Part 18

"Oh, I'll like him all right, Stara, don't you bother. I do most fellows, unless they're wrong 'uns, and I know you wouldn't fancy one of that sort. Funny I never saw the chap when the '1st' came through here last year. I dined with them, you know, and can remember most. There was a fellow called Porky, who never stopped talking till he got blind, and Graves, and Carson--good fellow, Carson--and old Royle, and yes, there was another chap none of them seemed to fancy. I didn't cotton to him myself, either, though I don't know why. He set my teeth on edge, for some reason."

"What was he like, Dick?"

"Rum-looking fellow, long nose, pale face, black eyes, not a bit like a soldier. Wore a purple silk cap at dinner, I remember, with gold bugs on it. Never saw such a thing in my life."

"Dick, it's he; but his eyes are not black, they're blue."

"Lord, you don't mean it, Stara? Damn, but I'm sorry, somehow. I wish it had been Carson--never mind, though. I dare say I was wrong, I usually am, and, anyway, your bringing him here is good enough for me. I'm going in to sleep now. Bye-bye, old girl; don't overtire yourself; you look a bit white. Polly and I will be looking out for you when you get back."

"Dick, if--you'd rather not have him here, I'll arrange it. I'll tell him you've sickness in the house, and that he must put up at the hotel. I could ride with him every day just the same."

"Hotel be blowed, Stara, what, a guest of mine put up at that Duikerpoort drinking shanty. Thank'ye no, I don't do that sort of thing. Now be off. Here's your pony, and tell Graeme from me he's very welcome; don't forget," and Richard rather huffily pushed aside the cane blinds and disappeared into the house.

Stara mounted and rode slowly away, the old antagonists watching each other once more across the battlefield of her mind--loyalty and straight-dealing on the one side, and love on the other. Of struggle between them, however, there was now none, for the question had been fought out three weeks before, on that day when the single word "Coming" had been flashed to her across six thousand miles of sea. Then indeed the battle had been fierce but final, for Stara, unlike most women, did not, her antagonist once down, lift him up again for the pleasure of renewing the combat with the consequent certainty of ultimate defeat.

Slower than Hector in decision, for to her the throwing overboard of honour and loyalty was a heart-wrenching pang, she nevertheless, in this instance, showed herself stronger than he, and the giving up of all once determined on, the sacrifice would be made freely and unreservedly. And so honour and loyalty were crushed down, and love remained alone on the field. Her mouth hardened, she thrust aside the thought of what lay behind, and, striking her pony with her spurred heel, hurried on to the destiny rushing to meet her.

For miles she rode without drawing rein, her mount lolloping easily on, as if impervious to heat or fatigue, till at length, some eight miles having been covered, she pulled up, and, dismounting, loosened the girths and led the pony away from the track to a small rise a few hundred yards away. Here she left him, the reins trailing loosely on the ground--Basuto-bred, he would stay there, she knew, for hours--and, throwing herself down on the grass, lay there, with her eyes fixed on the road ahead, a white thread seaming the yellow plain, till, topping a distant rise, it became lost to view.

Far below her, stretching across the track, a great herd of blesbok were moving restlessly, their forms looking vague and unreal through the gauzy veil of heat. Save for them and a wide-winged lammergeier hanging motionless in the blue vault above, sign of life there was none--veldt, kopje, and mountain slumbered undisturbed.

Suddenly Stara's body stiffened, her half-closed eyes opened wide, and a look almost of terror came into them, for the peace was broken at last, and the blesbok below, like her, were startled. Their aimless wanderings ceased, the outlying groups drew in, till the herd became one solid mass, and their heads were turned away from her towards the rise, beyond which the road dipped and was lost to sight.

Something had frightened them, but what? Then Stara's eyes grew wild as she, too, saw what that something was--a small cloud of dust topping the hill, and then rapidly descending into the plain below her. For a while the herd stood staring, and then began to move away, at a walk first, then at a trot, and finally in a headlong gallop, bounding over the grass for some miles, when they stopped, wheeled sharply about and again stood staring.

The cloud of dust drew nearer, taking shape as it came, till a Cape cart drawn by mules could be plainly seen. In the cart there were two figures--one in black, with a conical hat, sitting bolt upright and brandishing a whip; the other seemed strangely misty and indistinct to Stara.

She rose, turned her eyes towards the browsing pony, and moved away; then stopped, with her mouth firm-set, and sat down once more.

"What a woman I am, after all," she muttered, "flight, hide for him to pursue and find; we're all the same, pretend as we like. Heavens, how fast that cart's coming, what does Jacob mean by driving the mules like that? Ah! they've seen me; there's the boy pointing with his whip, they're stopping, and it's come at last. Oh, I daren't look at him, I know he'll show elation, and I shall hate him."

"How do you do, Colonel Graeme?"

"Quite well, thank you, Miss Selbourne; that's the right answer, isn't it? Damned fit I am, look at me and see."

Startled, Stara looked up, and fear vanished in amazement, for here was no triumphant conqueror, but a stricken, haggard-eyed man. "He has done it and regrets," she thought, and instantly was in revolt.

"It's so very good of you to come, Colonel Graeme, such a long journey in the heat. Did you have a good passage? My brother is so looking forward to seeing you, shall we get on? My pony's here, and----"

"Don't be a fool, I've not come eight thousand miles to see your brother, sit down."

"I think perhaps, as it's getting late----"

"Do you want to hear, or don't you? If not, I go back now."

"That--that depends. If ... you regret ... I don't."

"Bah!"

"Tell me."

"Kiss me first, not like that--properly." He caught Stara to him, and kissed her in a way that made her cheeks flame. She shrank back frightened and ashamed.

"Does that look as though I regretted? Listen. I've broken with her, as I said I would. Please God, I'll never see her again, blast her!"

"Oh, Hector, hush! Why?"

"Because she failed to ... No, that's not the reason, because she won't divorce me. That settles us, you see, no marriage for you and me."

"I never expected it, Hector. I was ready for it. But ... there's something more. What is it?"

"More, what more do you want, isn't that enough?"

"Hector, there is; there's something which has ... hurt you. It's not the parting from her. I can see that. Dearest, I must--I will know."

"There's nothing, I tell you, me hurt, by the death of a blind brat? Oh, God, curse me for a babbling fool!"

"Good--good God!"

Hector turned savagely on her. "Why do you say that? What right have you to assume ... Take your arms away from me. Oh, you must hear, must you, satisfy your damned curiosity, I suppose? All right, you shall. I told you on the ship I had no children. I lied; there was one, I'd never seen her when I spoke. She was blind and sickly, but--God knows why--she ... liked me, used to crawl over me, and call me 'daddy,' me, Stara, 'daddy.' Laugh, curse you, laugh, you won't? Look here, then," he dragged from his pocket the battered figure of James, and held it from him, wildly laughing, "here's what I play with at nights alone, croon and chuckle over it like the madman I am. Damn you, give it back--give it back, I say," for Stara had snatched James from his hand and was holding him against her breast, her tears raining on the plush. Hector's hand fell to his side and he turned sharply away, then once more went on:

"And when I left--I did suddenly, one morning--she came out to find me in the garden. There was an east wind blowing, and she ... caught cold, I suppose, and she," the expression of his voice made Stara shrink back--"the nurse wrote to me, let her die without me; she asked for me, but she wouldn't send till it was too late. Oh, don't be a fool and snivel like that, who cares? I don't. She wouldn't have lived, in any case. Oh, it didn't take much to kill my child, Stara, she paid in her body for the rottenness of her father's soul. For I am rotten--rotten to the core."

"You're not, you're not, no man can be who can love a child like that. Dearest, I won't have you say it, for you're mine, Hector, mine. My love is all yours now, and so am--I."

"Yes, with reservations. Oh, I know the sort of love--pure, no vile, earthly thoughts--thus far and no farther."

"No. I am not like that. I make no reservations. I give you all."

Hector stared, and, passion once more reawakening, he caught her by the shoulders; but Stara held him off, her grey eyes looking up into his.

"Wait, there is something you must promise me first. It--it may be, Hector, that in time there might come--another--oh, don't shrink away from me, it hurts so much--and you'd love my--our child, wouldn't you, Hector? But if ... that should happen, you must take me away ... leave the army, forsake ambition for--for love. Could you do that? Think well before you answer, for it's a big thing, Hector."

Hector, however, was now in passion's grip, and reflection had become impossible. Had Stara at that moment asked for the Southern Cross to wear in her hair, he would have promised her that, or anything else; and without a second's hesitation, he swore, if called upon, to do her bidding.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

Thus Hector followed in the footsteps of those with whom he claimed kinship, and, like them, left the broad track of conventional duty to turn aside into the by-paths of illicit love. True, behind him, trampled in the dust of the highway, broken vows and the fragments of a woman's happiness were lying, and, ever vivid and distinct, a tiny grave. But what of that, since he had carried through his purpose, and proved himself above the human weaknesses by which other men's lives are cramped and fettered? Feverishly he drank of the cup held out to him by Stara, and, his thirst quenched but too soon, revived the dead craving with the salt of imagination, and demanded more, ever more.

A month passed, and he was no longer a stranger, but one of the household; the hand of fellowship was held out to him by all, and by no one more eagerly than his host, whose cordiality was adopted the better to hide the curious instinctive aversion of twelve months before, which had but increased with fuller acquaintance with his guest. In vain did Richard assure himself that the feeling was one of prejudice only; it grew in strength daily, till at last, at Graeme's approach, Dick would make off, feigning work on the farm, or any excuse to avoid being alone with a man in whose presence he became so unaccountably silent and embarrassed.

His wife, however, had from the first taken to the stranger, though her only reason for such liking was, it must be owned, the essentially feminine one of sympathy for a lover, for that Hector was Stara's she had realised from the first, though why undeclared was beyond her comprehension.

It must be her sister-in-law's fault, she had come to believe, and was in consequence somewhat annoyed with Stara, frequently pressing her for explanations. If she cared for Colonel Graeme, why did she not admit it? It was not fair to play fast and loose with a man's devotion. Upon which her sister-in-law would smile, and assure her she was altogether wrong and didn't understand; she and Hector were friends, nothing more. Friends! as if she, Mary, was blind or a fool. And with much indignation the hostess would return to her housework, leaving the pair as usual to their own devices. They must settle the matter their own way, she decided, and, if Graeme was but half the man she took him to be, he would sooner or later bring Stara to book, for of the latter's feelings, too, Mary had no doubt, though Stara was far more successful in concealing them than Hector. Still, there was no mistaking the improvement in her sister-in-law's looks, or the meaning of the shedding of her former assumption of mannishness, which, with the bifurcated riding garments, had gone apparently for good, a modest riding-skirt replacing the one and a soft womanliness and radiant happiness the other.

Stara was happy, despite the lie she was living, for this had now become a habit, and troubled her not at all. And being happy, and loving, a change came over her: the veneer of hardness and independence disappeared, and with it, unfortunately, much of her former wit and brilliance. She was all woman now, fussing over Hector, ministering to his comforts, and exercising those small tyrannies dear to most lovers' hearts.

The inordinate consumption of cigarettes she put down firmly, retaining the supply in her own room, and doling them out at the rate of five a day--no more, save as a special indulgence. Schopenhauer and Lombroso also went, while the small phials were taken out on to the veldt the day after his arrival, and carefully buried in the home of an ant-bear, a solemn promise being exacted from Hector never to touch such things again. For Stara, wiser than Lucy, had from the first seen in which direction Graeme's peril lay, but while formerly she had regarded his morbidity merely as an interesting study, now the suppression of all encouragement of, and incentive to it, had become to her a matter of vital necessity.

For a time she was successful, Hector apparently being well content to idle the days away, roaming through the hot grass veldt, lying down on it for hours, or lounging with her in desultory inspection of farm-buildings, dam, and lucerne-fields. But, unknown to her, the poison was already working, and Graeme, when he seemed to be asleep on the grass beside her, was debating problems in his mind; for Stara, though she never knew it, had been stabbed to the heart by the unconscious hand of a blind child, who was now lying in sleep eternal to the lullaby of wind and waves.

Hector loved her, it is true, but it was not the love it had been, for, since the hour of darkness passed with the devil in the dreary hotel bedroom, there had come a difference. The ideality and the golden halo with which he had clothed his mistress were gone, and with them the longing to serve. Now he only saw her beauty, and in the possession of that beauty he strove to find oblivion from an undying memory; but in vain, for in the one pure emotion Hector had known, or could ever know, his eyes had been opened, and the real gold of the one showed the other to be but counterfeit metal and base. Thus Ruby was avenged, and, as usual, not on the most guilty fell the vengeance.

Hector began to ask himself questions, and critically to analyse the love he felt--love to which analysis means death. Why was it, he pondered, that passion so great as his did not act as a spur, but rather as a bridle? Surely Nelson was wrong when he said that "if the world held more Emmas, there would be more Nelsons"? For his own love for Stara was equally great, and yet indulgence in that love, so far from proving the incentive he had hoped, was fast suffocating ambition and rendering him a mere lotus-eater, content to idle away the hours on a God-forsaken African farm.

Gradually, fight against it, blind himself as he might, the bitter truth became known to Hector, that whereas passion denied, even vexed or hindered, is the greatest incentive to ambition man's nature can know, passion indulged without let or hindrance becomes inevitably its murderer. And with this truth, unacknowledged though it was, awakened in his mind, Hector became restless and rebellious, the sense of revolt growing as he realised that no sympathy was to be hoped for from Stara, but rather active opposition.

She now always became silent when he spoke of future greatness, or turned the subject to another future of which ambition was not the aim, but those very domestic joys which before she had been wont to deride. Only the other day she had put forward the same absurdity advanced by Lucy years before, namely, the hope of military renown without the disadvantages of his having to seek it on the battlefield. Nor was it only in her views that Stara had changed, for gone too were her brilliancy, her cynicism, the unlikeness to other women that had so fascinated him on board the _Dunrobin Castle_. He was now the cynic; she the believer, bitterly resentful of sneers at domesticity and marital fidelity.

As the days wore on, the monotony began to pall, the long rides to lose their charm, for, lover of the veldt though Hector was, solitude was also essential to his enjoyment of it. Silence and freedom to think undisturbed were what he craved, not talk of trifles, which only passion's glamour could render interesting. But Stara saw nothing of this, for she was blind, as she had said she would be blind, and when he was lying dreaming of future greatness she would irritate him with gentle caresses, asking him if he was thinking of her; and, starting, he would answer "Yes," and fall to silence once more.

The varnish, too, of normality, so laboriously laid on him by Stara, began to wear off; sleeplessness returned, and his real nature reasserted itself. Through the long night hours he would lie thinking, strange, monstrous thoughts, gradually weaving themselves into a fabric upon which he saw himself depicted as great as those others were great, and, like them, solitary in their greatness, for she whom he loved was dead. Stara had left him, and yet in some dim way stood near, a radiant vision, beloved as never on earth, guiding him on his lonely way. In a rapture of adoration he would be there talking to her, telling her of his undying love, till, torn with remorse for his cruelty and neglect to her when living, his eyes would fill and ecstatic grief wring his heart. And when the day came, Stara would greet him, her eyes dark with a love to which his own felt no response.

Nevertheless, strangely enough, in his dreams there was never a sign of Ruby, for she lay buried in his heart; the other only lived as a fantasy of fevered imagination. At last the day came when he knew he must return to a man's life once more, leaving her, the living and neglected, to dream of her dead and beloved, and of this necessity he told her one morning as they lay in the shadow of a lonely kopje.

"Stara, I must go," he said suddenly, "your brother's sick of me, and my regiment wants me back."

The girl looked up with startled eyes, her face grew suddenly pale and scared.

"Hector, you can't--not--not yet. Send them a wire."

"What's the use? I must go some time."

"Why?"

"Why? ... Because it's my life, Stara. I can't remain on leave, idling here for ever. Remember, I've got a name to make, and as yet I've not begun."

"You're a Colonel, isn't that enough, why do you want to make a name for yourself, Hector, aren't you happy here?"

"Of course I am, but----"

"Hector dear, I've been thinking a lot lately, thinking that perhaps the ambition we used to talk such a lot of is nothing, after all. I am sure now there is only one thing in the world that matters--love; that's real, the other's only a dream."

"What do you mean, Stara? This is against everything you used to say. Talk of inconsistency!"

"I know, but you mustn't expect a woman to be consistent. Besides, I wasn't in love then, but now I am, and can see things clearer. Oh, I am ashamed when I think of the nonsense I used to talk. Dear, I don't ask it, but couldn't you, wouldn't you like to give it up and be with me always?"

"Stara ... you don't mean? You ... can't. Oh, God, there seems to be a curse on me," and Hector flung himself face downwards on the grass.

A look of desperate pain came over Stara's face, as she answered hurriedly:

"No, no, you need not fear. I was only thinking, you being so happy here with me, that perhaps you had for gotten your ambitions."

"I? Never, they're part of me. Oh, thank God, but you know, Stara, I'd have done it, don't you? I'll keep faith with you."

For a fraction of a second Stara hesitated, but, before she could speak, Hector went on, and the chance was gone:

"You see, Stara, I must go back; they'll be finding out things if I don't--fellows are so infernally inquisitive--and then your brother might come to hear. By the way, he's no idea, I suppose?"

"None whatever. I told him what you said, about being here on leave when you're supposed to be in England, and that if they knew there'd be trouble. Dick won't say a word."

"And Polly?"

"She knows, of course, that we love each other, Hector, any woman could see that. She's never told Dick though. I asked her not to, but, Hector, she's always asking me things, why we ... don't..."

"What did you tell her?"

"Oh, some lie, but she didn't believe it. Hector, do you know, I think if she knew the truth, and we were to go away together, she'd stand by us two."

"Why are you always harping on this, Stara? I've told you the thing's practically impossible, though of course I'd do it, if anything happened. Why, do you know what I have to live on now that I've given up my income to her? Fool that I was! Two hundred a year besides my pay, and the last would stop once I leave, bar L120 a year."

"I don't think I should mind, Hector. I'm a good housekeeper, and we should have each other, which is everything, and perhaps in time your wife might relent, and we could marry."

"Damn her relenting, Stara; don't dream of it. I wouldn't do it for your sake, as much as mine. Oh, why can't you be satisfied, we are everything to each other now, and--and it's possible that if we were tied like that, you--I shouldn't--might tire, it's the freedom, don't you think, that makes love lasting?"

"No, I don't, I hate those ideas. They're wicked and unnatural. It's the advocates of immorality who start such theories."

"I'm not so sure, but about going, I should like to leave to-morrow, if it could be managed. I can easily get leave later, you know, and come back again."

"When?"

"Oh, in two or three months. I'll come when I can, you know that."

"Very well, Hector, if you think you ought to. Oh, it's hateful, this parting."

"It's only for a time, Stara, and, as I'm going, I think we ought to return home now. I've my packing to do, and the train leaves early to-morrow morning."

"I'll do your packing; I should love to. My brother shan't see, and Polly won't mind, I know. Come, as we must," and together they rode home, Graeme for once talkative, but Stara silent.

* * * * *

Next morning, before the sun had risen, the woman's dream had come to an end, and Hector was on his way back to a man's life once more. Within a mile of the station, at the top of the rise, where Stara had first seen his coming, the boy pulled up his mules, and pointed backward with his whip at a speck on the road behind them, rapidly growing larger.

"Missy Star," he said.

"We'll lose the train," muttered Hector, but the boy, ignoring the hint, refused to move till the flying figure had caught them up.

"Hector, I want you." Stara's voice was desperate, and her eyes wild.

Graeme, with one glance at the station ahead, climbed down and went over to where she was waiting, the pony's flanks heaving with distress.

"What is it, Stara? Quick! it's sweet of you to come after me, but the ... train."

Stara was silent, struggling with difficult words.