
-mood of loneliness had gone from her as she stood at the brink of those
-waters whose music was as the sound of a song of home heard in a strange
-land. What was there to hinder her from thinking that she was standing
-at the uttermost headland of Lough Suangorm, looking out once more upon
-the Atlantic?
-
-She crossed a sandy hollow and got upon a ledge of rocks, up to which
-the sea was beating. Here she seated herself, and sent her eyes out
-seawards to where the war-ship was lying, and then that thought which
-had been near her all the day came upon her. It was not of the Irish
-shore that the glad waters were laving. It was only of some words that
-had been spoken to her. "For a month we will think of each other," were
-the words, and she reflected that now this month had passed. The month
-that she had promised to think of him had gone, but it had not taken
-with it her thoughts of the man who had uttered those words.
-
-She looked out dreamily across the green waves, wondering if he had
-returned. Surely he would not let a day pass without coming to her side
-to ask her if she had thought of him during the month. And what answer
-would she give him? She smiled.
-
-"Love, my love," she said, "when have I ceased to think of you? When
-shall I cease to think of you?"
-
-The tears forced themselves into her eyes with the pure intensity of
-her passion. She sat there dreaming her dreams and thinking her thoughts
-until she seemed only to hear the sound of the waters of the distance;
-the sound of the breaking waves seemed to have passed away. It was this
-sudden consciousness that caused her to awake from her reverie. She
-turned and saw that the waves were breaking on the beach _behind
-her_--the rock where she was sitting was surrounded with water, and
-every plunge of the advancing tide sent a swirl of water through the
-gulf that separated the rocks from the beach.
-
-In an instant she had started to her feet. She saw the death that was
-about her. She looked to the rock where she was standing. The highest,
-ledge contained a barnacle. She knew it was below the line of high
-water, and now not more than a couple of feet of the ledge were
-uncovered. A little cry of horror burst from her, and at the same
-instant the boom of a gun came across the water from the man-of-war;
-she looked and saw that the boat was on its way to the shore again. In
-another half-minute a second report sounded, and she knew that they were
-firing a salute to her father. They were doing this while his daughter
-was gazing at death in the face.
-
-Could they see her from the boat? It seemed miles away, but she took off
-her white jacket and standing up waved it. Not the least sign was made
-from the boat. The report of the guns echoed along the shore mingling
-with her cries. But a sign was given from the water: a wave flung its
-spray clear over the rock. She knew what it meant.
-
-She saw in a moment what chance she had of escape. The water between the
-rock and the shore was not yet very deep. If she could bear the brunt of
-the wild rush of the waves that swept into the hollow she could make her
-way ashore.
-
-In an instant she had stepped down to the water, still holding on by the
-rocks. A moment of stillness came and she rushed through the waves, but
-that sand--it sank beneath her first step, and she fell backwards, then
-came another swirl of eddying waves that plunged through the gulf and
-swept her away with their force, out past the rock she had been on. One
-cry she gave as she felt herself lost.
-
-The boom of the saluting gun doing honour to her father was the sound
-she heard as the cruel foam flashed into her face.
-
-But at her cry there started up from behind a rock far ashore the figure
-of a man. He looked about him in a bewildered way. Then he made a rush
-for the beach, seeing the toy the waves were heaving about. He plunged
-in up to his waist.
-
-"Damn the sand!" he cried, as he felt it yield. He bent himself against
-the current and took advantage of every relapse of the tide to rush
-a few steps onward. He caught the rock and swung himself round to the
-seaward side. Then he waited until the next wave brought that helpless
-form near him. He did not leave his hold of the rock, but before the
-backward sweep came he clutched the girl's dress. Then came a struggle
-between man and wave. The man conquered. He had the girl on one of his
-arms, and had placed her upon the rock for an instant. Then he swung
-himself to the shoreward side, caught her up again, and stumbling,
-and sinking, and battling with the current, he at last gained a sound
-footing.
-
-Daireen was exhausted but not insensible. She sat upon the dry sand
-where the man had placed her, and she drew back the wet hair from her
-face. Then she saw the man stand by the edge of the water and shake his
-fist at it.
-
-"It's not the first time I've licked you singlehanded," he said, "and
-it'll not be the last. Your bullying roar won't wash here." Then he
-seemed to catch sight of something on the top of a wave. "Hang me if
-you'll get even her hat," he said, and once more he plunged in. The
-hat was farther out than the girl had been, and he had more trouble in
-securing it. Daireen saw that his head was covered more than once, and
-she was in great distress. At last, however, he struggled to the beach
-with the hat in his hand. It was very terrible to the girl to see him
-turn, squeezing the water from his hair, and curse the sea and all that
-pertained to it.
-
-Suddenly, however, he looked round and walked up to where she was now
-standing. He handed her the hat as though he had just picked it up from
-the sand. Then he looked at her.
-
-"Miss," he said, "I believe I'm the politest man in this infernal
-colony; if I was rude to you just now I ask your pardon. I'm afraid I
-pulled you about."
-
-"You saved me from drowning," said Daireen. "If you had not come to me I
-should be dead now."
-
-"I didn't do it for your sake," said the man. "I did it because that's
-my enemy"--he pointed to the sea--"and I wouldn't lose a chance of
-having a shy at him. It's my impression he's only second best this time
-again. Never mind. How do you feel, miss?"
-
-"Only a little tired," said Daireen. "I don't think I could walk back to
-the hotel."
-
-"You won't need," said the man. "Here comes a Cape cart and two ancient
-swells in it. If they don't give you a seat, I'll smash the whole
-contrivance."
-
-"Oh!" cried Daireen joyfully; "it is papa--papa himself."
-
-"Not the party with the brass buttons?" said the man. "All right, I'll
-hail them."
-
-Colonel Gerald sprang from the Cape cart in which he was driving with
-the commodore of the naval station.
-
-"Good God, Daireen, what does this mean?" he cried, looking from the
-girl to the man beside her.
-
-But Daireen, regardless of her dripping condition, threw herself into
-his arms, and the stranger turned away whistling. He reached the road
-and shook his head confidentially at the commodore, who was standing
-beside the Cape cart.
-
-"Touching thing to be a father, eh, Admiral?" he said.
-
-"Stop, sir," said the commodore. "You must wait till this is explained."
-
-"Must I?" said the man. "Who is there here that will keep me?"
-
-"What can I say to you, sir?" cried Colonel Gerald, coming up and
-holding out his hand to the stranger. "I have no words to thank you."
-
-"Well, as to that, General," said the man, "it seems to me the less
-that's said the better. Take my advice and get the lady something to
-drink--anything that teetotallers won't allow is safe to be wholesome."
-
-"Come to my house," said the commodore. "Miss Gerald will find
-everything there."
-
-"You bet you'll find something in the spirituous way at the admiral's
-quarters, miss," remarked the stranger, as Daireen was helped into the
-vehicle. "No, thank you, General, I'll walk to the hotel where I put
-up."
-
-"Pray let me call upon you before I leave," said Colonel Gerald.
-
-"Delighted to see you, General; if you come within the next two hours,
-I'll slip the tinsel off a bottle of Moët with you. Now, don't wait
-here. If you had got a pearly stream of salt water running down your
-spine you wouldn't wait; would they, miss? Aw revaw."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVI.
-
-
-``I shall, first asking your pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of
-my sudden and more strange return.=
-
-```O limèd soul, that, struggling to be free,
-
-```Art more engaged.=
-
-``Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|QUITE three hours had passed before Colonel Gerald was able to return
-to the hotel. The stranger was sitting in the coffee-room with a tumbler
-and a square bottle of cognac in front of him as the colonel entered.
-
-"Ah, General," cried the stranger, "you are come. I was sorry I said
-two hours, you know, because, firstly, I might have known that at the
-admiral's quarters the young lady would get as many doses as would make
-her fancy something was the matter with her; and, secondly, because I
-didn't think that they would take three hours to dry a suit of tweed
-like this. You see it, General; this blooming suit is a proof of the low
-state of morality that exists in this colony. The man I bought it from
-took an oath that it wouldn't shrink, and yet, just look at it. It's a
-wicked world this we live in, General. I went to bed while the suit
-was being dried, and I believe they kept the fire low so that they may
-charge me with the bed. And how is the young lady?"
-
-"I am happy to say that she has quite recovered from the effects of
-her exhaustion and her wetting," said Colonel Gerald. "Had you not been
-near, and had you not had that brave heart you showed, my daughter
-would have been lost. But I need not say anything to you--you know how I
-feel."
-
-"We may take it for granted," said the man.
-
-"Nothing that either of us could say would make it plainer, at any rate.
-You don't live in this city, General?"
-
-"No, I live near Cape Town, where I am now returning with my daughter,"
-said Colonel Gerald.
-
-"That's queer," said the man. "Here am I too not living here and just
-waiting to get the post-cart to bring me to Cape Town."
-
-"I need scarcely say that I should be delighted if you would accept a
-seat with me," remarked the colonel.
-
-"Don't say that if there's not a seat to spare, General."
-
-"But, my dear sir, we have two seats to spare. Can I tell my man to put
-your portmanteau in?"
-
-"Yes, if he can find it," laughed the stranger. "Fact is, General, I
-haven't any property here except this tweed suit two sizes too small for
-me now. But these trousers have got pockets, and the pockets hold a good
-many sovereigns without bursting. I mean to set up a portmanteau in Cape
-Town. Yes, I'll take a seat with you so far."
-
-The stranger was scarcely the sort of man Colonel Gerald would have
-chosen to accompany him under ordinary circumstances, but now he felt
-towards the rough man who had saved the life of his daughter as he would
-towards a brother.
-
-The wagonette drove round to the commodore's house for Daireen, and the
-stranger expressed very frankly the happiness he felt at finding her
-nothing the worse for her accident.
-
-And indeed she did not seem to have suffered greatly; she was a
-little paler, and the commodore's people insisted on wrapping her up
-elaborately.
-
-"It was so very foolish of me," she said to the stranger, when they
-had passed out of Simon's Town and were going rapidly along the road to
-Wynberg. "It was so very foolish indeed to sit down upon that rock and
-forget all about the tide. I must have been there an hour."
-
-"Ah, miss," said the man, "I'll take my oath it wasn't of your pa you
-were thinking all that time. Ah, these young fellows have a lot to
-answer for."
-
-This was not very subtle humour, Colonel Gerald felt; he found himself
-wishing that his daughter had owed her life to a more refined man; but
-on the whole he was just as glad that a man of sensitiveness had not
-been in the place of this coarse stranger upon that beach a few hours
-before.
-
-"I don't think I am wrong in believing that you have travelled a good
-deal," said Colonel Gerald, in some anxiety lest the stranger might
-pursue his course of humorous banter.
-
-"Travelled?" said the stranger. "Perhaps I have. Yes, sir, I have
-travelled, not excursionised. I've knocked about God's footstool since
-I was a boy, and yet it seems to me that I'm only beginning my travels.
-I've been----"
-
-And the stranger continued telling of where he had been until the oak
-avenue at Mowbray was reached. He talked very freshly and frankly of
-every place both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The account
-of his travels was very interesting, though perhaps to the colonel's
-servant it was the most entertaining.
-
-"I have taken it for granted that you have no engagement in Cape Town,"
-said Colonel Gerald as he turned the horses down the avenue. "We shall
-be dining in a short time, and I hope you will join us."
-
-"I don't want to intrude, General," said the man. "But I allow that
-I could dine heartily without going much farther. As for having an
-appointment in Cape Town--I don't know a single soul in the colony--not
-a soul, sir--unless--why, hang it all, who's that standing on the walk
-in front of us?--I'm a liar, General; I do know one man in the colony;
-there he stands, for if that isn't Oswin Markham I'll eat him with
-relish."
-
-"It is indeed Markham," said Colonel Gerald. "And you know him?"
-
-"Know him?" the stranger laughed. "Know him?" Then as the wagonette
-pulled up beside where Markham was standing in front of the house, the
-stranger leapt down, saying, as he clapped Oswin on the shoulder, "The
-General asks me if I know you, old boy; answer for me, will you?"
-
-But Oswin Markham was staring blankly from the man to Daireen and her
-father.
-
-"You told me you were going to New York," he said at last.
-
-"And so I was when you packed me aboard the _Virginia_ brig so neatly
-at Natal, but the _Virginia_ brig put into Simon's Bay and cut her cable
-one night, leaving me ashore. It's Providence, Oswin--Providence."
-
-Oswin had allowed his hand to be taken by the man, who was the same that
-had spent the night with him in the hotel at Pietermaritzburg. Then he
-turned as if from a fit of abstraction, to Daireen and the colonel.
-
-"I beg your pardon a thousand times," he said. "But this meeting with
-Mr. Despard has quite startled me."
-
-"Mr. Despard," said the colonel, "I must ever look on as one of my best
-friends, though we met to-day for the first time. I owe him a debt that
-I can never repay--my daughter's life."
-
-Oswin turned and grasped the hand of the man whom he had called Mr.
-Despard, before they entered the house together.
-
-Daireen went in just before Markham; they had not yet exchanged a
-sentence, but when her father and Despard had entered one of the rooms,
-she turned, saying:
-
-"A month--a month yesterday."
-
-"More," he answered; "it must be more."
-
-The girl laughed low as she went on to her room. But when she found
-herself apart from every one, she did not laugh. She had her own
-preservation from death to reflect upon, but it occupied her mind less
-than the thought that came to her shaping itself into the words, "He has
-returned."
-
-The man of whom she was thinking was standing pale and silent in a room
-where much conversation was floating, for Mr. Harwood had driven out
-with Markham from Cape Town, and he had a good deal to say on the Zulu
-question, which was beginning to be no question. The Macnamara had also
-come to pass the evening with Colonel Gerald, and he was not silent.
-Oswin watched Despard and the hereditary monarch speaking together, and
-he saw them shake hands. Harwood was in close conversation with Colonel
-Gerald, but he was not so utterly absorbed in his subject but that he
-could notice how Markham's eyes were fixed upon the stranger. The terms
-of a new problem were suggesting themselves to Mr. Harwood.
-
-Then Daireen entered the room, and greeted Mr. Harwood courteously--much
-too courteously for his heart's desire. He did not feel so happy as he
-should have done, when she laughed pleasantly and reminded him of her
-prophecy as to his safe return. He felt as he had done on that morning
-when he had said good-bye to her: his time had not yet come. But what
-was delaying that hour he yearned for? She was now standing beside
-Markham, looking up to his face as she spoke to him. She was not smiling
-at him. What could these things mean? Harwood asked himself--Lottie
-Vincent's spiteful remark with reference to Daireen at the lunch that
-had taken place on the hillside in his absence--Oswin's remark about not
-being strong enough to leave the associations of Cape Town--this quiet
-meeting without smiles or any of the conventionalities of ordinary
-acquaintance--what did all these mean? Mr. Harwood felt that he had at
-last got before him the terms of a question the working out of which was
-more interesting to him than any other that could be propounded. And
-he knew also that this man Despard was an important auxiliary to its
-satisfactory solution.
-
-"Dove of Glenmara, let me look upon your sweet face again, and say that
-you are not hurt," cried The Macnamara, taking the girl by both her
-hands and looking into her face. "Thank God you are left to be the pride
-of the old country. We are not here to weep over this new sorrow. What
-would life be worth to us if anything had happened to the pulse of our
-hearts? Glenmara would be desolate and Slieve Docas would sit in ashes."
-
-The Macnamara pressed his lips to the girl's forehead as a condescending
-monarch embraces a favoured subject.
-
-"Bravo, King! you'd make a fortune with that sort of sentiment on the
-boards; you would, by heavens!" said Mr. Despard with an unmodulated
-laugh.
-
-The Macnamara seemed to take this testimony as a compliment, for he
-smiled, though the remark did not appear to strike any one else as being
-imbued with humour. Harwood looked at the man curiously; but Markham was
-gazing in another direction without any expression upon his face.
-
-In the course of the evening the Bishop of the Calapash Islands dropped
-in. His lordship had taken a house in the neighbourhood for so long as
-he would be remaining in the colony; and since he had had that interview
-with Mrs. Crawford, his visits to his old friend Colonel Gerald were
-numerous and unconventional. He, too, smiled upon Dairecn in his very
-pleasantest manner, and after hearing from the colonel--who felt
-perhaps that some little explanation of the stranger's presence might
-be necessary--of Daireen's accident, the bishop spoke a few words to Mr.
-Despard and shook hands with him--an honour which Mr. Despard sustained
-without emotion.
-
-In spite of these civilities, however, this evening was unlike any that
-the colonel's friends had spent at the cottage. The bishop only remained
-for about an hour, and Harwood and Markham soon afterwards took their
-departure.
-
-"I'll take a seat with you, Oswin, my boy," said Despard. "We'll be at
-the same hotel in Cape Town, and we may as well all go together."
-
-And they did all go together.
-
-"Fine fellow, the colonel, isn't he?" remarked Despard, before they had
-got well out of the avenue. "I called him general on chance when I
-saw him for the first time to-day--you're never astray in beginning at
-general and working your way down, with these military nobs. And the
-bishop is a fine old boy too--rather too much palm-oil and glycerine
-about him, though--too smooth and shiny for my taste. I expect he does
-a handsome trade amongst the Salamanders. A smart bishop could make a
-fortune there, I know. And then the king--the Irish king as he calls
-himself--well, maybe he's the best of the lot."
-
-There did not seem to be anything in Mr. Despard's opening speech
-that required an answer. There was a considerable pause before Harwood
-remarked quietly: "By the way, Mr. Despard, I think I saw you some time
-ago. I have a good recollection for faces."
-
-"Did you?" said Despard. "Where was it? At 'Frisco or Fiji? South
-Carolina or South Australia?"
-
-"I am not recalling the possibilities of such faraway memories," said
-Harwood. "But if I don't mistake, you were the person in the audience at
-Pietermaritzburg who made some remark complimentary to Markham."
-
-The man laughed. "You are right, mister. I only wonder I didn't shout
-out something before, for I never was so taken aback as when I saw him
-come out as that Prince. A shabby trick it was you played on me the next
-morning, Oswin--I say it was infernally shabby. You know what he did,
-mister: when I had got to the outside of more than one bottle of Moët,
-and so wasn't very clear-headed, he packed me into one of the carts,
-drove me to Durban before daylight, and sent me aboard the _Virginia_
-brig that I had meant to leave. That wasn't like friendship, was it?"
-
-But upon this delicate question Mr. Harwood did not think it prudent to
-deliver an opinion. Markham himself was mute, yet this did not seem to
-have a depressing effect upon Mr. Despard. He gave a _résumé_ of
-the most important events in the voyage of the _Virginia_ brig, and
-described very graphically how he had unfortunately become insensible
-to the fact that the vessel was leaving Simon's Bay on the previous
-morning; so that when he awoke, the _Virginia_ brig was on her way to
-New York city, while he was on a sofa in the hotel surrounded by empty
-bottles.
-
-When Markham was alone with this man in a room at the hotel at Cape
-Town, Despard became even more talkative.
-
-"By heavens, Oswin," he said, "you have changed your company a bit since
-you were amongst us; generals, bishops, and kings--kings, by Jingo--seem
-to be your chums here. Well, don't you think that I don't believe you to
-be right. You were never of our sort in Australia--we all felt you to be
-above us, and treated you so--making a pigeon of you now and again, but
-never looking on ourselves as your equal. By heavens, I think now that I
-have got in with these people and seem to get on so well with them, I'll
-turn over a new leaf."
-
-"Do you mean to stay here longer than this week?" asked Oswin.
-
-"This week? I'll not leave for another month--another six months, maybe.
-I've money, my boy, and--suppose we have something to drink--something
-that will sparkle?"
-
-"I don't mean to drink anything," Oswin replied.
-
-"You must have something," Despard insisted. "You must admit that though
-the colonel is a glorious old boy, he didn't do the hospitable in the
-liquid way. But I'll keep in with the lot of them. I'll go out to see
-the colonel and his pretty daughter now and again. Ah, by George, that
-pretty daughter seems to have played the mischief with some of the young
-fellows about here. 'Sir,' says the king of Ireland to me, 'I fale more
-than I can till ye: the swate girl ye saved is to be me sonn's broide.'
-This looked well enough for the king, and we got very great friends, as
-you saw. But then the bishop comes up to me and, says he, 'Sir, allow me
-to shake you by the hand. You do not know how I feel towards that young
-lady who owes her life to your bravery.' I looked at him seriously:
-'Bishop,' said I, 'I can't encourage this sort of thing. You might be
-her father.' Well, my boy, you never saw anything so flustered as that
-bishop became; it was more than a minute before he could tell me that it
-was his son who had the tender heart about the girl. That bishop didn't
-ask me to dine with him; though the king did, and I'm going out to him
-to-morrow evening."
-
-"You are going to him?" said Markham.
-
-"To be sure I am. He agreed with me about the colonel's hospitality in
-the drink way. 'You'll find it different in my house,' said the king;
-and I think you know, Oswin, that the king and me have one point in
-common."
-
-"Good-night," said Markham, going to the door. "No, I told you I did not
-mean to drink anything."
-
-He left Mr. Despard on the sofa smoking the first of a box of cigars he
-had just ordered.
-
-"He's changed--that boy is," said Despard. "He wouldn't have gone out in
-that fashion six months ago. But what the deuce has changed him?
-that's what I'd like to know. He wants to get me away from here--that's
-plain--plain? by George, it's ugly. But here I am settled for a few
-months at least if--hang that waiter, is he never going to bring me that
-bottle of old Irish?"
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVII.
-
-
-Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play
-upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart
-of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my
-compass....'S blood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a
-pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you
-cannot play upon me.--_Hamlet_.
-
-
-|OSWIN Markham sat in his own room in the hotel. The window was open,
-and through it from the street below came the usual sounds of Cape
-Town--terrible Dutch mingling with Malay and dashed with Kafir. It was
-not the intensity of a desire to listen to this polyglot mixture that
-caused Markham to go upon the balcony and stand looking out to the
-night.
-
-He reflected upon what had passed since he had been in this place a
-month before. He had gone up to Natal, and in company of Harwood he had
-had a brief hunting expedition. He had followed the spoor of the gemsbok
-over veldt and through kloof, sleeping in the house of the hospitable
-boers when chance offered; but all the time he had been possessed of
-one supreme thought--one supreme hope that made his life seem a joyous
-thing--he had looked forward to this day--the day when he would have
-returned, when he would again be able to look into the face that moved
-like a phantom before him wherever he went. And he had returned--for
-this--this looking, not into her face, but into the street below him,
-while he thought if it would not be better for him to step out beyond
-the balcony--out into the blank that would follow his casting of himself
-down.
-
-He came to the conclusion that it would not be better to step beyond
-the balcony. A thought seemed to strike him as he stood out there. He
-returned to his chamber and threw himself on his bed, but he did not
-remain passive for long; once more he stepped into the air, and now he
-had need to wipe his forehead with his handkerchief.
-
-It was an hour afterwards that he undressed himself; but the bugle at
-the barracks had sounded a good many times before he fell asleep.
-
-Mr. Harwood, too, had an hour of reflection when he went to his room;
-but his thoughts were hardly of the excitable type of Markham's; they
-had, however, a definite result, which caused him to seek out Mr.
-Despard in the morning.
-
-Mr. Despard had just finished a light and salutary breakfast consisting
-of a glass of French brandy in a bottle of soda-water, and he was
-smoking another sample of that box of cigars on the balcony.
-
-"Good-morning to you, mister," he said, nodding as Harwood came, as if
-by chance, beside him.
-
-"Ah, how do you do?" said Harwood. "Enjoying your morning smoke, I see.
-Well, I hope you are nothing the worse for your plunge yesterday."
-
-"No, sir, nothing; I only hope that Missy out there will be as sound. I
-don't think they insisted on her drinking enough afterwards."
-
-"Ah, perhaps not. Your friend Markham has not come down yet, they tell
-me."
-
-"He was never given to running ties with the sun," said Mr. Despard.
-
-"He told me you were a particular friend of his in Australia?" continued
-Mr. Harwood.
-
-"Yes, men very soon get to be friends out there; but Oswin and myself
-were closer than brothers in every row and every lark."
-
-"Of which you had, no doubt, a good many?
-
-"A good few, yes; a few that wouldn't do to be printed specially as
-prizes for young ladies' boarding-schools--not but what the young ladies
-would read them if they got the chance."
-
-"Few fellows would care to write their autobiographies and go into the
-details of their life," said Harwood. "I suppose you got into trouble
-now and again?"
-
-"Trouble? Well, yes, when the money ran short, and there was no balance
-at the bank; that's real trouble, let me tell you."
-
-"It certainly is; but I mean, did you not sometimes need the friendly
-offices of a lawyer after a wild few days?"
-
-"Sir," said Despard, throwing away the end of his cigar, "if your idea
-of a wild few days is housebreaking or manslaughter, it wasn't ours, I
-can tell you. No, my boy, we never took to bushranging; and though
-I've had my turn with Derringer's small cannons when I was at Chokeneck
-Gulch, it was only because it was the custom of the country. No, sir;
-Oswin, though he seems to have turned against me here, will still have
-my good word, for I swear to you he never did anything that made the
-place too hot for him, though I don't suppose that if he was in a
-competitive examination for a bishopric the true account of his life in
-Melbourne would help him greatly."
-
-"There are none of us here who mean to be bishops," laughed Harwood.
-"But I understood from a few words Markham let fall that--well, never
-mind, he is a right good fellow, as I found when we went up country
-together a couple of weeks ago. By the way, do you mean to remain here
-long, Mr. Despard?"
-
-"Life is short, mister, and I've learned never to make arrangements very
-far in advance. I've about eighty sovereigns with me, and I'll stay here
-till they're spent."
-
-"Then your stay will be proportionate to your spending powers."
-
-"In an inverse ratio, as they used to say at school," said Despard.
-
-When Mr. Harwood went into the room he reflected that on the whole
-he had not gained much information from Mr. Despard; and Mr. Despard
-reflected that on the whole Mr. Harwood had not got much information by
-his system of leading questions.
-
-About half an hour afterwards Markham came out upon the balcony, and
-gave a little unaccountable start on seeing its sole occupant.
-
-"Hallo, my boy! have you turned up at last?" cried Despard. "Our good
-old Calapash friend will tell you that unless you get up with the lark
-you'll never do anything in the world. You should have been here a short
-time ago to witness the hydraulic experiments."
-
-"The what?" said Markham.
-
-"Hydraulic experiments. The patent pump of the _Dominant Trumpeter_ was
-being tested upon me. Experiments failed, not through any incapacity
-of the pump, but through the contents of the reservoir worked upon not
-running free enough in the right direction."
-
-"Was Mr. Harwood here?"
-
-"He was, my boy. And he wanted to know all about how we lived in
-Melbourne."
-
-"And you told him----"
-
-"To get up a little earlier in the morning when he wants to try his
-pumping apparatus. But what made you give that start? Don't you know
-that all I could tell would be some of our old larks, and he wouldn't
-have thought anything the worse of you on account of them? Hang it
-all, you don't mean to say you're going into holy orders, that you mind
-having any of the old times brought back? If you do, I'm afraid that
-it will be awkward for you if I talk in my ordinary way. I won't bind
-myself not to tell as many of our larks as chime in with the general
-conversation. I only object on principle to be pumped."
-
-"Talk away," said Oswin spasmodically. "Tell of all our larks. How could
-I be affected by anything you may tell of them?"
-
-"Bravo! That's what I say. Larks are larks. There was no manslaughter
-nor murder. No, there was no murder."
-
-"No, there was no murder," said Markham.
-
-The other burst into a laugh that startled a Malay in the street below.
-
-"By heavens, from the way you said that one would fancy there had been a
-murder," he cried.
-
-Then there was a long pause, which was broken by Markham.
-
-"You still intend to go out to dine with that man you met yesterday?" he
-said.
-
-"Don't call him a man, Oswin; you wouldn't call a bishop a man, and why
-call a king one. Yes, I have ordered a horse that is said to know the
-way across those Flats without a pocket compass."
-
-"Where did you say the house was?"
-
-"It's near a place called Rondebosch. I remember the locality well,
-though it's ten years since I was there. The shortest way back is
-through a pine-wood at the far end of The Flats--you know that place, of
-course."
-
-"I know The Flats. And you mean to come through the pine-wood?"
-
-"I do mean it. It's a nasty place to ride through, but the horse always
-goes right in a case like that, and I'll give him his head."
-
-"Take care that you have your own at that time," said Markham. "The
-house of the Irishman is not like Colonel Gerald's."
-
-"I hope not, for a more thirsty evening I never spent than at your
-friend's cottage. The good society hardly made up for the want of drink.
-It put me in mind of the story of the man that found the pearls when he
-was starving in the desert. What are bishops and kings to a fellow if he
-is thirsty?"
-
-"You will leave the house to return here between eleven and twelve, I
-suppose?" said Oswin.
-
-"Well, I should say that about eleven will see me on my way."
-
-"And you will go through the pine-wood?"
-
-"I will, my boy, and across The Flats until I pass the little
-river--it's there still, I suppose. And now suppose I buy you a drink?"
-
-But Oswin Markham declined to be the object of such a purchase. He went
-back to his own room, and threw himself on his bed, where he remained
-for more than an hour. Then he rose and wiped his forehead.
-
-He pulled down some books that he had bought, and tried to read bits of
-one or two. He sat diligently down as if he meant to go through a day's
-reading, but he did not appear to be in the mood for applying himself to
-anything. He threw the books aside and turned over some newspapers; but
-these did not seem to engross him any more than the books had done. He
-lay back in his chair, and after a while his restlessness subsided: he
-had fallen asleep.
-
-It was the afternoon before he awoke with a sudden start. He heard the
-sound of voices in the street below his window. He went forward, and,
-looking out, was just in time to see Harry Despard mounting his horse at
-the hotel door.
-
-"I will be back about midnight," he said to the porter of the hotel, and
-then he trotted off.
-
-Markham heard the sound of the horse's hoofs die away on the street, and
-he repeated the man's words: "About midnight."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXVIII.
-
-
-```To desperation turn my trust and hope.=
-
-````What if this cursed hand
-
-```Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
-
-```Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
-
-```To wash it white as snow?=
-
-````I'll have prepared him
-
-```A chalice for the nonce whereon but sipping
-
-`````... he...
-
-````Chaunted snatches of old tunes,
-
-```As one incapable.=
-
-```The drink--the drink--... the foul practice
-
-```Hath turned itself on me; lo, here I lie...
-
-```I can no more: the King--the King's to blame.--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|OSWIN Markham dined at the hotel late in the evening, and when he was
-in the act Harwood came into the room dressed for a dinner-party at
-Greenpoint to which he had been invited.
-
-"Your friend Mr. Despard is not here?" said Harwood, looking around
-the room. "I wanted to see him for a moment to give him a few words of
-advice that may be useful to him. I wish to goodness you would speak to
-him, Markham; he has been swaggering about in a senseless way, talking
-of having his pockets full of sovereigns, and in the hearing of every
-stranger that comes into the hotel. In the bar a few hours ago he
-repeated his boast to the Malay who brought him his horse. Now, for
-Heaven's sake, tell him that unless he wishes particularly to have a
-bullet in his head or a khris in his body some of these nights, he had
-better hold his tongue about his wealth--that is what I meant to say to
-him."
-
-"And you are right," cried Oswin, starting up suddenly. "He has been
-talking in the hearing of men who would do anything for the sake of a
-few sovereigns. What more likely than that some of them should follow
-him and knock him down? That will be his end, Harwood."
-
-"It need not be," replied Harwood. "If you caution him, he will most
-likely regard what you say to him."
-
-"I will caution him--if I see him again," said Markham; then Harwood
-left the room, and Markham sat down again, but he did not continue
-his dinner. He sat there staring at his plate. "What more likely?" he
-muttered. "What more likely than that he should be followed and murdered
-by some of these men? If his body should be found with his pockets
-empty, no one could doubt it."
-
-He sat there for a considerable time--until the streets had become
-dark; then he rose and went up to his own room for a while, and finally
-he put on his hat and left the hotel.
-
-He looked at his watch as he walked to the railway station, and saw that
-he would be just in time to catch a train leaving for Wynberg. He took
-a ticket for the station on the Cape Town side of Mowbray, where he got
-out.
-
-He walked from the station to the road and again looked at his watch:
-it was not yet nine o'clock; and then he strolled aside upon a little
-foot-track that led up the lower slopes of the Peak above Mowbray. The
-night was silent and moonless. Upon the road only at intervals came the
-rumbling of bullock wagons and the shouts of the Kafir drivers. The hill
-above him was sombre and untouched by any glance of light, and no breeze
-stirred up the scents of the heath. He walked on in the silence until he
-had come to the ravine of silver firs. He passed along the track at the
-edge and was soon at the spot where he had sat at the feet of Daireen a
-month before. He threw himself down on the short coarse grass just as
-he had done then, and every moment of the hour they had passed together
-came back to him. Every word that had been spoken, every thought that
-had expressed itself upon that lovely face which the delicate sunset
-light had touched--all returned to him.
-
-What had he said to her? That the past life he had lived was blotted out
-from his mind? Yes, he had tried to make himself believe that; but now
-how Fate had mocked him! He had been bitterly forced to acknowledge
-that the past was a part of the present. His week so full of bitterest
-suffering had not formed a dividing line between the two lives he
-fancied might be his.
-
-"Is this the justice of God?" he cried out now to the stars, clasping
-his hands in agony above his head. "It is unjust. My life would have
-been pure and good now, if I had been granted my right of forgetfulness.
-But I have been made the plaything of God." He stood with his hands
-clasped on his head for long. Then he gave a laugh. "Bah!" he said; "man
-is master of his fate. I shall do myself the justice that God has denied
-me."
-
-He came down from that solemn mount, and crossed he road at a nearer
-point than the Mowbray avenue.
-
-He soon found himself by the brink of that little river which flowed
-past Rondebosch and Mowbray. He got beneath the trees that bordered its
-banks, and stood for a long time in the dead silence of the night. The
-mighty dog-lilies were like pictures beneath him; and only now and again
-came some of those mysterious sounds of night--the rustling of certain
-leaves when all the remainder were motionless, the winnowing of the
-wings of some night creature whose form remained invisible, the sudden
-stirring of ripples upon the river without a cause being apparent--the
-man standing there heard all, and all appeared mysterious to him. He
-wondered how he could have so often been by night in places like this,
-without noticing how mysterious the silence was--how mysterious the
-strange sounds.
-
-He walked along by the bank of the slow river, until he was just
-opposite Mowbray. A little bridge with rustic rails was, he knew, at
-hand, by which he would cross the stream--for he must cross it. But
-before he had reached it, he heard a sound. He paused. Could it be
-possible that it was the sound of a horse's hoofs? There he waited until
-something white passed from under the trees and reached the bridge,
-standing between him and the other side of the river--something that
-barred his way. He leant against the tree nearest to him, for he seemed
-to be falling to the ground, and then through the stillness of the night
-the voice of Daireen came singing a snatch of song--his song. She was on
-the little bridge and leaning upon the rail. In a few moments she stood
-upright, and listlessly walked under the trees where he was standing,
-though she could not see him.
-
-"Daireen," he said gently, so that she might not be startled; and she
-was not startled, she only walked backwards a few steps until she was
-again at the bridge.
-
-"Did any one speak?" she said almost in a whisper. And then he stood
-before her while she laughed with happiness.
-
-"Why do you stand there?" he said in a tone of wonder. "What was it sent
-you to stand there between me and the other side of that river?"
-
-"I said to papa that I would wait for him here. He went to see Major
-Crawford part of the way to the house where the Crawfords are staying;
-but what can be keeping him from returning I don't know. I promised not
-to go farther than the avenue, and I have just been here a minute."
-
-He looked at her standing there before him. "Oh God! oh God!" he said,
-as he reflected upon what his own thoughts had been a moment before.
-"Daireen, you are an angel of God--that angel which stood between the
-living and the dead. Stay near me. Oh, child! what do I not owe to you?
-my life--the peace of my soul for ever and ever. And yet--must we speak
-no word of love together, Daireen?"
-
-"Not one--here," she said. "Not one--only--ah, my love, my love, why
-should we speak of it? It is all my life--I breathe it--I think it--it
-is myself."
-
-He looked at her and laughed. "This moment is ours," he said with
-tremulous passion. "God cannot pluck it from us. It is an immortal
-moment, if our souls are immortal. Child, can God take you away from
-me before I have kissed you on the mouth?" He held her face between his
-hands and kissed her. "Darling, I have taken your white soul into mine,"
-he said.
-
-Then they stood apart on that bridge.
-
-"And now," she said, "you must never frighten me with your strange words
-again. I do not know what you mean sometimes, but then that is because
-I don't know very much. I feel that you are good and true, and I have
-trusted you."
-
-"I will be true to you," he said gently. "I will die loving you better
-than any hope man has of heaven. Daireen, never dream, whatever may
-happen, that I shall not love you while my soul lives."
-
-"I will believe you," she said; and then voices were heard coming down
-the lane of aloes at the other side of the river--voices and the sound
-of a horse's hoofs. Colonel Gerald and Major Crawford were coming along
-leading a horse, across whose saddle lay a black mass. Oswin Markham
-gave a start. Then Daireen's father hastened forward to where she was
-standing.
-
-"Child," he said quickly, "go back--go back to the house. I will come to
-you in a few minutes."
-
-"What is the matter, papa?" she asked. "No one is hurt?--Major Crawford
-is not hurt?"
-
-"No, no, he is here; but go, Daireen--go at once."
-
-She turned and went up the avenue without a word. But she saw that Oswin
-was not looking at her--that he was grasping the rail of the bridge
-while he gazed to where the horse with its burden stood a few yards away
-among the aloes.
-
-"I am glad you chance to be here, Markham," said Colonel Gerald
-hurriedly. "Something has happened--that man Despard----"
-
-"Not dead--not murdered!" gasped Oswin, clutching the rail with both
-hands.
-
-"Murdered? no; how could he be murdered? he must have fallen from his
-horse among the trees."
-
-"And he is dead--he is dead?"
-
-"Calm yourself, Markham," said the colonel; "he is not dead."
-
-"Not in that sense, my boy," laughed Major Crawford. "By gad, if we
-could leave the brute up to the neck in the river here for a few hours I
-fancy he would be treated properly. Hold him steady, Markham."
-
-Oswin put his hand mechanically to the feet of the man who was lying
-helplessly across the saddle.
-
-"Not dead, not dead," he whispered.
-
-"Only dead drunk, unless his skull is fractured, my boy," laughed the
-major. "We'll take him to the stables, of course, George?"
-
-"No, no, to the house," said Colonel Gerald.
-
-"Run on and get the key of the stables, George," said the major
-authoritatively. "Don't you suppose in any way that your house is to be
-turned into an hospital for dipsomaniacs. Think of the child."
-
-Colonel Gerald made a little pause, and then hastened forward to awaken
-the groom to get the key of the stables, which were some distance from
-the cottage.
-
-"By gad, Markham, I'd like to spill the brute into that pond," whispered
-the major to Oswin, as they waited for the colonel's return.
-
-"How did you find him? Did you see any accident?" asked Oswin.
-
-"We met the horse trotting quietly along the avenue without a rider,
-and when we went on among the trees we found the fellow lying helpless.
-George said he was killed, but I knew better. Irish whisky, my boy, was
-what brought him down, and you will find that I am right."
-
-They let the man slide from the saddle upon a heap of straw when the
-stable door was opened by the half-dressed groom.
-
-"Not dead, Jack?" said Colonel Gerald as a lantern was held to the man's
-face. Only the major was looking at the man; Markham could not trust
-himself even to glance towards him.
-
-"Dead?" said the major. "Why, since we have laid him down I have heard
-him frame three distinct oaths. Have you a bucket of water handy, my
-good man? No, it needn't be particularly clean. Ah, that will do. Now,
-if you don't hear a choice selection of colonial blasphemy, he's dead
-and, by gad, sir, so am I."
-
-The major's extensive experience of the treatment of colonial complaints
-had, as the result proved, led him to form a correct if somewhat hasty
-diagnosis of the present case. Not more than a gallon of the water had
-been thrown upon the man before he recovered sufficient consciousness
-to allow of his expressing himself with freedom on the subject of his
-treatment.
-
-"I told you so," chuckled the major. "Fill the bucket again, my man."
-
-Colonel Gerald could only laugh now that his fears had been dispelled.
-He hastened to the house to tell Daireen that there was no cause for
-alarm.
-
-By the time the second bucketful had been applied, in pursuance of the
-major's artless system of resuscitation, Despard was sitting up talking
-of the oppressions under which a certain nation was groaning. He was
-sympathetic and humorous in turn; weeping after particular broken
-sentences, and chuckling with laughter after other parts of his speech.
-
-"The Irish eloquence and the Irish whisky have run neck and neck for the
-fellow's soul," said the major. "If we hadn't picked him up he would
-be in a different state now. Are you going back to Cape Town to-night,
-Markham?"
-
-"I am," said Oswin.
-
-"That's lucky. You mustn't let George have his way in this matter. This
-brute would stay in the cottage up there for a month."
-
-"He must not do that," cried Markham eagerly.
-
-"No, my boy; so you will drive with him in the Cape cart to the hotel.
-He will give you no trouble if you lay him across the floor and keep
-your feet well down upon his chest. Put one of the horses in, my man,"
-continued the major, turning to the groom. "You will drive in with Mr.
-Markham, and bring the cart back."
-
-Before Colonel Gerald had returned from the house a horse was harnessed
-to the Cape cart, Despard had been lifted up and placed in an easy
-attitude against one of the seats. And only a feeble protest was offered
-by the colonel.
-
-"My dear Markham," he said, "it was very lucky you were passing where my
-daughter saw you. You know this man Despard--how could I have him in my
-house?"
-
-"In your house!" cried Markham. "Thank God I was here to prevent that."
-
-The Cape cart was already upon the avenue and the lamps were lighted.
-But a little qualm seemed to come to the colonel.
-
-"Are you sure he is not injured--that he has quite recovered from any
-possible effects?" he said.
-
-Then came the husky voice of the man.
-
-"Go'night, king, go'night. I'm alright--horse know's way. We're
-tram'led on, king--'pressed people--but wormil turn--wormil turn--never
-mind--Go save Ireland--green flag litters o'er us--tread th' land that
-bore us--go'night."
-
-The cart was in motion before the man's words had ceased.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XXXIX.
-
-
-````Look you lay home to him:
-
-```Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with.=
-
-```What to ourselves in passion we propose,
-
-```The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.=
-
-````I must leave thee, love...
-
-```And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
-
-```Honour'd, belov'd, and haply one as kind
-
-```For husband shalt thou--=
-
-```Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife.--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|OSWIN Markham lay awake nearly all that night after he had reached the
-hotel. His thoughts were not of that even nature whose proper sequence
-is sleep. He thought of all that had passed since he had left the
-room he was lying in now. What had been on his mind on leaving this
-room--what had his determination been?
-
-"For her," he said; "for her. It would have been for her. God keep
-me--God pity me!"
-
-The morning came with the sound of marching soldiers in the street
-below; with the cry of bullock-wagon-drivers and the rattle of the rude
-carts; with the morning and the sounds of life--the breaking of the
-deadly silence of the night--sleep came to the man.
-
-It was almost midday before he awoke, and for some time after opening
-his eyes he was powerless to recollect anything that had happened during
-the night; his awakening now was as his return to consciousness on board
-the _Cardwell Castle_,--a great blank seemed to have taken place in his
-life--the time of unconsciousness was a gulf that all his efforts of
-memory could not at first bridge.
-
-He looked around the room, and his first consciousness was the
-recollection of what his thoughts of the previous evening had been when
-he had slept in the chair before the window and had awakened to see
-Despard ride away. He failed at once to remember anything of the
-interval of night; only with that one recollection burning on his brain
-he looked at his right hand.
-
-In a short time he remembered everything. He knew that Despard was in
-the hotel. He dressed himself and went downstairs, and found Harwood in
-the coffee-room, reading sundry documents with as anxious an expression
-of countenance as a special correspondent ever allows himself to assume.
-
-"What is the news?" Markham asked, feeling certain that something
-unusual had either taken place or was seen by the prophetical vision of
-Harwood to be looming in the future.
-
-"War," said Harwood, looking up. "War, Markham. I should never have left
-Natal. They have been working up to the point for the last few months,
-as I saw; but now there is no hope for a peaceful settlement."
-
-"The Zulu chief is not likely to come to terms now?" said Markham.
-
-"Impossible," replied the other. "Quite impossible. In a few days there
-will, no doubt, be a call for volunteers."
-
-"For volunteers?" Markham repeated. "You will go up country at once, I
-suppose?" he added.
-
-"Not quite as a volunteer, but as soon as I receive my letters by the
-mail that arrives in a few days, I shall be off to Durban, at any rate."
-
-"And you will be glad of it, no doubt. You told me you liked doing
-war-correspondence."
-
-"Did I?" said Harwood; and after a little pause he added slowly: "It's
-a tiring life this I have been leading for the past fifteen years,
-Markham. I seem to have cut myself off from the sympathies of life. I
-seem to have been only a looker-on in the great struggles--the great
-pleasures--of life. I am supposed to have no more sympathies than
-Babbage's calculator that records certain facts without emotion, and
-I fancied I had schooled myself into this cold apathy in looking at
-things; but I don't think I have succeeded in cutting myself off from
-all sympathies. No, I shall not be glad of this war. Never mind. By the
-way, are you going out to Dr. Glaston's to-night?"
-
-"I have got a card for his dinner, but I cannot tell what I may do. I am
-not feeling myself, just now."
-
-"You certainly don't look yourself, Markham. You are haggard, and
-as pale as if you had not got any sleep for nights. You want the
-constitution of your friend Mr. Despard, who is breakfasting in the
-bar."
-
-"What, is it possible he is out of his room?" cried Markham, in
-surprise.
-
-"Why, he was waiting here an hour ago when I came down, and in the
-meantime he had been buying a suit of garments, he said, that gallant
-check of his having come to grief through the night."
-
-Harwood spoke the words at the door and then he left the room.
-
-Oswin was not for long left in solitary occupation, however, for in
-a few moments the door was flung open, and Despard entered with a
-half-empty tumbler in his hand. He came forward with a little chuckling
-laugh and stood in front of Oswin without speaking. He looked with his
-blood-shot eyes into Oswin's cold pale face, and then burst into a laugh
-so hearty that he was compelled to leave the tumbler upon the table,
-not having sufficient confidence in his ability to grasp it under the
-influence of his excitement. Then he tapped Markham on the shoulder,
-crying:
-
-"Well, old boy, have you got over that lark of last night? Like the old
-times, wasn't it? You did the fatherly by me, I believe, though hang
-me if I remember what happened after I had drunk the last glass of old
-Irish with our friend the king. How the deuce did I get in with the
-teetotal colonel who, the boots has been telling me, lent me his cart?
-That's what I should like to know. And where were you, my boy, all the
-night?"
-
-"Despard," said Markham, "I have borne with your brutal insults long
-enough. I will not bear them any longer. When you have so disgraced both
-yourself and me as you did last night, it is time to bring matters to a
-climax. I cannot submit to have you thrust yourself upon my friends as
-you have done. You behaved like a brute."
-
-Despard seated himself and wiped his eyes. "I did behave like a brute,"
-he said. "I always do, I know--and you know too, Oswin. Never mind. Tell
-me what you want--what am I to do?"
-
-"You must leave the colony," said Oswin quickly, almost eagerly. "I
-will give you money, and a ticket to England to-day. You must leave this
-place at once."
-
-"And so I will--so I will," said the man from behind his handkerchief.
-"Yes, yes, Oswin, I'll leave the colony--I will--when I become a
-teetotaller." He took down his handkerchief, and put it into his pocket
-with a hoarse laugh. "Come, my boy," he said in his usual voice, "come;
-we've had quite enough of that sort of bullying. Don't think you're
-talking to a boy, Master Oswin. Who looks on a man as anything the worse
-for getting drunk now and again? You don't; you can't afford to. How
-often have I not helped you as you helped me? Tell me that."
-
-"In the past--the accursed past," said Oswin, "I may have made myself a
-fool--yes, I did, but God knows that I have suffered for it. Now all is
-changed. I was willing to tolerate you near me since we met this time,
-hoping that you would think fit, when you were in a new place and
-amongst new people, to change your way of life. But last night showed
-me that I was mistaken. You can never be received at Colonel Gerald's
-again."
-
-"Indeed?" said the man. "You should break the news gently to a fellow.
-You might have thrown me into a fit by coming down like that. Hark you
-here, Mr. Markham. I know jolly well that I will be received there and
-welcomed too. I'll be received everywhere as well as you, and hang me,
-if I don't go everywhere. These people are my friends as well as yours.
-I've done more for them than ever you did, and they know that."
-
-"Fool, fool!" said Oswin bitterly.
-
-"We'll see who's the fool, my boy. I know my advantage, don't you be
-afraid. The Irish king has a son, hasn't he? well, I was welcome with
-him last night. The Lord Bishop of Calapash has another blooming male
-offspring, and though he hasn't given me an invite to his dinner this
-evening, yet, hang me, if he wouldn't hug me if I went with the rest of
-you swells. Hang me, if I don't try it at any rate--it will be a lark at
-least. Dine with a bishop--by heaven, sir, it would be a joke--I'll go,
-oh, Lord, Lord!" Oswin stood motionless looking at him. "Yes," continued
-Despard, "I'll have a jolly hour with his lordship the bishop. I'll
-fill up my glass as I did last night, and we'll drink the same toast
-together--we'll drink to the health of the Snowdrop of Glenmara, as the
-king called her when he was very drunk; we'll drink to the fair Daireen.
-Hallo, keep your hands off!--Curse you, you're choking me! There!"
-Oswin, before the girl's name had more than passed the man's lips, had
-sprung forward and clutched him by the throat; only by a violent effort
-was he cast off, and now both men stood trembling with passion face to
-face.
-
-"What the deuce do you mean by this sort of treatment?" cried Despard.
-
-"Despard," said Oswin slowly, "you know me a little, I think. I tell you
-if you ever speak that name again in my presence you will repent it. You
-know me from past experience, and I have not utterly changed."
-
-The man looked at him with an expression that amounted to wonderment
-upon his face. Then he threw himself back in his chair, and an
-uncontrollable fit of laughter seized him. He lay back and almost yelled
-with his insane laughter. When he had recovered himself and had wiped
-the tears from his eyes, he saw Oswin was gone. And this fact threw him
-into another convulsive fit. It was a long time before he was able to
-straighten his collar and go to the bar for a glass of French brandy.
-
-The last half-hour had made Oswin Markham very pale. He had eaten no
-breakfast, and he was reminded of this by the servant to whom he had
-given directions to have his horse brought to the door.
-
-"No," he said, "I have not eaten anything. Get the horse brought round
-quickly, like a good fellow."
-
-He stood erect in the doorway until he heard the sound of hoofs. Then
-he went down the steps and mounted, turning his horse's head towards
-Wynberg. He galloped along the red road at the base of the hill, and
-only once he looked up, saying, "For the last time--the last."
-
-He reached the avenue at Mowbray and dismounted, throwing the bridle
-over his arm as he walked slowly between the rows of giant aloes. In
-another moment he came in sight of the Dutch cottage. He paused under
-one of the Australian oaks, and looked towards the house. "Oh, God, God,
-pity me!" he cried in agony so intense that it could not relieve itself
-by any movement or the least motion.
-
-He threw the bridle over a low branch and walked up to the house. His
-step was heard. She stood before him in the hall--white and flushed in
-turn as he went towards her. He was not flushed; he was still deadly
-white. He had startled her, he knew, for the hand she gave him was
-trembling like a dove's bosom.
-
-"Papa is gone part of the way back to Simon's Town with the commodore
-who was with us this morning," she said. "But you will come in and wait,
-will you not?"
-
-"I cannot," he said. "I cannot trust myself to go in--even to look at
-you, Daireen."
-
-"Oh, God!" she said, "you are ill--your face--your voice----"
-
-"I am not ill, Daireen. I have an hour of strength--such strength as is
-given to men when they look at Death in the face and are not moved at
-all. I kissed you last night----"
-
-"And you will now," she said, clasping his arm tenderly. "Dearest, do
-not speak so terribly--do not look so terrible--so like--ah, that night
-when you looked up to me from the water."
-
-"Daireen, why did I do that? Why did you pluck me from that death to
-give me this agony of life--to give yourself all the bitterness that can
-come to any soul? Daireen, I kissed you only once, and I can never kiss
-you again. I cannot be false to you any longer after having touched
-your pure spirit. I have been false to you--false, not by my will--but
-because to me God denied what He gave to others--others to whom His gift
-was an agony--that divine power to begin life anew. My past still clings
-to me, Daireen--it is not past--it is about and around me still--it is
-the gulf that separates us, Daireen."
-
-"Separates us?" she said blankly, looking at him.
-
-"Separates us," he repeated, "as heaven and hell are separated. We have
-been the toys--the playthings, of Fate. If you had not looked out of
-your cabin that night, we should both be happy now. And then how was
-it we came to love each other and to know it to be love? I struggled
-against it, but I was as a feather upon the wind. Ah, God has given us
-this agony of love, for I am here to look on you for the last time--to
-beseech of you to hate me, and to go away knowing that you love me."
-
-"No, no, not to go away--anything but that. Tell me all--I can forgive
-all."
-
-"I cannot bring my lips to frame my curse," he said after a little
-pause. "But you shall hear it, and, Daireen, pity me as you pitied me
-when I looked to God for hope and found none. Child--give me your eyes
-for the last time."
-
-She held him clasped with her white hands, and he saw that her passion
-made her incapable of understanding his words. She looked up to him
-whispering, "The last time--no, no--not the last time--not the last."
-
-She was in his arms. He looked down upon her face, but he did not kiss
-it. He clenched his teeth as he unwound her arms from him.
-
-"One word may undo the curse that I have bound about your life,"
-he said. "Take the word, Daireen--the blessed word for you and
-me--_Forget_. Take it--it is my last blessing."
-
-She was standing before him. She saw his face there, and she gave a
-cry, covering her own face with her hands, for the face she saw was that
-which had looked up to her from the black waters.
-
-Was he gone?
-
-From the river bank came the sounds of the native women, from the
-garden the hum of insects, and from the road the echo of a horse's hoofs
-passing gradually away.
-
-Was it a dream--not only this scene of broad motionless leaves, and
-these sounds she heard, but all the past months of her life?
-
-Hours went by leaving her motionless in that seat, and then came the
-sound of a horse--she sprang up. He was returning--it was a dream that
-had given her this agony of parting.
-
-"Daireen, child, what is the matter?" asked her father, whose horse it
-was she had heard.
-
-She looked up to his face.
-
-"Papa," she said very gently, "it is over--all--all over--for ever--I
-have only you now."
-
-"My dear little Dolly, tell me all that troubles you."
-
-"Nothing troubles me now, papa. I have you near me, and I do not mind
-anything else."
-
-"Tell me all, Daireen."
-
-"I thought I loved some one else, papa--Oswin--Oswin Markham. But he is
-gone now, and I know you are with me. You will always be with me."
-
-"My poor little Dolly," said Colonel Gerald, "did he tell you that he
-loved you?"
-
-"He did, papa; but you must ask me no more. I shall never see him
-again!"
-
-"Perfectly charming!" said Mrs. Crawford, standing at the door. "The
-prettiest picture I have seen for a long time--father and daughter in
-each other's arms. But, my dear George, are you not yet dressed for the
-bishop's dinner? Daireen, my child, did you not say you would be ready
-when I would call for you? I am quite disappointed, and I would be angry
-only you look perfectly lovely this evening--like a beautiful lily. The
-dear bishop will be so charmed, for you are one of his favourites. Now
-do make haste, and I entreat of you to be particular with your shades of
-gray."
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XL.
-
-
-````... A list of... resolutes
-
-```For food and diet, to some enterprise
-
-```That hath a stomach in't.=
-
-```My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.=
-
-```Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
-
-````The hart ungalléd play;
-
-```For some must watch, while some must sleep;
-
-````Thus runs the world away.--_Hamlet_.=
-
-
-|THE Bishop of the Calapash Islands and Metropolitan of the Salamander
-Archipelago was smiling very tranquilly upon his guests as they arrived
-at his house, which was about two miles from Mowbray. But the son of the
-bishop was not smiling--he, in fact, seldom smiled; there was a certain
-breadth of expression associated with such a manifestation of feeling
-that was inconsistent with his ideas of subtlety of suggestion. He was
-now endeavouring to place his father's guests at ease by looking only
-slightly bored by their presence, giving them to understand that he
-would endure them around him for his father's sake, so that there should
-be no need for them to be at all anxious on his account. A dinnerparty
-in a colony was hardly that sort of social demonstration which Mr.
-Glaston would be inclined to look forward to with any intensity of
-feeling; but the bishop, having a number of friends at the Cape,
-including a lady who was capable of imparting some very excellent advice
-on many social matters, had felt it to be a necessity to give this
-little dinnerparty, and his son had only offered such a protest against
-it as satisfied his own conscience and prevented the possibility of his
-being consumed for days after with a gnawing remorse.
-
-The bishop had his own ideas of entertaining his guests--a matter which
-his son brought under his consideration after the invitations had been
-issued.
-
-"There is not such a thing as a rising tenor in the colony, I am sure,"
-said Mr. Glaston, whose experience of perfect social entertainment was
-limited to that afforded by London drawing-rooms. "If we had a rising
-tenor, there would be no difficulty about these people."
-
-"Ah, no, I suppose not," said the bishop. "But I was thinking, Algernon,
-that if you would allow your pictures to be hung for the evening, and
-explain them, you know, it would be interesting."
-
-"What, by lamplight? They are not drop-scenes of a theatre, let me
-remind you."
-
-"No, no; but you see your theories of explanation would be understood
-by our good friends as well by lamplight as by daylight, and I am sure
-every one would be greatly interested." Mr. Glaston promised his father
-to think over the matter, and his father expressed his gratitude for
-this concession. "And as for myself," continued the bishop, giving his
-hands the least little rub together, "I would suggest reading a
-few notes on a most important subject, to which I have devoted some
-attention lately. My notes I would propose heading 'Observations on
-Phenomena of Automatic Cerebration amongst some of the Cannibal Tribes
-of the Salamander Archipelago.' I have some excellent specimens of
-skulls illustrative of the subject."
-
-Mr. Glaston looked at his father for a considerable time without
-speaking; at last he said quietly, "I think I had better show my
-pictures."
-
-"And my paper--my notes?"
-
-"Impossible," said the young man, rising. "Utterly Impossible;" and he
-left the room.
-
-The bishop felt slightly hurt by his son's manner. He had treasured up
-his notes on the important observations he had made in an interesting
-part of his diocese, and he had looked forward with anxiety to a moment
-when he could reveal the result of his labours to the world, and yet his
-son had, when the opportunity presented itself, declared the revelation
-impossible. The bishop felt slightly hurt.
-
-Now, however, he had got over his grievance, and he was able to smile as
-usual upon each of his guests.
-
-The dinner-party was small and select. There were two judges present,
-one of whom brought his wife and a daughter. Then there were two members
-of the Legislative Council, one with a son, the other with a daughter;
-a clergyman who had attained to the dizzy ecclesiastical eminence of
-a colonial deanery, and his partner in the dignity of his office. The
-Macnamara and Standish were there, and Mr. Harwood, together with the
-Army Boot Commissioner and Mrs. Crawford, the last of whom arrived with
-Colonel Gerald and Daireen.
-
-Mrs. Crawford had been right. The bishop was charmed with Daireen, and
-so expressed himself while he took her hand in his and gave her the
-benediction of a smile. Poor Standish, seeing her so lovely as she was
-standing there, felt his soul full of love and devotion. What was all
-the rest of the world compared with her, he thought; the aggregate
-beauty of the universe, including the loveliness of the Miss Van der
-Veldt who was in the drawing-room, was insignificant by the side of a
-single curl of Daireen's wonderful hair. Mr. Harwood looked towards
-her also, but his thoughts were somewhat more complicated than those of
-Standish.
-
-"Is not Daireen perfection?" whispered Mrs. Crawford to Algernon
-Glaston.
-
-The bishop's son glanced at the girl critically.
-
-"I cannot understand that band of black velvet with a pearl in front of
-it," he said. "I feel it to be a mistake--yes, it is an error for which
-I am sorry; I begin to fear it was designed only as a bold contrast. It
-is sad--very sad."
-
-Mrs. Crawford was chilled. She had never seen Daireen look so lovely.
-She felt for more than a moment that she was all unmeet for a wife, so
-child-like she seemed. And now the terrible thought suggested itself to
-Mrs. Crawford: what if Mr. Glaston's opinion was, after all, fallible?
-might it be possible that his judgment could be in error? The very
-suggestion of such a thought sent a cold thrill of fear through her. No,
-no: she would not admit such a possibility.
-
-The dinner was proceeded with, after the fashion of most dinners, in a
-highly satisfactory manner. The guests were arranged with discrimination
-in accordance with a programme of Mrs. Crawford's, and the conversation
-was unlimited.
-
-Much to the dissatisfaction of The Macnamara the men went to the
-drawing-room before they had remained more than ten minutes over their
-claret. One of the young ladies of the colony had been induced to sing
-with the judge's son a certain duet called "La ci darem la mano;" and
-this was felt to be extremely agreeable by every one except the bishop's
-son. The bishop thanked the young lady very much, and then resumed his
-explanation to a group of his guests of the uses of some implements
-of war and agriculture brought from the tribes of the Salamander
-Archipelago.
-
-Three of the pictures of Mr. Glaston's collection were hung in the room,
-the most important being that marvellous Aholibah: it was placed upon a
-small easel at the farthest end of the room, a lamp being at each side.
-A group had gathered round the picture, and Mr. Glaston with the utmost
-goodnature repeated the story of its creation. Daireen had glanced
-towards the picture, and again that little shudder came over her.
-
-She was sitting in the centre of the room upon an ottoman beside Mrs.
-Crawford and Mr. Harwood. Standish was in a group at the lower end,
-while his father was demonstrating how infinitely superior were the
-weapons found in the bogs of Ireland to the Salamander specimens. The
-bishop moved gently over to Daireen and explained to her the pleasure
-it would be giving every one in the room if she would consent to sing
-something.
-
-At once Daireen rose and went to the piano. A song came to her lips as
-she laid her hand upon the keys of the instrument, and her pure earnest
-voice sang the words that came back to her:--=
-
-```From my life the light has waned:
-
-````Every golden gleam that shone
-
-````Through the dimness now has gone:
-
-```Of all joys has one remained?
-
-````Stays one gladness I have known?
-
-```Day is past; I stand, alone,
-
-```Here beneath these darkened skies,
-
-```Asking--"Doth a star arise?"=
-
-She ended with a passion that touched every one who heard her, and then
-there was a silence for some moments, before the door of the room was
-pushed open to the wall, and a voice said, "Bravo, my dear, bravo!" in
-no weak tones.
-
-All eyes turned towards the door. Mr. Despard entered, wearing an
-ill-made dress-suit, with an enormous display of shirt-front, big studs,
-and a large rose in his button-hole.
-
-"I stayed outside till the song was over," he said. "Bless your souls,
-I've got a feeling for music, and hang me if I've heard anything that
-could lick that tune." Then he nodded confidentially to the bishop.
-"What do you say, Bishop? What do you say, King? am I right or wrong?
-Why, we're all here--all of our set--the colonel too--how are you,
-Colonel?--and the editor--how we all do manage to meet somehow! Birds of
-a feather--you know. Make yourselves at home, don't mind me."
-
-He walked slowly up the room smiling rather more broadly than the bishop
-was in the habit of doing, on all sides. He did not stop until he was
-opposite the picture of Aholibah on the easel. Here he did stop. He
-seemed to be even more appreciative of pictorial art than of musical. He
-bent forward, gazing into that picture, regardless of the embarrassing
-silence there was in the room while every one looked towards him. He
-could not see how all eyes were turned upon him, so absorbed had he
-become before that picture.
-
-The bishop was now certainly not smiling. He walked slowly to the man's
-side.
-
-"Sir," said the bishop, "you have chosen an inopportune time for a
-visit. I must beg of you to retire."
-
-Then the man seemed to be recalled to consciousness. He glanced up from
-the picture and looked into the bishop's face. He pointed with one hand
-to the picture, and then threw himself back in a chair with a roar of
-laughter.
-
-"By heavens, this is a bigger surprise than seeing Oswin himself," he
-cried. "Where is Oswin?--not here?--he should be here--he must see it."
-
-It was Harwood's voice that said, "What do you mean?"
-
-"Mean, Mr. Editor?" said Despard. "Mean? Haven't I told you what I mean?
-By heavens, I forgot that I was at the Cape--I thought I was still
-in Melbourne! Good, by Jingo, and all through looking at that bit of
-paint!"
-
-"Explain yourself, sir?" said Harwood.
-
-"Explain?" said the man. "That there explains itself. Look at that
-picture. The woman in that picture is Oswin Markham's wife, the Italian
-he brought to Australia, where he left her. That's plain enough. A
-deucedly fine woman she is, though they never did get on together.
-Hallo! What's the matter with Missy there? My God! she's going to
-faint."
-
-But Daireen Gerald did not faint. Her father had his arm about her.
-
-"Papa," she whispered faintly,--"Papa, take me home."
-
-"My darling," said Colonel Gerald. "Do not look like that. For God's
-sake, Daireen, don't look like that." They were standing outside waiting
-for the carriage to come up; for Daireen had walked from the room
-without faltering.
-
-"Do not mind me," she said. "I am strong--yes--very--very strong."
-
-He lifted her into the carriage, and was at the point of entering
-himself, when the figure of Mrs. Crawford appeared among the palm
-plants.
-
-"Good heavens, George! what is the meaning of this?" she said in a
-whisper.
-
-"Go back!" cried Colonel Gerald sternly. "Go back! This is some more of
-your work. You shall never see my child again!"
-
-He stepped into the carriage. The major's wife was left standing in the
-porch thunderstruck at such a reproach coming from the colonel. Was this
-the reward of her labour--to stand among the palms, listening to the
-passing away of the carriage wheels?
-
-It was not until the Dutch cottage had been reached that Daireen, in the
-darkness of the room, laid her head upon her father's shoulder.
-
-"Papa," she whispered again, "take me home--let us go home together."
-
-"My darling, you are at home now."
-
-"No, papa, I don't mean that; I mean home--I home--Glenmara."
-
-"I will, Daireen: we shall go away from here. We shall be happy together
-in the old house."
-
-"Yes," she said. "Happy--happy."
-
-"What do you mean, sir?" said the _maître d'hôtel_, referring to a
-question put to him by Despard, who had been brought away from the
-bishop's house by Harwood in a diplomatically friendly manner. "What do
-you mean? Didn't Mr. Markham tell you he was going?"
-
-"Going--where?" said Harwood.
-
-"To Natal, sir? I felt sure that he had told you, though he didn't speak
-to us. Yes, he left in the steamer for Natal two hours ago."
-
-"Squaring everything?" asked Despard.
-
-"Sir!" said the _maître_; "Mr. Markham was a gentleman."
-
-"It was half a sovereign he gave you then," remarked Despard. Then
-turning to Harwood, he said: "Well, Mr. Editor, this is the end of all,
-I fancy. We can't expect much after this. He's gone now, and I'm
-infernally sorry for him, for Oswin was a good sort. By heavens, didn't
-I burst in on the bishop's party like a greased shrapnel? I had taken
-a little better than a glass of brandy before I went there, so I was in
-good form. Yes, Paulina is the name of his wife. He had picked her up
-in Italy or thereabouts. That's what made his friends send him off to
-Australia. He was punished for his sins, for that woman made his life a
-hell to him. Now we'll take the tinsel off a bottle of Moët together."
-
-"No," said Harwood; "not to-night."
-
-He left the room and went upstairs, for now indeed this psychological
-analyst had an intricate problem to work out. It was a long time before
-he was able to sleep.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XLI.
-
-
-CONCLUSION.
-
-
-```What is it you would see?
-
-```If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.=
-
-*****
-
-```And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
-
-```How these things came about: so shall you hear
-
-```Of accidental judgments...
-
-`````purposes mistook.=
-
-```... let this same be presently performed
-
-````... lest more mischance
-
-```On plots and errors happen.--_Hamlet._=
-
-
-|LITTLE more remains to be told to complete the story of the few months
-of the lives of the people whose names have appeared in these pages in
-illustration of how hardly things go right.
-
-Upon that night, after the bishop's little dinnerparty, every one,
-except Mr. Despard, seemed to have a bitter consciousness of how
-terribly astray things had gone. It seemed hopeless to think that
-anything could possibly be made right again. If Mrs. Crawford had not
-been a pious woman and a Christian, she would have been inclined to say
-that the Fates, which had busied themselves with the disarrangement of
-her own carefully constructed plans, had become inebriated with their
-success and were wantoning in the confusion of the mortals who had been
-their playthings. Should any one have ventured to interpret her thoughts
-after this fashion, however, Mrs. Crawford would have been indignant
-and would have assured her accuser that her only thought was how hardly
-things go right. And perhaps, indeed, the sum of her thoughts could not
-have been expressed by words of fuller meaning.
-
-She had been careful beyond all her previous carefulness that her plans
-for the future of Daireen Gerald should be arranged so as to insure
-their success; and yet, what was the result of days of thoughtfulness
-and unwearying toil, she asked herself as she was driving homeward under
-the heavy oak branches amongst which a million fire-flies were flitting.
-This feeling of defeat--nay, even of shame, for the words Colonel
-Gerald had spoken to her in his bitterness of spirit were still in her
-mind--was this the result of her care, her watchfulness, her skill of
-organisation? Truly Mrs. Crawford felt that she had reason for thinking
-herself ill-treated.
-
-"Major," she said solemnly to the Army Boot Commissioner as he partook
-of some simple refreshment in the way of brandy and water before
-retiring for the night--"Major, listen to me while I tell you that I
-wash my hands clear of these people. Daireen Gerald has disappointed me;
-she has made a fool both of herself and of me; and George Gerald grossly
-insulted me."
-
-"Did he really now?" said the major compassionately, as he added another
-thimbleful of the contents of the bottle to his tumbler. "Upon my soul
-it was too bad of George--a devilish deal too bad of him." Here the
-major emptied his tumbler. He was feeling bitterly the wrong done to his
-wife as he yawned and searched in the dimness for a cheroot.
-
-"I wash my hands clear of them all," continued the lady. "The bishop is
-a poor thing to allow himself to be led by that son of his, and the son
-is a----"
-
-"For God's sake take care, Kate; a bishop, you know, is not like the
-rest of the people."
-
-"He is a weak thing, I say," continued Mrs. Crawford firmly. "And his
-son is--a--puppy. But I have done with them."
-
-"And _for_ them," said the major, striking a light.
-
-Thus it was that Mrs. Crawford relieved her pent-up feelings as she went
-to her bed; but in spite of the disappointment Daireen had caused her,
-and the gross insult she had received from Daireen's father, before she
-went to sleep she had asked herself if it might not be well to forgive
-George Gerald and to beg of him to show some additional attention to Mr.
-Harwood, who was, all things considered, a most deserving man, besides
-being a distinguished person and a clever. Yes, she thought that this
-would be a prudent step for Colonel Gerald to take at once. If Daireen
-had made a mistake, it was sad, to be sure, but there was no reason
-why it might not be retrieved, Mrs. Crawford felt; and she fell asleep
-without any wrath in her heart against her old friend George Gerald.
-
-And Arthur Harwood, as he stood in his room at the hotel and looked out
-to the water of Table Bay, had the truth very strongly forced upon him
-that things had gone far wrong indeed, and with a facility of error
-that was terrifying. He felt that he alone could fully appreciate how
-terribly astray everything had gone. He saw in a single glance all of
-the past; and his scrupulously just conscience did not fail to give him
-credit for having at least surmised something of the truth that had
-just been brought to light. From the first--even before he had seen
-the man--he had suspected Oswin Markham; and, subsequently, had he not
-perceived--or at any rate fancied that he perceived--something of the
-feeling that existed between Markham and Daireen?
-
-His conscience gave him ample credit for his perception; but after all,
-this was an unsatisfactory set-off against the weight of his reflections
-on the subject of the general error of affairs that concerned him
-closely, not the least of which was the unreasonable conduct of the
-Zulu monarch who had rejected the British ultimatum, and who thus
-necessitated the presence of a special correspondent in his dominions.
-Harwood, seeing the position of everything at a glance, had come to the
-conclusion that it would be impossible for him, until some months had
-passed, to tell Daireen all that he believed was in his heart. He knew
-that she had loved that man whom she had saved from death, and who had
-rewarded her by behaving as a ruffian towards her; still Mr. Harwood,
-like Mrs. Crawford, felt that her mistake was not irretrievable. But if
-he himself were now compelled by the conduct of this wretched savage
-to leave Cape Town for an indefinite period, how should he have an
-opportunity of pointing out to Daireen the direction in which her
-happiness lay? Mr. Harwood was not generously disposed towards the Zulu
-monarch.
-
-Upon descending to the coffee-room in the morning, he found Mr. Despard
-sitting somewhat moodily at the table. Harwood was beginning to think,
-now that Mr. Despard's mission in life had been performed, there could
-be no reason why his companionship should be sought. But Mr. Despard
-was not at all disposed to allow his rapidly conceived friendship for
-Harwood to be cut short.
-
-"Hallo, Mr. Editor, you're down at last, are you?" he cried. "The
-colonel didn't go up to, your room, you bet, though he did to me--fine
-old boy is he, by my soul--plenty of good work in him yet."
-
-"The colonel? Was Colonel Gerald here?" asked Harwood.
-
-"He was, Mr. Editor; he was here just to see me, and have a friendly
-morning chat. We've taken to each other, has the colonel and me."
-
-"He heard that Markham had gone? You told him, no doubt?"
-
-"Mr. Editor, sir," said Despard, rising to his feet and keeping himself
-comparatively steady by grasping the edge of the table,--"Mr. Editor,
-there are things too sacred to be divulged even to the Press. There are
-feelings--emotions--chords of the human heart--you know all that sort
-of thing--the bond of friendship between the colonel and me is something
-like that. What I told him will never be divulged while I'm sober. Oswin
-had his faults, no doubt, but for that matter I have mine. Which of us
-is perfect, Mr. Editor? Why, here's this innocent-looking lad that's
-coming to me with another bottle of old Irish, hang me if he isn't a
-walking receptacle of bribery and corruption! What, are you off?"
-
-Mr. Harwood was off, nor did he think if necessary to go through the
-formality of shaking hands with the moraliser at the table.
-
-It was on the day following that Mrs. Crawford called at Colonel
-Gerald's cottage at Mowbray. She gave a start when she saw that the
-little hall was blocked up with packing-cases. One of them was an old
-military camp-box, and upon the end of it was painted in dimly white
-letters the name "Lieutenant George Gerald." Seeing it now as she had
-often seen it in the days at the Indian station, the poor old campaigner
-sat down on a tin uniform-case and burst into tears.
-
-"Kate, dear good Kate," said Colonel Gerald, laying his hand on her
-shoulder. "What is the matter, my dear girl?"
-
-"Oh, George, George!" sobbed the lady, "look at that case there--look at
-it, and think of the words you spoke to me two nights ago. Oh, George,
-George!"
-
-"God forgive me, Kate, I was unjust--ungenerous. Oh, Kate, you do not
-know how I had lost myself as the bitter truth was forced upon me. You
-have forgiven me long ago, have you not?"
-
-"I have, George," she said, putting her hand in his. "God knows I have
-forgiven you. But what is the meaning of this? You are not going away,
-surely?"
-
-"We leave by the mail to-morrow, Kate," said the colonel.
-
-"Good gracious, is it so bad as that?" asked the lady, alarmed.
-
-"Bad? there is nothing bad now, my dear. We only feel--Dolly and
-myself--that we must have a few months together amongst our native Irish
-mountains before we set out for the distant Castaways."
-
-Mrs. Crawford looked into his face earnestly for some moments. "Poor
-darling little Dolly," she said in a voice full of compassion; "she has
-met with a great grief, but I pray that all may yet be well. I will
-not see her now, but I will say farewell to her aboard the steamer
-to-morrow. Give her my love, George. God knows how dear she is to me."
-
-Colonel Gerald put his arms about his old friend and kissed her
-silently.
-
-Upon the afternoon of the next day the crowd about the stern of the mail
-steamer which was at the point of leaving for England was very large.
-But it is only necessary to refer to a few of the groups on the deck.
-Colonel Gerald and his old friend Major Crawford were side by side,
-while Daireen and the major's wife were standing apart looking together
-up to the curved slopes of the tawny Lion's Head that half hid the dark,
-flat face of Table Mountain. Daireen was pale almost to whiteness, and
-as her considerate friend said some agreeable words to her she smiled
-faintly, but the observant Standish felt that her smile was not real,
-it was only a phantom of the smiles of the past which had lived upon her
-face. Standish was beside his father, who had been so fortunate as to
-obtain the attention of Mr. Harwood for the story of the wrongs he had
-suffered through the sale of his property in Ireland.
-
-"What is there left for me in the counthry of my sires that bled?"
-he inquired with an emphasis that almost amounted to passion. "The
-sthrangers that have torn the land away from us thrample us into the
-dust. No, sir, I'll never return to be thrampled upon; I'll go with my
-son to the land of our exile--the distant Castaway isles, where the
-flag of freedom may yet burn as a beacon above the thunderclouds of our
-enemies. Return to the land that has been torn from us? Never."
-
-Standish, who could have given a very good guess as to the number of
-The Macnamara's creditors awaiting his return with anxiety, if not
-impatience, moved away quickly, and Daireen noticed his action. She
-whispered a word to Mrs. Crawford, and in another instant she and
-Standish were together. She gave him her hand, and each looked into the
-other's face speechlessly for a few moments. On her face there was a
-faint tender smile, but his was full of passionate entreaty, the force
-of which made his eyes tremulous.
-
-"Standish, dear old Standish," she said; "you alone seem good and noble
-and true. You will not forget all the happy days we have had together."
-
-"Forget them?" said Standish. "Oh, Daireen, if you could but know
-all--if you could but know how I think of every day we have passed
-together. What else is there in the world worth thinking about? Oh,
-Daireen, you know that I have always thought of you only--that I will
-always think of you."
-
-"Not yet, Standish," she whispered. "Do not say anything to me--no,
-nothing--yet. But you will write every week, and tell me how the
-Castaway people are getting on, until we come out to you at the
-islands."
-
-"Daireen, do all the days we have passed together at home--on the
-lough--on the mountain, go for nothing?" he cried almost sadly. "Oh, my
-darling, surely we cannot part in this way. Your life is not wrecked."
-
-"No, no, not wrecked," she said with a start, and he knew she was
-struggling to be strong.
-
-"You will be happy, Daireen, you will indeed, after a while. And you
-will give me a word of hope now--one little word to make me happy."
-
-She looked at him--tearfully--lovingly. "Dear Standish, I can only give
-you one word. Will it comfort you at all if I say _Hope_, Standish?"
-
-"My darling, my love! I knew it would come right in the end. The world I
-knew could not be so utterly forsaken by God but that everything should
-come right."
-
-"It is only one word I have given you," she said.
-
-"But what a word, Daireen! oh, the dearest and best word I ever heard
-breathed. God bless you, darling! God bless you!"
-
-He did not make any attempt to kiss her: he only held her white hand
-tightly for an instant and looked into her pure, loving eyes.
-
-"Now, my boy, good-bye," said Colonel Gerald, laying his hand upon
-Standish's shoulder. "You will leave next week for the Castaways, and
-you will, I know, be careful to obey to the letter the directions of
-those in command until I come out to you. You must write a complete
-diary, as I told you--ah, there goes the gun! Daireen, here is Mr.
-Harwood waiting to shake hands with you."
-
-Mr. Harwood's hand was soon in the girl's.
-
-"Good-bye, Miss Gerald. I trust you will sometimes give me a thought,"
-he said quietly.
-
-"I shall never forget you, Mr. Harwood," she said as she returned his
-grasp.
-
-In another instant, as it seemed to the group on the shore, the good
-steamer passing out of the bay had dwindled down to that white piece of
-linen which a little hand waved over the stern.
-
-"Mr. Harwood," said Mrs. Crawford, as the special correspondent brought
-the major's wife to a wagonette,--"Mr. Harwood, I fear we have been
-terribly wrong. But indeed all the wrong was not mine. You, I know, will
-not blame me."
-
-"I blame you, Mrs. Crawford? Do not think of such a thing," said
-Harwood. "No; no one is to blame. Fate was too much for both of us, Mrs.
-Crawford. But all is over now. All the past days with her near us are
-now no more than pleasant memories. I go round to Natal in two days, and
-then to my work in the camp."
-
-"Oh, Mr. Harwood, what ruffians there are in this world!" said the lady
-just before they parted. Mr. Harwood smiled his acquiescence. His own
-experience in the world had led him to arrive unassisted at a similar
-conclusion.
-
-Arthur Harwood kept his work and left by the steamer for Natal two
-days afterwards; and in the same steamer Mr. Despard took passage
-also, declaring his intention to enlist on the side of the Zulus.
-Upon reaching Algoa Bay, however, he went ashore and did not put in an
-appearance at the departure of the steamer from the port; so that Mr.
-Harwood was deprived of his companionship, which had hitherto been
-pretty close, but which promised to become even more so. As there was in
-the harbour a small vessel about to proceed to Australia, the anxiety of
-the special correspondent regarding the future of the man never reached
-a point of embarrassment.
-
-The next week Standish Macnamara, accompanied by his father, left for
-the Castaway Islands, where he was to take up his position as secretary
-to the new governor of the sunny group. Standish was full of eagerness
-to begin his career of hard and noble work in the world. He felt that
-there would be a large field for the exercise of his abilities in the
-Castaways, and with the word that Daireen had given him living in his
-heart to inspire all his actions, he felt that there was nothing too
-hard for him to accomplish, even to compelling his father to return to
-Ireland before six months should have passed.
-
-It was on a cool afternoon towards the end of this week, that Mrs.
-Crawford was walking under the trees in the gardens opposite Government
-House, when she heard a pleasant little musical laugh behind her,
-accompanied by the pat of dainty little high-heeled shoes.
-
-"Dear, good Mrs. Crawford, why will you walk so terribly fast? It quite
-took away the breath of poor little me to follow you," came the voice of
-Lottie Vincent Mrs. Crawford turned, and as she was with a friend, she
-could not avoid allowing her stout hand to be touched by one of Lottie's
-ten-buttoned gloves. "Ah, you are surprised to see me," continued the
-young lady. "I am surprised myself to find myself here, but papa would
-not hear of my remaining at Natal when he went on to the frontier with
-the regiment, so I am staying with a friend in Cape Town. Algernon is
-here, but the dear boy is distressed by the number of people. Poor Algy
-is so sensitive."
-
-"Poor who?" cried Mrs. Crawford.
-
-"Oh, good gracious, what have I said?" exclaimed the artless little
-thing, blushing very prettily, and appearing as tremulous as a fluttered
-dove. "Ah, my dear Mrs. Crawford, I never thought of concealing it
-from you for a moment. I meant to tell you the first of any one in the
-world--I did indeed."
-
-"To tell me what?" asked the major's wife sternly.
-
-"Surely you know that the dear good bishop has given his consent
-to--to--do help me out of my difficulty of explaining, Mrs. Crawford."
-
-"To your becoming the wife of his son?"
-
-"I knew you would not ask me to say it all so terribly plainly," said
-Lottie. "Ah yes, dear Algy was too importunate for poor little me to
-resist; I pitied him and promised to become his for ever. We are
-devoted to each other, for there is no bond so fast as that of artistic
-sympathy, Mrs. Crawford. I meant to write and thank you for your dear
-good-natured influence, which, I know, brought about his proposal. It
-was all due, I frankly acknowledge, to your kindness in bringing us
-together upon the day of that delightful lunch we had at the grove
-of silver leaves. How can I ever thank you? But there is darling Algy
-looking quite bored. I must rush to him," she continued, as she saw Mrs.
-Crawford about to speak. Lottie did not think it prudent to run the
-risk of hearing Mrs. Crawford refer to certain little Indian affairs
-connected with Lottie's residence at that agreeable station on the
-Himalayas; so she kissed the tips of her gloves, and tripped away to
-where Mr. Algernon Glaston was sitting on one of the garden seats.
-
-"She is a wicked girl," said Mrs. Crawford to her companion. "She has
-at last succeeded in finding some one foolish enough to be entrapped by
-her. Never mind, she has conquered--I admit that. Oh, this world, this
-world!"
-
-And there can hardly be a doubt that Miss Lottie Vincent, all things
-considered, might be said to have conquered. She was engaged to marry
-Algernon Glaston, the son of the Bishop of the Calapash Islands and
-Metropolitan of the Salamander Group, and this to Lottie meant conquest.
-
-Of Oswin Markham only a few words need be spoken to close this story,
-such as it is. Oswin Markham was once more seen by Harwood. Two months
-after the outbreak of the war the special correspondent, in the
-exercise of his duty, was one night riding by the Tugela, where a fierce
-engagement had taken place between the Zulus and the British troops.
-The dead, black and white, were lying together--assagai and rifle
-intermixed. Harwood looked at the white upturned faces of the dead men
-that the moonlight made more ghastly, and amongst those faces he saw the
-stern clear-cut features of Oswin Markham. He was in the uniform of a
-Natal volunteer. Harwood gave a start, but only one; he stood above the
-dead man for a long time, lost in his own thoughts. Then the pioneers,
-who were burying the dead, came up.
-
-"Poor wretch, poor wretch!" he said slowly, standing there in the
-moonlight. "Poor wretch!... If she had never seen him... if... Poor
-child!"
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Daireen, by Frank Frankfort Moore
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