CAREW’S STORY

The news reached Carew through a newspaper. He was back in Salisbury now, attending the renewed sitting of the Commission, giving invaluable assistance. Whatever he said was instantly listened to. The chief members of the Commission, men of note and weight, wondered a little over this distinguished-looking man, merely a soldier-policeman, who knew such an extraordinary amount about the black races in Rhodesia; but if they sought enlightenment they were disappointed. No one knew anything about Major Carew, except that he was once in the Blues and now in the British South Africa police, and that the natives were more or less his hobby.

But there was one morning when he was more silent than usual; when he seemed a little distrait and very difficult to approach. And the moment the sitting was over he declined, somewhat curtly, an invitation to dinner that evening, and rode out across the veldt alone. That was the morning the daily newspaper contained the news that the only child of Henry Pym, the well-known millionaire, was engaged to be married to Mr. William van Hert, the eminent politician.

And Carew’s comment was to ride out across the veldt alone.

The news was undoubtedly a shock to him. Of course, he had known she would marry, but, more or less unconsciously, he had pictured her with an English home and a permanent place in English society.

The reality, what actually had happened, had not entered his head at all. Of course he knew van Hert by name; everyone did. And because of his reputation for anti-English views Carew both marvelled and at the same time gleaned a probable motive. And the result of his cogitations was that added sternness which always came into his face when he was seriously troubled.

Yet what use to fret and trouble now? She had gone out of his life for ever, and with her his last chance of glad renewing. Henceforth he must go back to his quiet life of service which asked and gave nothing else, and to the companionship of those old memories which sometimes awakened from their sleep.

He rode far across the veldt, and for the first time for many a long year turned back the leaves of the closed book. And the reason he did this was the remembrance of Meryl’s face, as she leaned up against the lintel of the window that last evening at Bulawayo, when they both felt it was a final parting. Something that had been in the depths of her eyes, and which she had been powerless to hide, although she made no other sign. It was a remembrance that called that added sternness to his face: the sternness of deep trouble suppressed. For he knew no woman of Meryl’s nature would look as she had looked that evening and love another man in a month. Therefore it was probably for some altruistic motive and not love that she had consented to marry van Hert; no shallow, selfish motive he knew well enough, but perhaps some call she had found the courage to answer.

But if it was also a sacrifice, an offering of herself and her happiness upon some altar of need, ought he to let her fulfil it? Between her and the husband he had pictured for her he could not allow himself to stand; between her and van Hert, whom he was convinced she did not love, was another matter. Yet he knew in his heart that he could not save her now; the die was cast, both of them must abide by it. And in any case, how could he tell her his story? How could he go to her with that story and empty-handed as well; she the heiress of great wealth, and he without even a name and position?

Away out in the kopjes he rode his horse slowly up a steep hill-side, and on the top dismounted and sat upon a boulder, looking over a vast tract of lovely country to infinite blue distances. As ever in moments of stress, he had chosen the height, with wide horizons, fresh-blowing winds, far spaces of sunlight; and in the flickering shade of the thinly foliaged trees he took off his helmet, baring his head to the breeze. And it could be seen that the grey about the temples had been increasing, while the strong lines on the face had deepened already, as if it had gone hardly with him of late.

He sat very still; so still that a little squirrel ran down almost to his feet to investigate the strange figure, and little birds chirped all kinds of personalities about him to each other close at hand. He was taking a journey into a far land the far land of the buried past. He was thinking of that story he would have had to tell Meryl Pym. Of Joan’s sad life, sad love, sad death. Of how long ago she had lain dead upon the heather, as far as anyone could tell, slain by his hand.

He went back to it now, page by page; it seemed in some sort of penance that he must give. The first pages dealt with those two gay young brothers in the Blues; the elder, Peter, the recognised heir to the rich bachelor uncle, who now made life gay for them with an allowance of two thousand a year each; but he was an autocrat and something of a tyrant, the old uncle, and his will had to be law. He did not mind their sowing of wild oats if they were what he called gentlemanly wild oats, and merely got them talked about as gay young dogs, and he was always generous with an extra cheque if they got into difficulties; but he would not have foolhardy, quixotic affairs at all. There he put his foot down. When the younger brother, Geoffrey, a youth of small, mean aims and temperament, led the pretty daughter of one of the keepers into trouble, he told his uncle he was going to give her a fixed sum out of his own allowance yearly while she was unmarried, and something always for the child.

“Nonsense,” said the old gentleman tartly; “the girl shouldn’t have been such a fool. I will pay one hundred pounds into the bank for her, and she shall not have another penny.” Geoffrey thought himself well out of the scrape, but before the incident closed there were words between the brothers that neither ever forgot. Peter took a different view of the matter entirely; he knew the girl, and he knew that she was gentle and confiding, and that Geoffrey had won her round with promises. So he called his brother a cur, and a few other things with strong adjectives, and because he knew he was in the wrong Geoffrey never forgave him. He went further, and hated him from that time onward.

But the incident was destined to bear fruit of a far more searching nature. Because he heard the girl was very ill and quietly fretting herself to death, Peter went one day to see her, prepared to make any amends in his power for his brother’s sin. And beside the sofa where the girl lay he met Joan Whitby. And such are the vagaries of human nature, with its beginning on that day, the gay, light heart, the fickle fancies, light loves, wild escapades of the devil-may-care young sportsman, all vanished away into thin air before a love that filled his whole being. Lovelier, gayer, cleverer women, ready enough to meet the heir of Richard Fourtenay-Carew halfway, had left him only gay and careless. Joan Whitby, shy, distrustful, reserved, won the prize unsought. She had run away from him, avoided any spot where they might meet, hidden if she saw him in the distance, tried to hurry past if they met unawares; more than that she could not do, because she was the governess at the agent’s house, and she and her charge must often cross the park. But Captain Peter Fourtenay-Carew was a hot-headed, determined young man, and having lost his heart to Joan’s grey eyes and delicate, lovely face, he was not very likely to be abashed by the fact that she hid from him; rather it whetted his determination to win her. And in the end, because Joan perceived he was an honest gentleman and that he truly loved her, and because with all her pure, strong soul she truly loved him, she left off running away and came shyly through the wood to meet him. And of course Geoffrey, the jealous, spiteful brother, discovered their secret, and carried the tale to his uncle in violent, indignant guise, precipitating anger for his own ends, where a little discretion might have found a compromise. Mr. Carew’s lips curled a little cruelly as he remarked he would easily nip that peccadillo in the bud. He would have no penniless, unknown governess reigning at Dartwood Hall, having already quite other views for his future successor. Then he informed his agent the young lady holding the post of governess in his house must be sent away at once, with a quarter’s wages which he would be pleased to remit. To Peter he said nothing; he merely waited for an indignant scene, easily to be squashed with cold and cursory logic concerning allowances and future inheritance if his wishes were disregarded. But it was just there that he misjudged this gay, handsome nephew of his, possessed also of a fund of spirit and strong character which his uncle had not had the perspicacity to perceive.

The interview duly transpired, but there was no indignation at all. If he had looked for melodrama he was disappointed; the melodramatic did not appeal to Peter Fourtenay-Carew. He merely told his uncle quite quietly and respectfully that he intended to marry Joan Whitby. Richard Carew condescended to reason a little before he resorted to that cold, cursory logic, but he might just as well have saved himself both. Peter stood in the library window, looking across the grand old park, and heard, apparently unmoved, that all those rich acres and woodlands and well-stocked waters and preserves would pass from him to his brother, if he chose to remain obdurate and marry the poor governess, instead of the lady of high lineage his uncle had already selected for him.

What he said was, “Do you wish me also to lose my career and leave the Blues?”

For the moment his uncle had been too angry to reply. “Get out,” he had said roughly. “You can’t be yourself this morning. I will not believe you seriously contemplate losing anything.”

Peter had turned back from the window, and stood a moment looking squarely into his uncle’s face. “I am going to marry Joan,” he said, “and as you have brought me up to be perfectly useless, except in a crack regiment, I only want to know if you will continue my allowance long enough to give me time to find out what I can be useful at,” then he had walked quietly out of the room.

And Richard Carew, distrusting his own ears and far more upset than he would ever for a moment admit, remembered that he had seen just that look on the face of Peter’s mother when he had had to break to her that her husband had been killed in the hunting-field a look of desperate finality and unswerving resolve. Within the year he had stood beside her grave also, and taken the two baby boys home to his own house.

Then Geoffrey had come to him, and because he was clever and unscrupulous he fanned the flame easily to white-heat. Finally the uncle had decreed, “I will give him a week to think it over, and in the event of his remaining obdurate I will offer him one thousand a year for five years, and at the end of that time the allowance to be renewed or decreased, or stopped, according to my pleasure.”

At the end of the week Peter’s reply was “I am going to marry Joan on the 25th by special licence, in London. If you will not receive us together, I should be glad if my man might pack my clothes and bring them to me, with a few other belongings.”

And Richard Carew’s answer to that had been a lawyer’s letter, politely enquiring of Captain Peter Fourtenay-Carew to what address he wished the allowance sent, which was to be his for five years. Peter, not yet too angry to be cautious, asked if the five thousand pounds might be invested for him in entirety, and made arrangements at once to exchange into a far cheaper regiment, aware that as a soldier he might still keep a home for his wife, whereas any experiment in the untried fields of labour might swallow up all he had. In due course the solicitor replied that the request would be granted. But ere the wedding was solemnised the unlooked-for hand of fate dealt him a pitiless blow. He had many friends in the neighbourhood of his uncle’s estate, friends who were glad and willing to receive Joan for his sake and her own; and in an unhappy hour he received a pressing invitation to meet her at the house of one of them, and have a week with the pheasants before he had to rejoin his regiment. It was a bitter cold month that year, and every sportsman’s temper was a little on edge at having to face December blasts in October. And one day when they were out in a preserve that adjoined Richard Carew’s, he and his friend heard shots and voices over the dividing hedge; and it brought up the subject of young Geoffrey’s cold-blooded delight in his good fortune at becoming his uncle’s heir, and unthinkingly the friend commenced to repeat a report of something he had said in the local club when a little the worse for drink. Then he had stopped short abruptly, trying to turn away the subject, but with a sudden dangerous light in his eyes Peter had demanded to be told; and because the other man’s heart was sore for his friend, and he wanted to give Peter an excuse to cross swords with his brother, he told how Geoffrey had implied his relations with Joan had been exactly the same as his own, Geoffrey’s, with the keeper’s daughter in the beginning, but that he had not been clever enough to get clear of the affair as he had done, and that now he was nicely sold for his high-flown superiority.

And then the wrath in Peter’s face had been a terrible thing to see. It was as if his very nature reeled. He ground his teeth together, and his eyes had a red look as he muttered savagely, “God damn him; he shall pay for this!” He was standing with his face towards his uncle’s preserve, and even as he cursed there was a sound of shots, and a second later a hare dashed out and fled past them.

Scarcely knowing what he did in the blind white-heat of his passion, but possessed suddenly with an awful desire to kill, he swung completely round and fired at it. And just at that moment Joan and their hostess were coming up behind, hidden by the brushwood and shrubs, to go with them to the luncheon-place, and Joan fell, shot through the heart. In the first awful moment no one seemed able to grasp the appalling fact. Peter threw himself down on his knees beside her, and was like a man struck dazed and speechless. He had a feeling that it was some horrible dream or hallucination, and presently this bewildering dazed sense would pass away and he would find the horror had not been real. Then across his torment he heard a voice that stung him alive with dreadful venom. His uncle and his brother had climbed the fence and had come to see what had happened, hearing from a scared keeper that someone was shot. Peter looked up and saw them. It was a dreadful moment for the three to meet. His friend, Maitland, seeing the unnatural ferocity in his eyes, tried to draw him away. Even Richard Carew, the uncle, looked a little alarmed. But Peter in his madness took a step forward. “You cur, you libelled her,” he hissed at his brother, and cursed him bitterly. And then Geoffrey lost his head too. An ugly sneer distorted his face as he answered, “Well, anyhow, you won’t get your inheritance back now, just through a casual shot. Lady Lilton is going to marry me, and ...” But he had no time to finish, for Peter suddenly hurled himself upon him, and struggled fiercely to get his hands at his throat.

The scene was terrible. Those who were present never forgot it, and by the time a keeper and Maitland managed to separate them Geoffrey was too much hurt to stand alone. They left him lying on the ground, while Richard Carew forced a little brandy between his clenched teeth, and Maitland dragged Peter away to where his wife and a keeper were watching with horror in their eyes beside Joan’s lifeless form. For a moment they feared he had lost his reason, and then some dreadful tension in his brain seemed to snap suddenly and they saw he was himself again. Without a word to either of them he stooped down and lifted the still form in his arms, and carried her unaided back to the Maitlands’ house.

He did not lose hold of himself again, but for weeks suffered a mind agony that might well have permanently turned the brain of a weaker man. Night after night the Maitlands heard him leave the house, after all had gone to bed; and they knew that he went out to tramp the moors till morning, for it was only from utter physical exhaustion he ever slept. No word came from the Hall, but rumour said the younger brother was injured so that he would not walk for months. Richard Carew’s only action was to lavish hush-money, and keep as much as possible out of the papers. One mistake he made. Through his solicitor he informed his nephew he was willing to give him his former income, that he might remain in his old regiment. In answer to that Peter wrote to the lawyer: “I am leaving England for ever, and I shall cease to remember from this moment that I have the misfortune to be related to Richard and Geoffrey Fourtenay-Carew. No letters will reach me. I leave no address,” and then he signed himself “Peter Carew” without the Fourtenay, and used the second name no more. And immediately afterwards he joined one of the early pioneer bands setting out for Rhodesia, possessing nothing in the world but a little money gained by the sale of his personal possessions and a memory that would shadow his whole life.

Sitting alone on the kopje-top, he leaned his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands, and it was as though the waters of bitterness overflowed him.

No, of course he could never tell Meryl such a story as that. For sixteen years his path had lain alone and his bitterness been shared with none. It must go on so now to the end. When he could bear it the memory of Joan’s dear face still came to him as in infinite love and compassion; but he seldom dared allow himself even that; it was better to have nothing in his life no past, present, nor future except his work.

He got up and stood for a moment leaning against his horse, resting his arms on the saddle and gazing far away. Then he rode slowly home under the stars, and by the time he reached the police camp his face was only rigid and mask-like.