At Love's Cost Part 20

"Yes," a.s.sented Falconer, his eyes growing still narrower. "Yes, I suppose it ought."

"Would your answer have been the same as mine--'friends'?" asked Sir Stephen in a low voice.

Falconer was silent for a moment, then he said:

"It oughtn't to have been. If ever a man had cause to regard another as an enemy, I've had cause to regard you as one, Orme!"

Sir Stephen flushed, then went pale again.

"There is no use in raking up the past," he muttered.

"Oh, I've no need to rake it up; it's here right enough, without raking," retorted Falconer, and he touched his breast with his thick forefinger. "I'm not likely to forget the trick you played me; not likely to forget the man who turned on me and robbed me--"

"Robbed!" echoed Sir Stephen, with a dark frown.

Falconer turned his cigar in his mouth and bit at it.

"Yes, robbed. You seem to have forgotten: my memory is a better one than yours, and I'm not likely to forget the day I tramped back to the claim in that G.o.d-forsaken Australian hole to find that you'd discovered the gold while I'd been on the trail to raise food and money--discovered it and sold out--and cleared out!"

His eyes flashed redly and his mouth twitched as his teeth almost met in the choice Havana.

Sir Stephen threw out his hand.

"I heard you were dead," he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "I heard that you had died in a street row--in Melbourne."

Falconer's heavy face was distorted by a sneer.

"Yes? Of course, I don't believe you: who would?"

"As Heaven is my witness--!" exclaimed Sir Stephen; but Falconer went on:

"You didn't wait to see if it were true or not; you cleared out before I'd time to get back, and you took precious good care not to make enquiries. No; directly your partner's back was turned you--sold him; got the price and levanted."

Sir Stephen paced up and done, his hands clenched behind him; his fine leonine head bent; then he stopped in front of the chair, and frowned down into the scowling face.

"Falconer, you wrong me--it was not so bad, so black as it looked. It's true I sold the claim; but I swear that I intended saving half for you.

But news was brought in that you were dead--a man said that he had seen you fall, that you were dead and buried. I had to leave the camp the night the money was paid: it would not have been safe to remain: you know what the place was, and that the man who was known to have money carried his life in his hand. I left the camp and tramped south. Before a month had pa.s.sed, the money had gone; if I had had any doubts of your death, it was too late to enquire; it would have been useless; as I tell you, the money was gone. But I hadn't any doubts; in simple truth, I thought you were dead."

Falconer looked round the luxurious room.

"You lost the money? But you appear to have picked it up again; you seem to be pretty flouris.h.i.+ng, my friend; when you got on your feet again and made your pile, why didn't you find out whether your old pal was alive or dead?"

Sir Stephen was silent for a s.p.a.ce, then he raised his head and met the other's accusing gaze unflinchingly.

"I'll tell you--I'll tell you the whole truth, Falconer; and if you can make excuse for me, if you can put yourself in my place--"

He drew his hand across his brow as if the sweat had broken out upon it. "The luck was dead against me for a time, the old luck that had haunted you and me; then it swung round completely--as it generally does when it changes at all. I was out in Africa, on the tramp, picking up a day's work now and again at the farms--you know the life! One day I saw a Kaffir boy playing with some rough stones--"

Falconer nodded.

"Diamonds. I fancy I've read an account of the great Sir Stephen Orme's first beginnings," he put in with a touch of sarcasm.

Sir Stephen reddened.

"I daresay. It was the start, the commencement of the luck. From the evening I took those stones in my hands--great Heaven! I can see the place now, the sunset on the hill; the dirty brat playing in the dust!--the luck has stood by me. Everything I touched turned out right.

I left the diamond business and went in for land: wherever I bought land towns sprang up and the land increased in value a thousandfold.

Then I stood in with the natives: you've heard of the treaty--"

Falconer nodded.

"The treaty that enabled you to hand over so many thousand square miles to the government in exchange for a knighthood."

"No," said Sir Stephen, simply. "I got that for another business; but I daresay the other thing helped. It doesn't matter. Then I--I married. I married the daughter of a man of position, a girl who--who loved and trusted me; who knew nothing of the past you and I know; and as I would rather have died than that she should have known anything of it, I--"

"Conveniently and decently buried it," put in Falconer. "Oh, yes, I can see the whole thing! You had blossomed out from Black Steve--"

Sir Stephen rose and took a step towards the door, then remembered that he had shut it and sank down again, his face white as ashes, his lips quivering.

--"To Sir Stephen Orme, the African millionaire, the high and lofty English gentleman with his head full of state secrets, and his safe full of foreign loans; Sir Stephen Orme, the pioneer, the empire maker--Oh, yes, I can understand how naturally you would bury the past--as you had buried your old pal and partner. The dainty and delicate Lady Orme was to hear nothing--" Sir Stephen rose and stretched out his hand half warningly half imploringly.

"She's dead, Falconer!" he said, hoa.r.s.ely. "Don't--don't speak of her!

Leave her out, for G.o.d's sake!"

Falconer shrugged his shoulders.

"And this boy of yours--he's as ignorant as her ladys.h.i.+p was, of course?"

Sir Stephen inclined his head.

"Yes," he said, huskily. "He--he knows nothing. He thinks me--what the world sees me, what all the world, saving you, Falconer, thinks me: one who has risen from humble but honest poverty to--what I am. You have seen him, you can understand what I feel; that I'd rather die than that he should know--that he should think badly of me. Falconer, I have made a clean breast of it--I'm in your hands. I'm--I'm at your mercy. I appeal to you"--he stretched out his white, shapely hands--"you have a child of your own: she's as dear to you as mine is to me--I've watched you to-night, and I've seen you look at her as she moved about and talked and sang, with the look that my eyes wear when they rest on my boy. I am at your mercy--not only mine, but my son's future--"

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and drew a long breath.

Falconer leant back and smoked contemplatively, with a coolness, an indifference to the other's emotion which Sir Stephen found well-nigh maddening.

"Yes," said Falconer, after a pause, "I suppose your house of cards would come down with a crash if I opened my mouth say, at breakfast to-morrow morning, and told--well, all I know of the great Sir Stephen Orme when he bore the name of Black Steve. Even you, with all you colossal a.s.surance, could not face it or outlive it. And as for the boy--it would settle his hash now and forever. A word from me would do it, eh, Orme? And upon my soul I don't know why I shouldn't say it!

I've had it in my mind, I've kept it as a sweet morsel for a good many years. Yes, I've been looking forward to it. I've been waiting for the 'physiological moment,' as I think they call it; and it strikes me that it has arrived."

Sir Stephen's face grew strained, and a curious expression crept into it.

"If you ask me why you should not, I can give you no reason," he said.

"If you were poor I should offer you money--more, a great deal more than I received for the old claim; but I can see that that would not tempt you to forego your revenge. Falconer, you are not poor; your daughter wears diamonds--"

Falconer shrugged his shoulders.

"No, I'm not in want of money. You're not the only man who has had a change of luck. No, you can't bribe me; even if I were hard up instead of rather flush, as I am, I wouldn't take a hundred thousand pounds for my revenge."

Sir Stephen rose. There was an ominous change in his manner. His nervousness and apprehension seemed to have suddenly left him, and in its place was a terrible, stony calmness, an air of inflexible determination.