The Sign of the Spider

"You needn't get your shirt out, old chap," was the answer, quite good-humouredly. "Look here, now – we are alone together – so just between ourselves. Do you notice how all of these up-country going fellows shunt him – Wheeler, for instance? and Garway, who is at your hotel, never speaks to him. And Garway, you'll admit, is as good a fellow as ever lived."

"Yes, I'll own up to that. What then?"

"Only this, that they know a good deal that we don't."

"Well, what do they know – or say they know?"

"Look here, Stanninghame," said Rainsford, rather mysteriously, "has Hazon ever told you any of his up-country experiences?"

"A few – yes."

"Did he ever suggest you should take a trip with him?"

"We have even discussed that possibility."

"Ah – !" Then Rainsford gave a long whistle, and his voice became impressive as he resumed: "Watch it, Stanninghame. From time to time other men have gone up country with Hazon, but —not one of them has ever returned."

"Oh, that's what you're all down on him about, is it?"

The other nodded; then, with a "so-long," he cut across the street and disappeared into an office where he had business.

CHAPTER VII.

"THE WHOLE SOUL PRISONER …"

No more foolish passion was ever implanted in the human breast than that of jealousy – unless it were that of which it is the direct outcome – nor is there any which the average human is less potent to resist. The victim of either, or both, is for the time being outside reason.

Now the first-mentioned form of disease is, to the philosophical mind, of all others the most essentially foolish – indeed, we can hardly call to mind any other so thoroughly calculated to turn the average well-constructed man or woman into an exuberantly incurable idiot. For what does it amount to when we come to pan it out? If there exist grounds for the misgiving, why then it is going begging – grovelling for something which the other party has not got to give; if groundless, is it not a fulfilling of the homely old saw relating to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? (We disclaim any intent to pun.) In either case it is such a full and whole-souled giving of himself, or herself, away on the part of the patient; while on that of its object – is he, or she, worth it?

Now, from a very acute form of this insanity George Falkner was a chronic sufferer. He had cherished a secret weakness for Lilith, almost when she was yet in short frocks, but since her return from England, from the moment he had once more set eyes upon her on the deck of the Persian, he had tumbled madly, uncontrollably, headlong in love. Did a member of the opposite sex so much as exchange commonplaces with her, George Falkner's personality would contrive to loom, grim and dark, and almost threatening, in the background; while such male animal who should enjoy the pleasure of say an hour of Lilith's society à deux, even with no more flirtatious or ultimate intent than the same period spent in the society of his grandmother, would inspire in George a fell murderousness, which was nothing short of a reversion to first principles. As for Lilith herself, she was fond of him, very, in a sisterly, cousinly way – and what way, indeed, could be more fatal to that by which he desired to travel? Nor did it mend matters any that their mutual relatives were the reverse of favourable to his aspirations, on the ground of the near relationship existing between the parties. So, poor George, seeing no light, became morose and quarrelsome, and wholly and violently unreasonable – in short, a bore. All of which was a pity, because, this weakness apart, he was, on the whole, rather a good fellow.

He had come to the Rand, like everybody else, to wait for the boom – which boom, like the chariots of Israel, though totally unlike the children of the same, tarried long in coming; indeed, by that time there were not wanting those who feared that it might not come at all. He had pleaded with his aunt to invite Lilith at the same time, artfully putting it that the opportunity of his escort was too good to be missed; and Mrs. Falkner, with whom he was a prime favourite, although she did not approve his aspirations, weakly agreed. And so here they were beneath the same roof, with the addition of his second sister, the blue-eyed Mabel, whose acquaintance we have already made.

The latter, in her soft, fair-haired, pink and roses style, was a very pretty girl. She, for her part, could count "coup" to a creditable extent, and among the latest scalps which she had hung to her dainty twenty-inch girdle was that of our friend Holmes.

This – idiot, we were going to say, looked back upon that deadly, monotonous, starved, dusty, flea-bitten coach-ride of three days and two nights as a species of Elysium, and in the result was perennially importuning Laurence to take a stroll down to Booyseus, "Just for a constitutional, you know." And the latter would laugh, and good-naturedly acquiesce. It was a cheap way of setting up a character for amiability, he would say to himself satirically; for as yet Holmes hardly suspected he was almost as powerfully drawn thither as Holmes was himself – more powerfully, perhaps – only, with the advantage of years and experience and cooler brain, he had himself more in hand.

"Instead of making a prize gooseberry of me, Holmes, as a very appropriate item against the 'silly' season," he said one day, "you had much better go over by yourself. You are getting into Falkner's black books. He hates me like poison, you know."

"But that's just why I want you along, Stanninghame. While he's trying to stand you off in the other quarter, I'm in it, don't you see?" replied the other, with whole-hearted ingenuousness.

Holmes had stated no more than the truth. Of all the "rivals," real or imaginary, whom the jealous George hated and feared, quâ rival, none could touch Laurence Stanninghame. For by this time it had become patent to his watchful eyes that among the swarms of visitors of the male, and therefore, to him, obnoxious sex, at whose coming Lilith's glance would brighten, and with whom she would converse with a kind of affectionate confidentiality when others were present, and apparently even more so when others were not, that objectionable personage was the said Laurence Stanninghame.

This being the case, it followed that George Falkner, looking out on the stoep one fine afternoon, and descrying the approach of his bugbear, stifled a bad cuss-word or two, and then exploded aloud in more approved and passworthy fashion.

"There's that bounder coming here again."

"'Bounder' being Dutch for somebody you detest – eh, George?" said Lilith sweetly.

"Confound it! That everlasting trying to be sharp is one of the most deadly things a man has to put up with. It's catching – eh, Lilith?" was the sneering retort.

"But who is it?" said Mrs. Falkner, who was short-sighted, or affected to be.

"Oh, the great god, Stanninghame, of course, and his pup, Holmes."

Now the ill-conditioned George had stirred up a hornet's nest, for his sister took up the parable.

"Well, there are lessons to be learned even from 'pups,'" said Mabel scathingly. "They are not always growling, at any rate."

"Oh, you're on the would-be smart lay, too? Didn't I say it was catching?" he jeered.

"Yes, and you say a great many things that are supremely foolish," retorted Mabel, turning up her tip-tilted nose a little more, in fine scorn.

"Well, I'm off to the camp," said George, with a sort of snarl, reaching for a hat. "Clearly, I'm not wanted here."

"You're not, if you're going to do nothing but make yourself fiendishly disagreeable," rejoined his sister, pertly pitiless. In reality she was very fond of him, and he of her, but he had trampled on a tender place; for she liked Holmes.

George banged on his hat, strode angrily to the door, and – got no farther. He did not see why he should leave the field clear to all comers, even if he were out of the running himself; a line of irresoluteness which affords an excellent exemplification of the remarks wherewith we have opened this chapter.

By all but George, who was excusably undemonstrative, the two new arrivals were greeted with customary cordiality.

"Why, Mr. Stanninghame, it seems quite a long time since we saw you last," said Mrs. Falkner, as they were all seated out on the stoep. "What have you been doing with yourself?"

"The usual thing – studying the share market, and – talking about it."

"And is the outlook still as bad as it was?"

"Worse. However, we must hope it'll go better."

"I hear that you and that queer man, Mr. Hazon, have become such friends, Mr. Stanninghame."

This was the sort of remark with which Laurence had scant patience, the more so that it met him at every turn. What concern was it of the Rand collectively who he chose to be friendly with, that every third person he met should rap out such kind of comment?

"Oh, we get along all right, Mrs. Falkner," he answered. "But then I have a special faculty for hitting it off with unpopular persons – possibly a kind of fellow-feeling. Besides, accepting ready-made judgments concerning other people does not commend itself to my mind on any score of logic or sound sense. It is just a trifle less insane than taking up other people's quarrels, but only just."

"I dare say you're right; only it is difficult for most of us to be so consistently, so faultlessly logical. No doubt most of the things they say about him are not true."

"But what are most of the things they say, Mrs. Falkner? Now I, for my part, never can get anybody to say anything. They will hint unutterables and look unutterables, but when it comes to saying– no, thank you, they are not taking any."

"But he is such a very mysterious personage. Not a soul here knows anything about him – about his affairs, I mean – and who he is."

"Perhaps that enhances his attractiveness in my eyes, Mrs. Falkner. There is prestige in the unknown."

"Not of a good kind, as a rule," she replied, and then stopped short, for a dry malicious cough on the part of George brought home to her the consciousness that she was putting her foot in it pretty effectively. For the same held good of the man to whom she was talking; about Laurence Stanninghame and his affairs not a soul there knew anything.

Not a soul? Yes, one, peradventure. For between himself and Lilith the interchange of ideas had been plenteous and frequent, and the subtile, sympathetic vein existing between them had deepened and grown apace. About himself and his affairs he had told her nothing, yet it is probable that he could tell her but little on this head that would be news in any sense of the word. Lilith's aunt, however, who was a good-hearted soul, without a grain of malice in her composition, felt supremely uncomfortable and quite savage with George, who was now grinning, sourly and significantly.

None of this by-play was lost upon Laurence, but he showed no consciousness. He knew that George Falkner detested him – detested him cordially, yet he in no wise reciprocated this dislike. He did not blame George. Probably he would have felt the same way himself, had he been in George's place and at George's age; for the latter had the advantage of him on the side of youth by at least ten years. He was inclined to like him, and at any rate was sorry for him, perhaps with a dash of pity that came near contempt. Poor George did give himself away so, and it was so foolish – so supremely foolish. Yet not for a moment did it occur to Laurence to efface himself in this connection. Duty? Hang duty! He had made a most ruinous muddle of his whole life through reverencing that fetich word. Honour? There was no breach of honour where there was no deception, no pretence. Consideration for others? Who on earth ever dreamt of considering him – when to do so would cost them anything, that is? Unselfishness? Everybody was selfish – everything even. What had he ever gained by striving to improve upon the universal law? Nothing – nothing good; everything bad – bad and deteriorating – morally and physically.