Part 17 (1/2)

”It is only when you enter Elysium that there is no time. It was eight o'clock when I arrived--by the world's time. Since then I have been dead to time--and the world.”

”You do not suggest that you are in heaven?” she asked, ironically.

”Nothing so extreme as that. All extremes are violent.”

”Ah, the middle place--then you are in purgatory?”

”But what should you be doing in purgatory? Or have you only come with a drop of water to cool the tongue of Dives?” His voice trailed along so coolly that it incensed her further.

”Certainly Dives' tongue is blistering,” she said with great effort to still the raging tumult within her. ”Yet I would not cool it if I could.”

Suddenly the anger seemed to die out of her, and she looked at him as she did in the days before Rudyard Byng came across her path--eagerly, childishly, eloquently, inquiringly. He was the one man who satisfied the intellectual and temperamental side of her; and he had taught her more than any one else in the world. She realized that she had ”Tossed him violently like a ball into a far country,” and that she had not now a vestige of power over him--either of his senses or his mind; that he was master of the situation. But was it so that there was a man whose senses could not be touched when all else failed? She was very woman, eager for the power which she had lost, and power was hard to get--by what devious ways had she travelled to find it!

As they leaned over a book of coloured prints of Gainsborough, Romney, and Vand.y.k.e, her soft, warm breast touched his arm and shoulder, a strand of her cobweb, golden hair swept his cheek, and a sigh came from her lips, so like those of that la.s.s who caught and held her Nelson to the end, and died at last in poverty, friendless, homeless, and alone.

Did he fancy that he heard a word breathing through her sigh--his name, Ian? For one instant the wild, cynical desire came over him to turn and clasp her in his arms, to press those lips which never but once he had kissed, and that was when she had plighted her secret troth to him, and had broken it for three million pounds. Why not? She was a woman, she was beautiful, she was a siren who had lured him and used him and tossed him by. Why not? All her art was now used, the art of the born coquette which had been exquisitely cultivated since she was a child, to bring him back to her feet--to the feet of the wife of Rudyard Byng.

Why not? For an instant he had the dark impulse to treat her as she deserved, and take a kiss ”as long as my exile, as sweet as my revenge”; but then the bitter memory came that this was the woman to whom he had given the best of which he was capable and the promise of that other best which time and love and life truly lived might accomplish; and the wild thing died in him.

The fever fled, and his senses became as cold as the statue of Andromeda on the pedestal at his hand. He looked at her. He did not for the moment realize that she was in reality only a girl, a child in so much; wilful, capricious, unregulated in some ways, with the hereditary taint of a distorted moral sense, and yet able, intuitive and wise, in so many aspects of life and conversation. Looking, he determined that she should never have that absolution which any outward or inward renewal of devotion would give her. Scorn was too deep--that arrogant, cruel, advent.i.tious attribute of the sinner who has not committed the same sin as the person he despises--

”Sweet is the refuge of scorn.”

His scorn was too sweet; and for the relish of it on his tongue, the price must be paid one way or another. The sin of broken faith she had sinned had been the fruit of a great temptation, meaning more to a woman, a hundred times, than to a man. For a man there is always present the chance of winning a vast fortune and the power that it brings; but it can seldom come to a woman except through marriage. It ill became him to be self-righteous, for his life had not been impeccable--

”The shaft of slander shot Missed only the right blot!”

Something of this came to him suddenly now as she drew away from him with a sense of humiliation, and a tear came unbidden to her eye.

She wiped the tear away, hastily, as there came a slight tapping at the door, and Krool entered, his glance enveloping them both in one lightning survey--like the instinct of the dweller in wild places of the earth, who feels danger where all is most quiet, and ever scans the veld or bush with the involuntary vigilance belonging to the life. His look rested on Jasmine for a moment before he spoke, and Stafford inwardly observed that here was an enemy to the young wife whose hatred was deep. He was conscious, too, that Jasmine realized the antipathy.

Indeed, she had done so from the first days she had seen Krool, and had endeavoured, without success, to induce Byng to send the man back to South Africa, and to leave him there last year when he went again to Johannesburg. It was the only thing in which Byng had proved invulnerable, and Krool had remained a menace which she vaguely felt and tried to conquer, which, in vain, Adrian Fellowes had endeavoured to remove. For in the years in which Fellowes had been Byng's secretary his relations with Krool seemed amiable and he had made light of Jasmine's prejudices.

”The butler is out and they come me,” Krool said. ”Mr. Stafford's servant is here. There is a girl for to see him, if he will let. The boy, Jigger, his name. Something happens.”

Stafford frowned, then turned to Jasmine. He told her who Jigger was, and of the incident the day before, adding that he had no idea of the reason for the visit; but it must be important, or nothing would have induced his servant to fetch the girl.

”I will come,” he said to Krool, but Jasmine's curiosity was roused.

”Won't you see her here?” she asked.

Stafford nodded a.s.sent, and presently Krool showed the girl into the room.

For an instant she stood embarra.s.sed and confused, then she addressed herself to Stafford. ”I'm Lou--Jigger's sister,” she said, with white lips. ”I come to ask if you'd go to him. 'E's been hurt bad--knocked down by a fire-engine, and the doctor says 'e can't live. 'E made yer a promise, and 'e wanted me to tell yer that 'e meant to keep it; but if so be as you'd come, and wouldn't mind a-comin', 'e'd tell yer himself.

'E made that free becos 'e had brekfis wiv ye. 'E's all right--the best as ever--the top best.” Suddenly the tears flooded her eyes and streamed down her pale cheeks. ”Oh, 'e was the best--my Gawd, 'e was the best! If it 'd make 'im die happy, you'd come, y'r gryce, wouldn't y'r?”

Child of the slums as she was, she was exceedingly comely and was simply and respectably dressed. Her eyes were big and brown like Stafford's; her face was a delicate oval, and her hair was a deep black, waving freely over a strong, broad forehead. It was her speech that betrayed her; otherwise she was little like the flower-girl that Adrian Fellowes had introduced to Al'mah, who had got her a place in the chorus of the opera and had also given her personal care and friendly help.

”Where is he? In the hospital?” Stafford asked.