The White Hand and the Black Part 41

"So it was. I have had a great many years wherein to look back, and I have never been able to blame myself in the affair in any single particular. Well at the time my first feeling was one of intense relief--shocking again, wasn't it? Then a horrid thought struck me.

Our relations with each other were well known, were matter of common scandal. I began to feel the tightening of a noose, for who the devil was likely to believe my version? Just then I saw someone watching me.

"I must have been mad. I don't know how it happened, but instead of treating any witness as a friendly and invaluable one, I at once a.s.sumed this one's hostility. I decided that one of us must not leave the spot alive. I flung myself upon him and--didn't we have a tussle! Well, he did exactly the same thing--stepped back into a crevice, and--stayed there. That man was Manamandhla."

"Then he got out?"

"Well, of course. But I didn't know he was alive from that night until a few weeks before you came. And he saved all four of our lives--but that part of the story you know. Well that's all--and, thank G.o.d it is."

The narrator closed his eyes wearily and lay still. The listener sat there, still holding his hand. Her glance rested upon the firm, fine features, and a great yearning was round her heart. What a tragedy had this man's life been. Her thoughts went round to Edala. Had she been in Edala's place would she have taken everything on trust? She thought she would: she was sure she would.

"Why didn't you tell Edala all this, Inqoto?" she asked. "When she was old enough I mean."

"She wouldn't have believed me. Do you?"

He had opened his eyes and was fixing them full on her face. But not the slightest sign of doubt or misgiving did he read there. On the contrary the expression was one of complete trust.

"Haven't I already said so?" she answered.

"Do you know, Evelyn, since I have been lying here I have found myself wis.h.i.+ng you had never found us out at all."

She looked hurt. "Why, Inqoto?"

"Because child," and he smiled a little at her still slight difficulty with the d.i.c.k. "I am wondering how I am ever going to do without you again. You did threaten to take yourself off once you know."

"Well I can't inflict myself upon you for ever," she answered, with a laugh. "But I have been very happy at Sipazi--very."

"Happy? I should have thought you'd have been bored out of your immortal soul, shut up all this time with only another girl and a sober-sided, boring, old fogey."

"Stop that now, Inqoto," she said quickly, dropping her other hand on to his, and there was a ring in her voice that his ear might or might not have caught. The air seemed charged with some sort of unwonted force.

"Well, what I was trying to screw up courage to say was this," he went on. "If you have been so happy here why not continue to be so on the same terms, for the rest of our natural lives--that is if you can put up with the old fogey aforesaid 'for better or for worse,' as the rigmarole has it, probably the latter? What do you say, dear?"

A flush had come over her face, giving way to a momentary paleness, then it returned. The light in her eyes burned dear and soft. She looked wonderfully attractive.

"I say--'Yes,'" she answered. "But oh, dearest, are you sure of yourself. You are weak and ill you know. Had we not better treat this as though it had not been until you are your own strong self again, and even then if you wish it?"

"No--we had not. Well? You said yes just now. Say it again."

She did so. And she bent down and kissed him again, this time on the lips.

"I've never seen anyone like you before," she whispered tenderly.

"Never."

"Gee-yupp! Strikes me I've looked in at the wrong time."

Evelyn sprang back, flus.h.i.+ng crimson. Hyland was standing in the doorway, with the most mischievously comical expression of countenance.

The coolest of the three was the patient himself.

"No you haven't," said the latter. "Come in Hyland, and shut the door.

Evelyn here has agreed to take me on for better or for worse--probably worse, I tell her. What d'you think of that?"

"Good old step-ma!" cried Hyland, seizing hold of Evelyn, and bestowing upon her cheeks a hearty kiss--Hyland was nothing if not boisterous. "I say dad, though, I've got a bit of news for you--and very much of the same sort. Edala's gone and got engaged to that fellow Elvesdon. What d'you think of that?"

"Well, it doesn't come upon me as a wild surprise. When did they put up that bargain?"

"Now. This afternoon; half an hour ago."

"That's odd, the coincidence I mean. So did we."

Hyland whistled.

"My hat!" he exclaimed, "but it's a rum world."

"--And very much given to match-making," supplied Thornhill complacently.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE.

ENVOI.

The table was laid out in the cool shade of the fig-trees, but the birds which loved to depredate in crowds in the garden at Sipazi had taken themselves off to the further end of the same with that object, for it was not quiet here; not by any means. A small, but very jovial party was a.s.sembled, a party of six. And it was Christmas day.

The afternoon heat of the midsummer day s.h.i.+mmered without, but there was no hot wind, wherefore here in the cool shade it was delightful. Nearly a year had gone by since we first made acquaintance with the spot, and the party here gathered; nearly half a year since we last saw the latter brought safely through the times of peril and anxiety which that year had brought forth. And upon the third finger of the left hand of two members of that party was a plain ring of somewhat suspicious brightness--which had not been there then.

"I say," cried Hyland, getting up to pop off another of the gold-headed bottles which stood in a _vaatje_ of water. "We've drank all our own healths and everybody else's. Now we ought to drink the health of this jolly ghost party."

"Contradiction in terms, boy," said his father. "Who ever heard of a 'jolly' ghost?"

"Well, ain't we? We're all in white."

"Lucky we're not all in black," said Edala, half seriously.

"Hear--hear!" cried Prior.

"Appropriate colour for Christmas," put in Evelyn.

"And the heat," supplied Elvesdon.

"Who ever saw a ghost with a very red and skinned nose either?" observed Edala, with a severe glance at her brother, whose face still bore traces of the exposure of a hard campaign.

"Look here, Mrs Elvesdon, don't you make personal remarks," retorted Hyland. "Two can play at that game, and I for one never saw you look so dashed fetching as you're doing now--and that's saying a great deal.

Gee-yupp!" pretending to dodge the bottle which his sister pretended to throw at him. "Elvesdon, keep your wife in order, can't you. It's a bad example for us two old bachelors--eh. Prior? Two poor old bachelors!"

"The remedy for that pitiable state lies in your own hands, Hyland,"

said Evelyn serenely. "Why don't you apply it?"