“HOW CAN I GO TO HER!...”

The first meeting between Ailsa and Carew was a very difficult one for the woman. Directly she saw him she realised that he had drawn back into his shell further than ever, and the increased greyness on his temples spoke for itself of anxious, troubled hours. At first he had been difficult to entrap. In reply to her note came just a vague regret that he was exceptionally busy, and often out on the veldt, with a hope that he would see her before she left. One or two other attempts failed entirely to procure the interview, and she was almost at her wits’ end. Finally, she had to resort to strong measures, and gain her end by subterfuge. Carew went to the house of a man friend by invitation, and was shown into his friend’s den to find Ailsa awaiting him alone. The expression on his face told her instantly that he felt himself trapped, and resented it. But she could be very disarming when she liked, and she had tact enough to follow the straight course most likely to appeal to him now that she had gained her interview.

“You must not be angry with me,” she said, with engaging frankness. “I simply had to see you.”

He stood very upright, with a cold, unresponsive face, and waited for her to proceed.

“Won’t you sit down? You make it difficult for me when you are ... so ... so ... distant and unbending.”

He moved away to the window, and stood looking out, with his back to the room. “Will you tell me what it is you have to say?” he asked very quietly. He knew perfectly well it had to do with Meryl, and he did not want her to see his secret in his face. In fact, he did not wish to speak of the subject at all.

Ailsa stood silently a moment, looking at his back, and then she said very quietly, “I have heard the story of your past life. I ... I ... know it all.”

For a moment there was such a stillness in the room that one could almost hear heart beats. The figure in the window never moved.

“Who told you?...” he asked at last.

“Mr. Henry Delcombe, the scientist, who was a great friend of your father’s.”

Another silence. At last

“Is he in Rhodesia now?”

“He is here, in Salisbury. He will not tell anyone else,” she added. “He told me because ... because ... he perceived that Billy and I cared for you very much, and for your happiness.” She moved a little nearer to him, and continued gently, “I felt almost as if I could break my heart with sympathy for you, and that you should have borne such memories all these years, alone.”

“I have put them behind me,” he said, speaking almost harshly. “The past is dead. What does it matter who and what I was before?... To-day I am a Rhodesian, and my work is here. I shall remain here now until I die.”

“You may not be able to do that,” and her voice had suddenly a ring in it that seemed to arrest him.

“Why may I not?”

“Because presently very soon perhaps you will have to answer to a call that requires you in England.”

He half turned to her, waiting silently and unmoved, with grave eyes fixed on the distance.

She came a step nearer. “Mr. Delcombe told me also, that because of many changes that have taken place in the sixteen years since you cut yourself adrift from home, you are now heir to the marquisate of Toxeter. When the present marquis dies you will succeed him.”

It seemed at first as if he heard without understanding. Once more there was a silence in which one might hear heart beats.

“Will you let me congratulate you?” Ailsa asked a little timidly.

“I think he must have been dreaming,” he said in slow comment.

“No; there is no doubt about it whatever. He will tell you himself if you will let him. He wants to see you very much.”

And still he was only silent, gazing, gazing to the far distance. If it was true, how was it he had never heard?... Could it possibly all have transpired during the times he had been away shooting in the far north, or out on the veldt, away from newspapers for months?

“There is something else I want to speak about,” and her voice trembled somewhat. “This news concerning your future will make it a little easier. You know, of course, that Meryl Pym has become engaged to Mr. van Hert, the well-known Dutch politician?”

Instantly he stiffened. “I saw it in a newspaper.”

She came close up to him suddenly. “O, Major Carew” and there was an infinite pleading in her voice “Billy and I thought you cared for her, and we believed she cared for you. Don’t let her wreck her whole life now.... Don’t stand by and let her marry a man she does not love. Go to her before it is too late!”

Under his iron control his face seemed to work strangely. She saw the swift compression of his lips, the swift pain in his eyes, the strong hunger he could not entirely hide.

“It is impossible,” and the usual steadiness of his voice was shaken. “You say you know my story!... How can I go to her and tell her that once I killed the woman I loved?... How can I speak to her of love I, the policeman, she the heiress?... How can I tell her that story which was told to you?... The story of damnable hate and passion, when I tried to strangle my own brother. I tell you she would shrink away in horror. She must shrink. Why did you speak to me about it at all! Your thoughts are folly and madness. I offer love to Meryl Pym?... My God! I have some decency some pride left.” And the pain and bitterness in his voice shocked and stabbed her.

But in spite of her inward shrinking she answered him boldly, drawing on a courage lent her by love and sincerity.

“And I say that if you love her truly, you ought to be able to trust her with your story. It is not noble and spirited of you to stand aside as you perhaps think. It is cowardly. Pride is generally cowardly. For the sake of your pride, of your own personal feelings, you will let her go on with this marriage and never say a word and never move a finger to save her from shipwrecking her whole life. First you will let your own sad past come between you; then you will let her hateful gold drive you away; then you will talk of yourself as just a policeman. And in any case you must know it as well as I know it none of these things would estrange Meryl Pym from the man she loved. There is nothing whatever between you except your pride, and you think that demands a renunciation from you, careless or no whether it brings heart-break for her.”

He had grown deathly white now, with dark hollows round his eyes, and she could almost see how his teeth were clenched behind the firm lips. She had taken him entirely by surprise in her outburst, and her news concerning himself; and he discovered she had swept his secret from him concerning his love for Meryl, almost before he knew what he was speaking of.

“There might be something in what you say if Miss Pym cared for me in return. That she does is the merest supposition.”

“And how do you know that with such sureness?” she cried. “No, no, Major Carew; in your heart you know otherwise. But you just let her go away without a word, without a hope, and one or two of us know what this hasty engagement means. Diana calls it martyrdom. She wrote me to send Meryl an in memoriam card instead of congratulations, for it was more in accord with the occasion.”

His face worked visibly, in spite of his stern suppression, but he still stood rigid and upright, looking away from her out over the far shadowy veldt, seeing nothing.

In the pulsing silence that followed he beheld again that terrible October scene, when his love lay dead upon the heather. Could he ask any other woman to share that with him?... let the burden of such a memory faintly touch her life?... He knew that at the inquest it had been decided no one could possibly say who fired the shot. His uncle and brother were both shooting at the time, in the same direction; but though his friend Maitland had insisted upon a verdict of accidentally shot by someone unknown, and Richard Carew had resolutely supported him, in his own heart he had stood condemned. Yet if penance were required, what had he not given?... Exile, loneliness, nonentity for all the best years of his life; and her image, the beloved face of his lost Joan, the only woman’s presence in his life. And yet now, as he stood gazing, gazing to the far blue hills, it seemed that her face and Meryl’s were strangely blended. From the very first their eyes had been as the eyes of one woman, infinitely comprehending, infinitely true. Was it possible that Ailsa’s accusation was true? One woman had been sacrificed more or less to his mad, insensate fury against his brother. Was the other perhaps to be sacrificed to his rigid, indomitable pride? One picture seemed to stamp itself upon his brain with ever-increasing strength and clearness: the picture of Meryl, leaning up against the window lintel that last evening at Bulawayo, white as a frail, exquisite lily, with the anguish in her deep eyes that she could not entirely hide. That, and the iron control he had needed to put upon himself, making him seem grim and unfeeling for fear one instant’s weakness should make his longing arms enfold her. Well, he had played his man’s part as well as he could; ridden away from her, disappointed her, openly avoided her, only in the end to love her with the deep, wise, understanding, all-embracing love of a man past his first youth, and with a wide knowledge of human nature.

And this engagement of hers to van Hert! What might it not result from?... What hopelessness, what despair, what heroic resolve to play her little part in the country’s good, and win some satisfaction perhaps, since she might not have happiness!

Standing silently at the window it all seemed to pass through his mind with piercing clearness, and Ailsa’s spirited attack rang still in his ears: “First you will let your sad story come between you, then her hateful gold, then your lowly position, answering to the call of your own pride, careless whether it wreck her life’s happiness or no.”

Yes, she was quite right, it was his pride. Even now the thought of the gold was hateful to him.

Still, if some day he would indeed be the Marquis of Toxeter!... if he could at least offer her a high position!... if it was no longer a question of going to her empty-handed....

The silence continued, and in the background Ailsa waited and watched. She could read nothing from the tall figure in the window, except that his thoughts were far away and he was probing deeply. She leaned back in a low chair, feeling suddenly very tired and overwrought. She had come all the way from far Zimbabwe for this interview, just to say to this man, before it was too late, the spirited things she had said. And now?...

She looked round the den of the man who was her friend, and his, and had helped her to win the interview, noting each trivial detail, each attempt at decoration and hominess, each cunning substitute such as every Rhodesian contrives out of his ingenuity for some trifle not easily procured in that far land. And all the time she was tensely painfully aware of that strong man in the window, and of the issues that hung upon his decision. How, in the event of his deciding to approach Meryl, the recognised fiance was to be treated, was beyond her. She was too tired to probe further. She only cared that Meryl’s happiness should be saved. Her own had been so nearly lost, she had seen so much unspeakable bitterness arise out of one great mistake, made once by many women at the altar, and she only waited to know if she had lost or won.

At last the silent figure moved. At the window Carew turned and came towards her. She watched him with all her soul in her eyes, unable to rise from her chair for very tension.

“What are you going to do?...” she asked, hoarsely.

“Can you tell me where I can find Henry Delcombe?” he said.