The Sign of the Spider

"Perhaps – in fact, I must have, because I understand so thoroughly what you mean; but it must have been a very, very long time ago."

His tone was that of one gravely amused, indulgently caressing. Heavens! he was thinking. The contrast here was quite delicious; in fact, it was unique. If only Lilith could have seen into his thoughts at that moment, if only she had had the faintest inkling as to their nature an hour or so back. Still something in his look or in his tone sobered her.

"Ah, Laurence, forgive me," she cried. "How unfeeling I am, throwing my light-heartedness at you in this way, when things are going so badly with you."

"Unfeeling? Why, child, I love to see you rejoicing in the bright happiness of your youth and glowing spirits. I would not have you otherwise for all the world."

"No, I ought not to feel that way just now, when you – when so many all round us – are passing through such a dreadfully anxious and critical time. Tell me, Laurence, are things brightening for you even a little?"

"Not even a little; the case is all the other way. But don't you think about it, child. Be happy while you can and as long as you can. It is the worst possible philosophy to afflict yourself over the woes of other people."

Now the tears did indeed well to Lilith's eyes, but assuredly this time they were not tears of joy and thankfulness. One or two even fell.

"Don't sneer, Laurence. You must keep the satire and cynicism for all the world, if you will, but keep the inner side of your nature for me," said she, and in the sweet, pleading ring in her voice there was no lack of feeling now. "You have had about ten times more than your share of all the dark and bitter side of life. You will not refuse my sympathy – my deepest, most heartfelt sympathy – will you, dear? Ah, would that it were only of any use at all!"

"Your sympathy? Why, I value and prize it more than anything else in the world – in fact it is the only thing in the world I do value. 'Of any use at all?' It is of some use – of incalculable use, perhaps."

A smile lit up the clouded sadness of her face.

"If I only thought that," she said. "Still it's more than sweet to hear you say so. Tell me, Laurence, what was the strange sympathetic magnetism that existed between us from the very first – yes, long before we talked together? I was conscious of it, if you were not – a sympathy that makes it easy for me to follow you, when you talk so darkly that nobody else could."

"Oh, there is such a sympathy, then?"

"Of course there is, and you know it."

"Perhaps. Tell me, Lilith, do you still cherish certain fusty and antiquated superstitions which make that good results and beneficial can never come out of abstract wrong? Abstract wrong being for present purposes a mere conventionality."

She looked at him for a moment. The interchange of that steady silent glance was sufficient.

"No, I do not," she said.

"I thought not. Well, that being so, you can perhaps realize of what 'use,' as you put it, that sweetest gift of your deepest, most heartfelt sympathy may be to its object, and in its results wholly beneficial. Do you follow?"

"Why, of course. And is it really in my power to brighten life for you ever so little? Ah, that would be happiness indeed."

"Continue to think so, then, for it is in your power to do just that, and you are doing it at this moment. And, child, when you feel that sense of boundless elation with the joy of living, add this to the happiness you are feeling, not to lessen but to enhance it."

"I will do that, Laurence," she said. "And if the consciousness that you have what you say is of use to you, let it be to strengthen you. Clear-headed, strong as you are, dear, there must come hours of terrible gloom, even to you. Well, when such come on, think of our talk to-day and strive to throw them off because of it – because of the strengthening influences of it."

Thus she spoke, bravely, but beneath her outwardly sweet serenity a hard battle was being waged. She was fighting with her innermost self; striving hard to retain her self-control. She would not even raise her eyes to his lest she should lose it, lest she should betray herself. And all the while the chords of her innermost being thrilled and quivered with an indescribable tenderness, taking words within her mind: "My Laurence, my love, my ideal, what would I not do to brighten life for you – you for whom life is all too hard! I would draw down that life-weary head till it rested on my breast; I would wind my arms round your neck and whisper into your tired ear words of comfort, and of soothing, and of love. Ah, how I would love you, care for you, shield your ear from ever being hurt by a discordant word! And I would draw your heart within mine to rest there, and would feel life all too blissfully, ineffably sweet to live."

His voice broke in upon her meditations, causing her a very perceptible start, so rapt were they.

"What is the subject of your very deep thought, my Lilith? Are you wreathing some strange and hitherto unsuspected spell, sorceress?"

The tone, playful, half sad, nearly upset her self-control then and there. Was it with design that, after the first keen penetrating gaze, he half averted his glance?

"I am afraid I am poor company," she said rather lamely. "I must have been silent quite a long time. I was thinking – thinking out some knotty problem which would draw down your superior lordship's indulgent pity," with a flash of all her former bright spirits.

"And its nature?"

"If you will promise not to sneer I'll tell you. You will? Well, then, I was thinking whether I would have that gold-yellow dress done up with mauve sleeves or black, for Wednesday week."

Whether he believed her or not it was impossible to determine from the demeanour wherewith this statement was received. She was inclined to think he did, which spoke volumes for his tactfulness; and is it not of the very essence of that far too uncommon virtue to impress your interlocutor with the conviction that you believe exactly as he – or she – wants you to? In point of fact, there was something heroically pathetic in the way in which each mind strove to veil from the other its inner workings, while every day showed more and more the impossibility of keeping up the figment.

Yet, for all this, there were times when the possession, the certainty of Lilith's – "sympathy" she had called it, would fail to cheer, to strengthen. Darker and darker grew the days, more hopeless the prospect, and soon Laurence Stanninghame found himself not merely face to face with poverty, but on the actual verge of destitution. Grim, fell spectres haunted his waking hours no less than his dreams. Did he return from a few hours of hard exercise with a fine appetite, that healthy possession served but to remind him how soon he would be without the means of gratifying it. He pictured himself utterly destitute, and through his sleeping visions would loom hideous spectres of want and degradation. Day or night, waking or sleeping, it was ever the same; the horror of the position was ever before him and would not be laid. His mind was a hell to him, his heart of lead, his hard, clear brain deadly, self-pitiless in its purpose. Obviously, there was no further room in the world for such as he.

CHAPTER IX.

HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL

"I'd sell my immortal soul, twenty times over, for a few thousands of the damnation stuff; but as that article isn't negotiable, why, better make an end of the whole bother."

Thus Laurence to himself, though unconsciously aloud. His room was an end one on the stoep, and the door was open. The time was the middle of the morning, and he sat thinking.

His thoughts were black and bitter – as how indeed should they be otherwise? He had come to this place to make one final effort to retrieve his fortunes. That effort had failed. He had put what little remained to him into various companies – awaiting the boom – and no boom had ensued. On the contrary, things had never looked more dead than at this moment, never since the Rand had been opened up. The bulk of the scrip owned by him was now barely saleable at any price; for the residue he might have obtained a quarter of the price he had paid for it. He was ruined.

He was not alone in this – not by a very large number. But what sort of consolation was that? He had received letters too by the last mail. Money! money! That was their burden. He tossed them aside half read. What mattered anything? The accursed luck which had followed him throughout life had stuck to him most consistently – would do so until the end. The end? Ha, had not "the end" come? What more was left? More squalor, more deterioration – gradually dragging him down, down. Heaven knew what he might come to, what final degradation might not be his. The end? Yes, better let it be the end – now, here – while in the full possession of his faculties, in the full possession of the dignity of his self-respect. The dead blank hopelessness of life! Better end it, now, here.

He rose and went to the open door. All was quiet. The occupants of the other rooms were away, drowning their cares in liquor saloons, or feverishly hanging around 'Change to grasp at any possible straw. He was about to close the door. No, it had better remain as it was. The thing would look more accidental that way.

He returned into the room, and unlocking his portmanteau, took out a six-shooter. It was loaded in every chamber, for in those days such a companion was not far from a necessity in the great restless gold-town. He sat down at the table, and, placing the weapon in front of him, passed his fingers up and down the blue shiny metal in a strange, half-meditative way. Then, grasping the butt, he placed the muzzle against his forehead.

The hard metal imprinted a cold ring just between the eyes. He did not flinch at the grisly contact. His hand was as firm as a rock. He must depress the muzzle just a trifle – it would make more certain. He began to press the trigger, ever so faintly, then a little more firmly, strangely wondering how much more imperceptible a degree of pressure would be required to produce the roaring, shattering shock which should whirl him into the dark night of Death.

Well, but – afterwards? Who knew? If it were as they taught, even then it could be no augmentation of the hopelessness of this life. Perhaps they might make a devil of him, he thought, with grim satisfaction, as a black wave of hatred towards humanity at large surged through his brain. In that eventuality his rôle of tormentor as well as tormented would be a congenial one.

The dark night of death! What would it matter about money then, and all the sordid and pitiful wretchednesses entailed by the want of it? A leap in the dark! It held all the excitement of an unknown adventure to the man who sat there, pressing the muzzle of the deadly weapon hard against his forehead. The additional pressure of so much as a hair's weight upon that trigger now!

Could it be that the man's guardian angel was with him still, that a saving presence really hovered about him in the prosaic noonday? A strange chord seemed to thrill and vibrate within his brain, bringing before his vision the face of Lilith Ormskirk. There it was, as he had beheld it but a few days since; but now the sweet eyes were troubled, as though clouded with pain and bitter disappointment.

"You, whom I thought so strong, are weak after all! You, to whom I loved to listen as the very ideal of a well-balanced mind and judgment, are about to do what will stamp your memory forever as that of one who was insane! Have I been no more to you than that – I who thought to have brightened and strengthened your life all that within me lay? It cannot be! You shall not do it."

He could not. The voice thrilled to his hearing, as plainly, as articulately as it had ever done when she had stood before him. He laid down the weapon, and passed his hand in a dazed sort of manner over his brows. Laurence Stanninghame was saved.

He stared around, somewhat unsteadily, as though more than half expecting to behold her there in the room. What did it all mean? At any rate she had saved him. Was it for good or for ill? Then the full irony of the position struck upon his satirical soul. His mind went back over his acquaintance with Lilith. What if his disillusioning had been a little less complete? What if he had fled the rich attractiveness of her presence, had shunned her with heroic scrupulousness, acting from some fiddle-faddle notion of so-called "honour"? Just this, he, Laurence Stanninghame, would at that moment be lying a lifeless thing, with brains scattered all over the room – a memory, a standing monument of commonplace weakness. But she had saved him from this – had saved him as surely and completely as though she had struck the weapon from his hand. Was it for good or for ill?

He fell thinking again. Had he indeed played his last card, or did one more solitary trump yet lurk up his sleeve unknown to himself? No, it could not be; and his thoughts grew dark again. Yet he was safe now – safe from himself. Lilith had done it – her influence, her love!

He thought long and thought hard, but still hopelessly. And again, unconsciously, he broke out into soliloquy.

"Yes, I'd sell my soul to the devil himself!"

"Maybe the old man would be dead off the deal. Likely he reckons you a dead cert. already, Stanninghame."

Laurence did not start at the voice, which was that of Hazon, whose shadow darkened the door. The up-country man at that moment especially noticed that he did not.

"Dare say you're right, Hazon," was the reply. "That's it, come in," which the other had already done. "Talking out loud, was I? It's a d – bad habit, and grows on one."