The Sign of the Spider

"But you – are you staying here?"

"Well, no. I have been trying to kill time until this afternoon. I am leaving by the Alnwick Castle."

"Oh! By the Alnwick Castle?" she repeated again – and in the catch in her voice, and the quickness of utterance, he knew she was talking at random, for the sake of saying something, in fact.

"Do you care to hear a little of what has befallen me since I went?" he said. "Then let us turn in here," as she made a mute but eager gesture of assent.

They had gained the entrance to the oak avenue at the back of Government House. Strolling up this, they turned into the beautiful Botanical Gardens. Nobody was about, save a gardener or two busied with their work.

"What I am going to tell you is so marvellous that you will probably refuse to believe it," he said, after narrating the incident of the sign upon the metal box which had arrested the uplifted weapons of the unsparing Ba-gcatya, and, of course, editing out all that might have revealed the real nature of the expedition. "I have never breathed one word of it to any living being – not even to those who were with me. I would rather you did not either, Lilith, because it is too strange for anybody to believe, and – for other reasons."

She gave the required promise, and he drew forth the box. At sight of this relic of the past, that sweet, entrancing, if profitless past – Lilith could no longer quite keep herself in hand. The tears welled forth, falling upon the metal box itself – hallowing, as it were, the sweet charm of its saving power.

"Your love had power to save one life, you see," he went on in a cold, even voice, intended to strengthen him against himself. "But look, now – see those marks on the lid, just discernible? Now – listen."

And Lilith did listen; and at the description of the awful rock prison, with its skeleton bones, the long hours of helpless suspense and despair – and the final struggle in the ghastly moonlight; the struggle for life with the appalling monster that tenanted it, her eyes dilated with horror, and with pallid face and gasping lips she begged him not to go on, so great a hold did the incident take upon her imagination, even there, in the blaze of the broad midday sunlight.

"I have done now," he said. "Well, Lilith – you see what that token of your love has rescued me from. It was given as an amulet or charm, and right well has it fulfilled its purpose. But – to what end?"

"Did you – did you come back with what you went for," she broke forth at last, as with an effort.

"Yes. Therein, too, you proved yourself a true prophet. And now tell me something about yourself."

"Were you – angry with me when you heard what I had done, Laurence?" she said, raising her eyes full to his.

"Angry? No. Why should I be? Your life is your own, though, as a rule, sacrificing ones' self to save somebody else, as your aunt rather gave me to understand was the case here, is lamentably apt to turn out a case of throwing away one's life with both hands. It is too much like cutting one's own throat to save somebody else from being hanged."

"And is that your way of wishing me well, Laurence?" she said reproachfully.

"No. I wish you nothing but well. It would be futile to say 'happiness,' I suppose."

"The happiness of doing one's duty is a hard kind of happiness, after all," she said, with a sad little smile.

"Yes. An excellent copybook maxim, but for all purposes of real life – bosh. Am I not in my own person a living instance to that effect? As soon as I pitched 'duty' to the dogs, why then, and only then, did I begin to travel in the contrary direction to those sagacious animals myself – which, of course, is simply appalling morality, but – it's life. Well, child, make the best of your life, and prove a shining exception to the dismal rule."

"Do you remember our talk on board the dear old Persian? Yes, we had so many, you were going to say; but I mean our first one, the first serious one – that night, leaning over the side, I asked you: 'Shall I make a success of life?' Do you remember your answer?"

"As well as though it were yesterday. I replied that the chances were pretty even, inclining, if anything, to the negative. Well, and was I right?"

Lilith turned away her head. He could see that the tears were not far away. Her lips were quivering.

"I likewise told you you were groping after an ideal," he went on.

"And I found it. Perhaps I had already found it when I asked the question. Oh, Laurence, life is all wrong, all horribly wrong and out of joint," she burst forth, with a passionate catch in her voice, as she turned and faced him once more.

"Yes, I know it is. I came to that conclusion a goodish while ago, and have never seen any reason since to doubt its absolute accuracy."

"All out of joint!" she repeated hopelessly. "It is as if our lives had been placed opposite each other on parallel lines, and then one of the lines had been moved. Then our lives lay apart forever."

"That's about it."

She was not deceived. His tone was hard; to all appearances indifferent. Yet not to her ear did it so ring. She knew the immensity of effort that kept it – and what lay behind it – under control. Then she broke down entirely.

"Laurence, my love – my doubly lost love!" she uttered through a choking whirlwind of sobs. "Teach me some of your strength – some of your hardness. Then, perhaps, I can bear things better."

"A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, remember, and perhaps you have shown me the weak link here – that of my 'hardness.' Child, I would not teach you an iota of it, if I could. It is good for me, but no woman was ever the better for it yet. But keep yourself in hand now. We are in a public place, although a comparatively secluded one. For your own sake, do not give way. And for the very reason that I feared to stir up old memories, I had intended to go through without attempting to see you once more. Tell me one thing – would it have been better had I done so?"

"Better had you done so? No – no. A thousand times no – Laurence, my darling. I shall treasure up this last hour we have spent together – shall treasure it as the sweetest of memories as long as life shall last."

"And I shall treasure up that reply. Listen! Twice has your love stood between me and death, as I have told you. Yet of the third time I have never told you. It was the day I decided to go up-country. I had done with life. The pistol was pressed hard against my forehead. I was gradually trying how much more pressure the trigger would bear. A hair's breadth would have done it. Then it seemed that your voice was in my ear. Your form stood before me. I tell you, Lilith, you saved me that day as surely as though you had actually been within the room. I put the pistol down."

"I did this?" wonderingly. "Why, that must have been the day I had that awful dream."

"It was. Hazon came in just after, and we made our plans for the expedition. I remember telling you of it that same afternoon."

"Why, then, if this is so, it must have been with some great purpose," she cried, brightening up, a strange, wistful smile illumining her face. "Oh, how glad I am you have told me this, for now I can see comfort – strength. In some mysterious way it seems as if our two lives were intertwined, that it would ever be in my power in some dim way to watch over yours. My darling, my darling – until this moment I had not the strength to part with you – now I have. Let me do so before it leaves me, for we have been here a very long time. I would have seen you off on board, but that I dare not. I simply lack the strength of will to bear that, Laurence, my dear one. We had better say good-bye here – not in the crowded street. Then I will go – alone."

Both had risen, and were holding each other's hands, were gazing into each other's eyes. Thus they stood for a moment. Nobody was in sight. Lilith lifted her lips, and they moved in a barely audible murmur.

"Good-bye, my ideal!"

One long, close, farewell kiss, and she was gone. And the man, as he flung himself back on the garden seat, with his eyes fixed dreamily on the jutting end of the massive rock wall of Table Mountain towering on high to the cloudless blue, realized at that moment no elation such as one might feel who had found considerable wealth, and was returning full of hard, firm health to enjoy the same. More than ever at that moment did life seem to him all out of joint – more than ever, if possible; for his had been one of those lives which, from the cradle to the grave, never seems to be anything else.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CONCLUSION

"Well, Fay, I think that's about enough for one lesson. Down you get."

"Just once more round the park, father," was the pleading rejoinder. "I'm quite beginning to feel at home on Tricksie now."

Laurence gave way, and Tricksie darted off, perhaps a trifle too vivaciously for a learner of the noble art of horsemanship. But the girl kept her seat bravely, and the conceded scamper being brought to a close, she came round to where Laurence awaited, and slid from her saddle.

"Father, I won't have you call it 'lessons' any more," she cried. "I can ride now; can ride – do you hear!"

"Oh, can you?" laughed Laurence, thinking what a pretty picture she made standing there with the full light of the setting sun tinting the golden waves of her hair, playing upon the great dark eyes. Indeed, he owned inwardly to a weakness, a soft place as strange as it was unwonted, for this child of his. Yet she was something more than a child now, quite a tall slip of a girl at the angular age; but there was nothing awkward or angular even then about Fay Stanninghame.

"Well, hitch up the pony to the rail there," he went on. "Those two scamps can take him in when they are tired of careering around and whooping like Sioux on the war-path."

The two boys, also happy in the possession of a pony apiece, had lost no time either in learning to ride it.

"There's no part of a fool about either of those chaps," said Laurence, more to himself than to the girl, as he watched the two circling at full gallop in and out among the trees, absolutely devoid of fear. "Let's stroll a little, Fay; or would you rather go in?"

"Of course, I wouldn't," linking her arm in his. "Father, are we very rich now?"

"Oh, pretty warm. Think it fun, eh, child?"

"Fun? Why it's heavenly. This lovely place! Oh, sometimes I dream that this is all a dream, and then – to wake up and find it real!"