THE SIGN OF THE HEART

Chapter 9

"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 sixshooter. 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."

"It does. Say, though, what game were you up to with that plaything?" glancing

meaningly at the six-shooter lying on the table.

"This? Oh, I thought likely it wanted cleaning." "So?" and the corners of Hazon's saturnine mouth drooped in ever so faint a grin

as his keen eyes fixed themselves for a moment full upon the other's face.

Laurence had forgotten the tell-tale imprint left in the centre of his forehead by

the muzzle. "So? See here, Stanninghame, don't be at the trouble to invent any

more sick old lies, but put the thing away. It might go off. Don't mind me; I've

been through the same stage myself."

"Have you? How did it feel, eh?" said Laurence, with a sort of weary

imperturbability, filling his pipe and pushing the pouch across the table to his

friend.

"Bad. Ah, that's right! Instead of fooling about 'cleaning' guns at such times, fill

your pipe. That's the right lay, depend upon it."

Laurence made no reply, but lighting up, puffed away in silence. His thoughts

were wandering from Hazon.

"Broke, eh?" queried the latter sententiously.

"Stony."

"So? Ah, I knew it'd come; I knew it'd come."

This remark, redolent as it was of that sort of cheap prophecy which consists of

being wise after the event, Laurence did not deem worthy of answer.

"And I was waiting for it to come," pursued Hazon. "Say, now, why not make a

trip up country with me?"

"That sounds likely, doesn't it? Didn't I just tell you I was stony broke?"

"You did. The very reason why I made my proposal."

"Don't see it. If I were to sell out every rag of my scrip now, I couldn't raise

enough to pay my shot towards the outfit. And I couldn't even render service in

kind, for I've had no experience of waggons and all that sort of thing. So where

does it come in?"

"It does come in. You can render service in kind—darned much so. I don't want

you to pay any shot towards the outfit. See here, Stanninghame, if you go up

country with me now, you'll come back a fairly rich man, or——"

"Or what?" "You'll never come back at all."

In spite of his normal imperturbability, Laurence was conscious of a quickening

of the pulses. The suggestion of adventure—of an adventure on a magnificent

scale, and with magnificent results if successful, as conveyed in the other's reply,

caused the blood to surge hotly through his frame. He had been strangely drawn

towards this dark, reticent, solitary individual, beneath whose quiet demeanour

lurked such a suggestion of force and power, who shunned the friendship of all

even as all shunned his, who had been moderately intimate even with none but

himself. This wonderful land—the dim, mysterious recesses of its interior—what

possibilities did it not hold? And in groping into such possibilities this, above all

others, was the comrade he would have chosen to have at his side. Not that he

had forgotten the words of dark warning spoken by Rainsford and others, but at

such he laughed.

"Are you taking it on any?" queried Hazon, after a pause of silence on the part of

both.

"I am. I don't mind telling you, Hazon, that life, so far as I am concerned, was no

great thing before."

"I guessed as much," assented the other, with a nod of the head.

"Quite. Now, I'm broke, stony broke, and it's more than ever a case of stealing

away to hang one's self in a well. I tell you squarely, I'd walk into the jaws of the

devil himself to effect the capture of the oof-bird."

"Yes? How are your nerves, Stanninghame?"

"Hard—hard as nails now. That's not to say they have been always."

"Quite so. Ever seen a man's head cut off?"

"Two."

"So? Where was that?" said Hazon, ever so faintly surprised at receiving an

affirmative reply.

"In Paris. A press friend of mine had to go and see two fellows guillotined, and

managed to work me in with him. We were as close to the machine, too, as it

was possible to get."

"Did it make you feel sick at all?" "Not any. The other Johnny took it pretty badly, though. I had to fill him up with

cocktails before he could eat any breakfast."

"That's a very good test. I never expected you to say you had stood it. Well, you

may see a little more in that line before we come through. Can't make omelettes

without breaking eggs though, as the French say. Well now, Stanninghame, I've

had my eye on you ever since you came up here. I'm pretty good at reading

people, and I read you. 'That's the man for me,' I said to myself. 'He's come to

the end of his tether. He's just at that stage of life when it's kill or cure, and he

means kill or cure.'" "Well, we had talked enough together to let you into that much, eh, Hazon?" said

Laurence, with a laugh which was not altogether free from a dash of scepticism.

"We have. Still, I'm not gassing when I tell you I knew all about it before. How?

you want to ask. Because I've been through it all myself. I thought, 'That chap is

throwing his last card; if he loses, he's my man.' And you have lost."

"But what's the object of the trip, Hazon? Gold?"

"No."

"Stones?"

"Not stones."

"Ivory, then?"

"That's it; ivory," and a gleam of saturnine mirth shot across the other's dark

features.

"You have to go a good way up for that now, don't you, Hazon?"

"Yes, a good way up. And it's contraband."

"The devil it is!"

Hazon nodded. Then he went to the door and looked out.

"Leave it open. It's better so. We can hear any one coming," he said, returning.

"And now, Stanninghame, listen carefully, and we'll talk out the scheme. If

you're on, well and good; if you're dead off it, why, I told you I had read you,

and you're not the man to let drop by word or hint to a living soul any of what

has passed between us."

"Quite right, Hazon. You never formed a safer judgment in your life."

Then, for upwards of an hour, the pair talked together; and when the luncheon

bell rang, and Laurence Stanninghame took his seat at the table along with the

rest, to talk scrip in the scathingly despondent way in which the darling topic

was conversationally dealt with in these days, he was conscious that he had

turned the corner of a curious psychological crisis in his life. In the afternoon he took his way down to Booyseus. Would he find Lilith in? It

was almost too much good luck to hope to find her alone. As he walked, he was

filled with a strange elation. The dull pain of a very near parting was largely

counteracted by the manner of it. Such a parting had been before his mind for

long; but then he would have gone forth broken down, ruined, more utterly

without hope in life than ever. Now it was different. He was going forth upon an

adventure fraught with all manner of stirring potentialities—one from which he

would return wealthy, or, as his friend and thenceforth comrade had said, one

from which he would not return at all.

Had his luck already begun to turn, he thought? As he mounted the stoep Lilith

herself came forth to meet him. It struck him that the omen was a good one.

"Why, you are becoming quite a stranger," she said. But the note of gladness

underlying the reproach did not escape him, nor a certain lighting up of her face

as they clasped hands, with the subtile lingering pressure now never absent from

that outwardly formal method of greeting.

"Am I?" he answered, thinking how soon, how very soon, he would become one

in reality. "But you were going out?" For she had on her hat and gloves, and

carried a sunshade.

"I was. You are only just in time—only just. But I won't now that you have

come."

"On the contrary, I want you to. I want you to come out with me, and at once,

before an irruption of bores renders that manœuvre impracticable. Will you?"

"Of course I will. Which way shall we go? Up to the town?"

"Not much. Right in the opposite direction, and as far away from it as possible.

Are you alone?"

"Not quite alone. Aunt is having her afternoon sleep; but May and George went

to the town this morning. They intended to have lunch at the Stevensons', and

then go on to the cricket ground. There's a match or something on to-day. George

was cross because I wouldn't go too; but I had a touch of headache, and went to

sleep instead. And oh, Laurence, I had such a horrible dream. It was about you."

"Oh, was it?" The words rapped themselves out quickly, nervously, more so than

she had ever heard him talk before. But the awful and ghastly crisis of the

morning was recalled by her words. "About me? Tell it to me." "I can't. It was all rather vague, and yet so real. I dreamed that you were in the

face of some strange, some horrible danger, against which I was powerless to

warn you. I struggled to, even prayed. Then I was able. I warned you, and the

danger seemed to pass. And oh, Laurence, I woke up crying!"

"Your dream was a true one, my Lilith. No, I will not tell you how or in what

way. And will you always be empowered to warn me—to save me, my sweet

guardian angel? I shall need it often enough during the next—er—in the time

that is coming."

His face had taken on an unwonted expression, and his tones were suspiciously

husky. Lilith looked wonderingly at him, and her own expression was grave and

earnest. The sweet eyes became dewy with unshed tears.

"You know I will, if I may," she answered, stealing a hand into his for a

sympathetic pressure, as they walked side by side.

They had been walking at a good pace over the open, treeless veldt, and the

roofs of Booyseus were now quite dwarfed behind them.

"But, tell me," she continued, "are things any better? Oh, it is dreadful that you

should have come all this way only to be more completely ruined than before—

dreadful! I am always thinking about it. Yet I am of a hopeful disposition, as I

told you. I never despair. Things will take a turn. They must."

"They have taken a turn, Lilith, but not in the direction you mean. I am going

away."

She started. She knew that those words must one day be spoken. Now that they

had been, they hurt.

"Back to England?"

The words came out breathlessly, and with a sort of gasp.

"No, not there. I am going up country, into the interior."

"Oh!"

There was relief in the ejaculation. For the moment she lost sight of all that was

involved by such a destination. They would still be in the same land. That was

something—or seemed so. Now all the latent instincts, never half drawn forth, surged like molten volcano

fires through Laurence Stanninghame's soul. The dead and stormy nature, slain

within him, revivified, burst forth into warm, pulsating, struggling, rebellious

life. This striving of heart against heart, this desperate effort still to patch up the

rents in the flimsy veil, moved him infinitely. The veldt on the Witwatersrand is

as open and devoid of cover as a billiard-table. The two were visible for miles.

But for this he knew not what he might have done—rather he knew full well

what he certainly would have done.

They took refuge in practical topics; they talked of the up-country trip.

"You are very friendly with that Mr. Hazon, are you not, Laurence? Nobody else

is, and there are strange stories, not told, but hinted about him. He is a man I

should be almost afraid of, and yet half admire. He strikes me as one who would

be a terrible and relentless enemy, but as true as steel, true to self-sacrificing

point, to a friend."

"That's exactly my opinion. Now, Hazon and I suit each other down to the

ground. I have an especial faculty, remember, for getting on with unpopular

individuals."

Thus they talked, and at length time forced them to turn their steps homeward.

And as the sun rays began to slant golden upon the surrounding veldt, it seemed

to Laurence that even that triste wilderness took on a glow that was more than of

earth. How that afternoon, that walk, would dwell within his memory, stamped

there indelibly! He thought how the day had opened, of that gnawing mental

struggle culminating in—what? But for this girl at his side he would now be—

what? She had saved him, she alone—her confidence in him, her high opinion of

him, and—her love. Yes, her love. He looked upon her as she walked beside

him, entrancing beyond words in her rich, warm beauty, a perfect dream of grace

and symmetry. Even the hot sunlight seemed to linger, as with a kiss, upon the

dark, brilliant loveliness of her eyes, on the soft curve of her lips.

"You are cruel, sorceress," he broke forth. "You have made yourself look

especially enchanting because soon I shall see you no more. You are looking

perfect."

She flashed a bright smile upon him, but it seemed to fade into a shadow, as of

pain.

"Am I? Well, Laurence, one knows instinctively when one is looking one's best. It would be affectation to pretend otherwise. And I love to make myself look

bright and sweet and attractive for you. And now—oh, dear, we are nearly home

again. Come in with me now and stay the evening. We shall not be alone

together again, I fear—this evening, I mean. But you will be going away so soon

now, and I must see as much of you as I can."

He needed no persuasion. And as Lilith had said, they were not alone together

again. But even the jealous George, who came back from the town more

cantankerous than ever on learning of this addition, found balm in Gilead. That

brute Stanninghame was going away up-country soon, he put it. Heaven send a

convenient shot of malaria or a providential assegai prod to keep him there

forever!