Blue Aloes Part 14

"He shall pay me my price for this," she promised herself softly, "and it shall not be a light one."

(Hugh Hading had paid his price for her girlhood; Lundi Druro should pay for the rest of her life!)

Only one thing could put her right with her own pride and before the little world which had witnessed the slight, and that she would exact--the announcement that he was hers, body and soul, to do with as she pleased. That the honour would be an empty one, this evening's _deroute_ would seem to have demonstrated; he had proved once more that he was no man's man, and no woman's man, either; he belonged to his sins, and his weaknesses, and his failings. But, for the moment, it would be enough for Marice Hading that he should propose to her and be accepted. Her time would come later--afterward. There were many modes of recompense of which she was past mistress, many subtle means of repayment for injuries received. Such a mind as hers was not lacking in refined methods of inflicting punishment. It would be proved to him, in bitter retribution, that Marice Hading could not be trifled with and neglected--_forgotten for a game of cards_!

In the meantime, she eased her anger a little by snubbing Tryon, when he came to claim a waltz she had given him early in the week. Looking at him with cool and lovely disdain as she leaned on the arm of the great politician who still lingered with her, she disclaimed all recollection of any such engagement.

"You should be careful not to make such mistakes, Mr. Tryon," she said haughtily.

"_Soit_! The mistake is mine as well as the loss," he murmured gracefully, knowing very well what was his real crime. "But prophets must be prepared for losses. In olden days they have even been known to lose their heads for prophesying too truly." And on that he made a bow, and returned to Gay, whom he had left in their sitting-out place, which was his car. She had danced but little all the evening and seemed lost in dark thoughts.

"Tired?" he asked, leaning on the door beside her.

"No; but I'm sick of this dance," she said fiercely. "Take me for a spin, d.i.c.k."

"Right. But the roads are pretty bad in the dark, you know."

Gay pondered a moment.

"The Selukine road isn't bad"--she paused a moment, then slowly added, "and the road to Glendora."

It was Tryon's turn to ponder. The road to the Glendora was the worst in the country, but it didn't take him long to read the riddle.

"Come on, then!" he said abruptly. "Shall I get your cloak?"

"No; let me wear your things, d.i.c.k." She took up a big motor-coat and deer-stalker from the driving-seat and slipped into them. The rose-pink gown disappeared and was lost under the darkness of tweed, and the cap covered her bright hair. She sat well back in the shadows of the tonneau.

Tryon set the car going, climbed moodily into the lonely driving-seat, and steered away into the darkness just as the music stopped and a crowd of dancers came pouring out of the ballroom.

The Glendora lay west of the town, and the road to it ran past the club. As luck would have it, a man coming from the latter place, and pus.h.i.+ng a bicycle before him, almost collided with them, causing Tryon to pull up short.

"Is that you, Emma Guthrie?" he called irritably.

"Yep!" came the gloomy answer.

"Seen anything of Lundi?"

"Nope!" on a deeper tone of gloom. Gay touched Tryon's shoulder.

"Make him come, too," she whispered.

"I'm just taking a run out to the Glendora," announced Tryon. "Want to come?"

"I do," said Guthrie, with laconic significance, and climbed in beside the driver. They flipped through the night at thirty miles an hour, which was as much as Tryon dared risk on such a road. The Glendora was about ten miles off. Gay, furled in the big coat and kindly darkness, could hear the two men exchanging an occasional low word, but little was said. It was doubtful whether Guthrie knew who Tryon's other pa.s.senger was.

In time, the clanking and pounding of a battery smote their ears, and the twinkling myriad lights of a mining camp were spread across the darkness. One large wood-and-iron house, standing alone on rising ground, well back from the road, was conspicuously brilliant. The doors were closed, but lights and the sound of men's voices raised in an extraordinary uproar streamed from its open, unblinded windows and fanlights. Abruptly Tryon turned the car so that it faced for home, halted it in the shadow of some trees, and jumping out, strode toward the house, followed by Guthrie and Gay.

Almost as they reached it, the door was flung open, and a man came out and stood in the light. He was pa.s.sing his hand over his eyes and through his hair in an odd gesture that would have told Gay who he was, even if every instinct in her had not recognized Druro. The pandemonium in the house had fallen suddenly to a great stillness, but as Guthrie and Tryon reached the house, it broke forth again with increased violence, and a number of men rushed out and laid hands on Druro as if to detain him. He flung them off in every direction; a couple of them fell scrambling and swearing over the low rail of the veranda. Then, several spoken sentences, terse, and clean-cut as cameos, fell on the night air.

"Come on home, Lundi; we have a car here."

"I tell you he has killed Capperne! Capperne is dead as a bone!"

"All right!" came Druro's voice, cool and careless. "If he's dead, he's dead. I am prepared to accept the consequences."

The Australians stood off, grouped together, muttering. Guthrie and Tryon moved to either side of Druro, and between them he walked calmly away from the house. When they reached the car, he took the seat beside Tryon, Guthrie climbed in next to Gay, and they drove away without a word being spoken. The whole nightmare happening had pa.s.sed with the precision and ease of a clockwork scene played by marionettes.

Now the curtain was down, and nothing remained but the haunting, fateful words still ringing in the ears of them all. Small wonder they sat silent as death. As the car entered the precincts of the town, Druro said to Tryon:

"I must go to the police camp and report this thing, d.i.c.k. But, first drive to the 'Falcon,' will you? I've just remembered that I had an appointment there and must go and apologize."

They drew up at a side entrance of the hotel and Druro stepped out and turned almost mechanically to open the door for those behind. So far he had shown no knowledge of Gay's presence, but he now looked straight into her eyes without any sign of surprise. He held out his hand to help her to descend, and, in the same instant, swiftly withdrew it.

"I forgot," he said, and, for an instant, stood staring at his palm and then at her in a dazed, musing sort of way. "There is blood upon it!"

Gay could not speak. Her heart felt breaking. It seemed to her that, in that moment, with the shadow of crime on him, he had suddenly changed into a bright-haired, innocent, wistful boy. She longed, with an infinite, brooding love that was almost maternal, to shelter and comfort him against all the world. But she could do nothing. Even if she could have spoken, there was nothing to say. Only, on an impulse, she caught the hand he had drawn back, and, for a moment, held it close between her warm, generous little palms. Then she slipped away into the darkness, and he went into the hotel, walking like a man in a dream.

PART II

Cold-blooded nerve, otherwise intrepid cheek, is a much admired quality in that land of bluffs and _blagues_ called Rhodesia. Therefore, when Lundi Druro walked into Mrs. Hading's ballroom in his old grey lounge suit, with ruffled hair and the distrait eyes of a man dreaming of other things, and proceeded, in casual but masterly fas.h.i.+on, to detach his hostess from the tentacles of a new admirer, w.a.n.kelo silently awarded him the palm of palms. But no one who saw Mrs. Hading's face as she walked out of the ballroom by his side envied him his job of conciliation.

However, they could not know that her cold looks were for their benefit rather than Druro's. Ba.n.a.l upbraidings would not bring off the _coup_ she had planned, and she did not intend to employ them. When she and Druro were out of earshot in a far corner of the veranda, the face she turned to him wore nothing on it but an expression of lovely and tender pain that he found much harder to contend with than anything she could possibly have said.

Contritely he proffered his profound apologies and regrets. But when all was said and done, it boiled down to the same old lame duck of an excuse that was yet the simple and shameful truth.

"I forgot all about it."

Like Gay under similar circ.u.mstances, she was infuriated by the combined flimsiness and sincerity of the plea. But, unlike Gay, she was too clever to give herself away and ruin her plans by an outburst of indignation. She only fixed her sad and lovely dark eyes on his and said quietly:

"Is that all you have to say to me, Lundi? With everyone laughing at my humiliation and disappointment--my foolishness!"

He flushed at the use of his name, the tone of her voice, the inference in her words.

"I am most frightfully sorry," he repeated, deeply embarra.s.sed. "It was unutterably caddish of me. I can never forgive myself, or expect you to forgive me."

"I think you know by now that I can forgive you anything," she answered, in a low voice.

His embarra.s.sment increased.

"I'm not worth a second thought from any woman," he a.s.severated firmly.

"But if I think you are?" There was a little break in her voice, and suddenly she put out her hands toward him. "If I cannot help----"

"Mrs. Hading," he interposed hastily, "you don't know what you are saying. I am a blackguard--a scamp, unfit to touch a woman's hand."

"Let me be judge of that," she said.