The Sign of the Spider Part 36

She was but voicing his own thoughts of many and many a time before. Yet now Laurence felt almost startled. Was it the clear intuition which rightly or wrongly is believed to accompany the hour of dissolution?

Then he remembered she could have learned much about civilized peoples through the talk of Tyisandhlu and her father.

"I die, beloved, but I welcome death," she went on,--"for I have lived--ah, yes, I have lived. I feel no pain now, and I die in your arms. Surely my _itongo_[7] will not weep mournfully on the voices of the night as others do; surely it will laugh for very joy, for very love, because of this my end, until time shall die--will it not, Nyonyoba, my beloved? Say--will it not?"

But Laurence could not say anything, for, lo--a marvel. This man, deadened for long years to feeling or ruth; this coldly pitiless trafficker in the sufferings of human beings; in whose cynical creed now such a love as that of this savage girl held no place--felt now as though a hand were gripping him by the throat, choking all power of reply. And the call of birds, high among the tree-tops, alone broke the silence, in the semi-gloom of the forest aisles.

Lindela's voice had sunk until it was well-nigh inaudible, and Laurence was constrained to bend his head to hers in order to catch her every word. Then--a flash of gladness seemed momentarily to light up the drowsy eyes, and she spoke no more. Her eyelids closed, her breathing grew fainter and fainter, and soon Laurence knew that that which lay heavy within his arms was no longer a living woman. Lindela had pa.s.sed.

For long he sat thus. Then a faint rustling sound in the dry wood of an immense fallen tree-trunk caught his ear. Ha!--the snake which had been the cause of her death! It, at any rate, should die. Gently he laid her down, then s.n.a.t.c.hing up a stick which had been used to carry one of the loads he advanced towards the sound.

Something was struggling among the dry bark; with the stick he broke this away. There fell out an enormous spider.

He started back in horror and loathing. The hairy monster brought back too gruesome a reminiscence. Then he noticed that it looked as if it had received injury through crus.h.i.+ng, two or three of the hideous tentacles being partially or wholly broken off.

Then, as he gazed with loathing upon the sprawling thing, it seemed that the missing link was supplied. Lindela, in her sleep, must have moved over on to this horror, though not heavily enough to crush it. It had buried its venomous nippers in her shoulder, prior to crawling away to die.

A s.h.i.+ver ran through his frame as he beat to death the great noisome insect--and his blood seemed to chill with a superst.i.tious fear. It seemed too strange, too marvellous to be a mere coincidence. Lindela had defied the traditions of her race, and now she had met her death through the agency of the very embodiment of those traditions. She, a daughter of the Kings of the People of the Spider, had met her death through the Spider's bite. It was horrifying in its sinister appropriateness. Was it really a thing of witchcraft? Did the Fiend have actual bodily power here, in "the dark places of the earth"? Had this demoniacal influence followed her to wreak its vengeance here, at such a distance from the home and country to which she would return no more?

When Laurence Stanninghame resumed his journey the next day he left behind him a grave--a deep, secure grave--a solitary grave in the heart of the untrodden forest. His journeyings henceforth must be alone; but ofttimes his thoughts would go back to that nameless grave, and to her who rested forever therein. Only a savage! Only a heathen! Yes--but if brave, devoted, self-sacrificing love is of any account at all in the scheme of Christian virtues, where would this savage, this heathen, come in at the day of awards? Where indeed, among the mult.i.tude of gold-wors.h.i.+pping, form-adoring Pharisees? Truth to tell, Laurence believed but dimly in the day of awards. Yet did it exist, he thought he knew the answer to his own question.

FOOTNOTE:

[7] Tutelary spirit.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

"GOOD-BYE--MY IDEAL!"

Johannesburg once more. The great, restless gold-town had pa.s.sed through many changes, many booms and rumours of booms--the latter for the most part--since that quiet _trek_ now four years ago. Many of those who then were among its busiest inhabitants had departed, some to a land whence there is no return, others to the land of their respective births. Many, who then had been on the verge of millionaires, "buzzing" their rapidly acquired gains with a lavish magnificence which they imagined to be "princely"--were now uncertificated bankrupts, or had blown their brains out, or had come within the meshes of the law and the walls of a convict prison; while others, who at that time lived upon hope and the "whiff of an oiled rag," now fared sumptuously every day, and would do so unto their lives' end. But for those who had held on to the place through good and evil report, since the time we last pioneered our reader through its dust-swept streets and arid surroundings, something of a surprise was in store. For the old order of things was reversed. Instead of Hazon returning without his travelling companions, the latter had returned without Hazon.

"Bless my soul, Stanninghame, is that you?" cried Rankin, running right into Laurence one morning just outside the new Exchange. "And Holmes too? Why, you're looking uncommonly well, both of you. What have you done with the pirate, eh?"

"Oh, he's coming on!" replied Laurence, which in substance was correct, though it might be weeks before he came on; for, as a matter of fact, Hazon had remained behind at a certain point to collect and reduce to cash such gains as were being custodied for him--and the joint undertaking--by sundry of his blood-brethren the Arab chiefs.

"Coming on, is he? Well, well! I think we've been libelling the pirate after all, eh Rainsford?" as that worthy just joined them. "Here's Hazon's _trek_ come back without Hazon, instead of the other way about."

Laurence thought how nearly it had been a case of the other way about.

Had he not offered himself instead of Holmes, it would have been, for he would have remained with the Ba-gcatya, and Hazon would have returned alone. Of the fate of Holmes--well--he knew what that would have been.

Holmes, however, did not, for the simple reason that Laurence had refrained from communicating a word relating to that horrible episode to either of his a.s.sociates--when, shortly after parting with Rahman ben Zuhdi, and the death of Lindela, he had found the two, safe and well, at the princ.i.p.al town of a prominent Arab chief. And Holmes, possibly through ignorance of its nature or magnitude, never did fully appreciate the sacrifice which the other had made for him.

"What do you think?" went on Rankin, when the requisite amount of greeting and chaff had been exchanged, "this fellow Rainsford has gone and got married; has started out in the nursery department for all he's worth."

Laurence laughed.

"Why, Rainsford, you were as stony broke as the rest of us when I left.

Things looking up, eh?"

"Of course. I told you it was a case of 'down to-day, up to-morrow'--told you at the time. And it's my belief you'd have done better to have remained here." Then lowering his voice; "Where's the pirate?"

"Coming on."

Rainsford whistled, and looked knowing.

"What do you say?" cut in Rankin, "a drop of gin and soda wouldn't hurt us, eh?" Then while they moved round to the Exchange bar, he went on; "I've got a thing that would suit you to a hair, Stanninghame. I'd take it up myself if I could, but I'm only an agent in the matter."

"Shares, eh?"

"Yes--Skinner and Sacks."

"Dead off. See here, Rankin--you must off-load them on somebody else. If I were next door to certain of making half a million out of it, even then I wouldn't touch any sort of investment connected with this place.

No, not to save my immortal soul--if I've got one, which at times seems doubtful." And there was something in Laurence's laugh--evoked by old time recollections--which convinced the other that no business was to be done in this quarter at any rate.

There was method in the way in which Laurence had sought to dawdle away the morning. He had arrived late the night before, and as yet had made no inquiries. How strange it all seemed! Surely it was but yesterday that he was here last. Surely he had slept, and had dreamed the portentous events which had intervened. They could not have been real.

But the stones--the great diamonds--they were real enough; the metal box too--the "Sign of the Spider."

How was he thus transformed? Later in the day, as he stood on the _stoep_ knocking at the door of Mrs. Falkner's house, he was conscious that his heart hardly beat quicker, that his pulses were as firm and even as ever. Four years of a hard, stern schooling had done it.

Yes, Mrs. Falkner was at home. He was ushered into the drawing room, which was empty. There was the same ever-clinging scent of roses, the same knick-knacks, the same lounge on which they had sat together that night. Even the battery stamps across the kloof seemed to hammer out the same refrain.

The door opened. Was it Lilith herself? No, only Lilith's aunt.

"Why, Mr. Stanninghame, I am glad to see you. But--how you have changed!"

"Well, yes, Mrs. Falkner. Time has knocked me about some. I can't say the same as regards yourself, though. You haven't changed an atom."

She laughed. "That can't be true. I'm sure I feel more and more of an old woman every day. But sit down, do, and tell me about your adventures. Have you had a successful trip?"

"Pretty well. It has proved a more paying concern, at any rate, than the exhilarating occupation known as 'waiting for the boom.'"

"I am very glad to hear that. And your friends--have you all returned safe and sound?"

Laurence replied that they had. But for all his outward equability, his impatience was amounting to torment. Even while he talked his ears were strained to catch the sound of a light step without. How would Lilith look? he wondered. Would these four years have left their mark upon her?

"And how is your niece, Miss Ormskirk?" he went on.

"Lilith? Oh, but--by the way, she is not 'Miss Ormskirk' now. She is married."

"Oh, is she? I hadn't heard. After all, one forgets how time slips by."

That was all. It was a shock--possibly a hard one; but of late Laurence Stanninghame had been undergoing a steady training for meeting such.

Mrs. Falkner--who had made the communication not without some qualm, for she had been put very much up to the former state of things, both by her nephew, George, and certain "signs of the times," not altogether to be dissimulated, however bravely Lilith had borne herself after that parting now so far back--felt relieved and in a measure a trifle disappointed, for, womanlike, she dearly loved romance. But the man before her had not turned a hair, had not even changed colour at the intelligence. It could not really matter, she decided--which was as well for him, but for herself disappointing.

"Yes--she married her cousin George, my nephew. You remember him," she went on. "I was against it for a long time; but, after all, I believe it was the saving of him, poor fellow, he was so wildly in love with her.

He was simply going to the dogs. Yes, it was the saving of him."