Hector Graeme Page 18

  *CHAPTER XVIII*

  Thus Hector followed in the footsteps of those with whom he claimedkinship, and, like them, left the broad track of conventional duty toturn aside into the by-paths of illicit love. True, behind him,trampled in the dust of the highway, broken vows and the fragments of awoman's happiness were lying, and, ever vivid and distinct, a tinygrave. But what of that, since he had carried through his purpose, andproved himself above the human weaknesses by which other men's lives arecramped and fettered? Feverishly he drank of the cup held out to him byStara, and, his thirst quenched but too soon, revived the dead cravingwith the salt of imagination, and demanded more, ever more.

  A month passed, and he was no longer a stranger, but one of thehousehold; the hand of fellowship was held out to him by all, and by noone more eagerly than his host, whose cordiality was adopted the betterto hide the curious instinctive aversion of twelve months before, whichhad but increased with fuller acquaintance with his guest. In vain didRichard assure himself that the feeling was one of prejudice only; itgrew in strength daily, till at last, at Graeme's approach, Dick wouldmake off, feigning work on the farm, or any excuse to avoid being alonewith a man in whose presence he became so unaccountably silent andembarrassed.

  His wife, however, had from the first taken to the stranger, though heronly reason for such liking was, it must be owned, the essentiallyfeminine one of sympathy for a lover, for that Hector was Stara's shehad realised from the first, though why undeclared was beyond hercomprehension.

  It must be her sister-in-law's fault, she had come to believe, and wasin consequence somewhat annoyed with Stara, frequently pressing her forexplanations. If she cared for Colonel Graeme, why did she not admitit? It was not fair to play fast and loose with a man's devotion. Uponwhich her sister-in-law would smile, and assure her she was altogetherwrong and didn't understand; she and Hector were friends, nothing more.Friends! as if she, Mary, was blind or a fool. And with muchindignation the hostess would return to her housework, leaving the pairas usual to their own devices. They must settle the matter their ownway, she decided, and, if Graeme was but half the man she took him tobe, he would sooner or later bring Stara to book, for of the latter'sfeelings, too, Mary had no doubt, though Stara was far more successfulin concealing them than Hector. Still, there was no mistaking theimprovement in her sister-in-law's looks, or the meaning of the sheddingof her former assumption of mannishness, which, with the bifurcatedriding garments, had gone apparently for good, a modest riding-skirtreplacing the one and a soft womanliness and radiant happiness theother.

  Stara was happy, despite the lie she was living, for this had now becomea habit, and troubled her not at all. And being happy, and loving, achange came over her: the veneer of hardness and independencedisappeared, and with it, unfortunately, much of her former wit andbrilliance. She was all woman now, fussing over Hector, ministering tohis comforts, and exercising those small tyrannies dear to most lovers'hearts.

  The inordinate consumption of cigarettes she put down firmly, retainingthe supply in her own room, and doling them out at the rate of five aday--no more, save as a special indulgence. Schopenhauer and Lombrosoalso went, while the small phials were taken out on to the veldt the dayafter his arrival, and carefully buried in the home of an ant-bear, asolemn promise being exacted from Hector never to touch such thingsagain. For Stara, wiser than Lucy, had from the first seen in whichdirection Graeme's peril lay, but while formerly she had regarded hismorbidity merely as an interesting study, now the suppression of allencouragement of, and incentive to it, had become to her a matter ofvital necessity.

  For a time she was successful, Hector apparently being well content toidle the days away, roaming through the hot grass veldt, lying down onit for hours, or lounging with her in desultory inspection offarm-buildings, dam, and lucerne-fields. But, unknown to her, thepoison was already working, and Graeme, when he seemed to be asleep onthe grass beside her, was debating problems in his mind; for Stara,though she never knew it, had been stabbed to the heart by theunconscious hand of a blind child, who was now lying in sleep eternal tothe lullaby of wind and waves.

  Hector loved her, it is true, but it was not the love it had been, for,since the hour of darkness passed with the devil in the dreary hotelbedroom, there had come a difference. The ideality and the golden halowith which he had clothed his mistress were gone, and with them thelonging to serve. Now he only saw her beauty, and in the possession ofthat beauty he strove to find oblivion from an undying memory; but invain, for in the one pure emotion Hector had known, or could ever know,his eyes had been opened, and the real gold of the one showed the otherto be but counterfeit metal and base. Thus Ruby was avenged, and, asusual, not on the most guilty fell the vengeance.

  Hector began to ask himself questions, and critically to analyse thelove he felt--love to which analysis means death. Why was it, hepondered, that passion so great as his did not act as a spur, but ratheras a bridle? Surely Nelson was wrong when he said that "if the worldheld more Emmas, there would be more Nelsons"? For his own love forStara was equally great, and yet indulgence in that love, so far fromproving the incentive he had hoped, was fast suffocating ambition andrendering him a mere lotus-eater, content to idle away the hours on aGod-forsaken African farm.

  Gradually, fight against it, blind himself as he might, the bitter truthbecame known to Hector, that whereas passion denied, even vexed orhindered, is the greatest incentive to ambition man's nature can know,passion indulged without let or hindrance becomes inevitably itsmurderer. And with this truth, unacknowledged though it was, awakenedin his mind, Hector became restless and rebellious, the sense of revoltgrowing as he realised that no sympathy was to be hoped for from Stara,but rather active opposition.

  She now always became silent when he spoke of future greatness, orturned the subject to another future of which ambition was not the aim,but those very domestic joys which before she had been wont to deride.Only the other day she had put forward the same absurdity advanced byLucy years before, namely, the hope of military renown without thedisadvantages of his having to seek it on the battlefield. Nor was itonly in her views that Stara had changed, for gone too were herbrilliancy, her cynicism, the unlikeness to other women that had sofascinated him on board the _Dunrobin Castle_. He was now the cynic;she the believer, bitterly resentful of sneers at domesticity andmarital fidelity.

  As the days wore on, the monotony began to pall, the long rides to losetheir charm, for, lover of the veldt though Hector was, solitude wasalso essential to his enjoyment of it. Silence and freedom to thinkundisturbed were what he craved, not talk of trifles, which onlypassion's glamour could render interesting. But Stara saw nothing ofthis, for she was blind, as she had said she would be blind, and when hewas lying dreaming of future greatness she would irritate him withgentle caresses, asking him if he was thinking of her; and, starting, hewould answer "Yes," and fall to silence once more.

  The varnish, too, of normality, so laboriously laid on him by Stara,began to wear off; sleeplessness returned, and his real naturereasserted itself. Through the long night hours he would lie thinking,strange, monstrous thoughts, gradually weaving themselves into a fabricupon which he saw himself depicted as great as those others were great,and, like them, solitary in their greatness, for she whom he loved wasdead. Stara had left him, and yet in some dim way stood near, a radiantvision, beloved as never on earth, guiding him on his lonely way. In arapture of adoration he would be there talking to her, telling her ofhis undying love, till, torn with remorse for his cruelty and neglect toher when living, his eyes would fill and ecstatic grief wring his heart.And when the day came, Stara would greet him, her eyes dark with a loveto which his own felt no response.

  Nevertheless, strangely enough, in his dreams there was never a sign ofRuby, for she lay buried in his heart; the other only lived as a fantasyof fevered imagination. At last the day came when he knew he must returnto a man's life once more, leaving her, t
he living and neglected, todream of her dead and beloved, and of this necessity he told her onemorning as they lay in the shadow of a lonely kopje.

  "Stara, I must go," he said suddenly, "your brother's sick of me, and myregiment wants me back."

  The girl looked up with startled eyes, her face grew suddenly pale andscared.

  "Hector, you can't--not--not yet. Send them a wire."

  "What's the use? I must go some time."

  "Why?"

  "Why? ... Because it's my life, Stara. I can't remain on leave, idlinghere for ever. Remember, I've got a name to make, and as yet I've notbegun."

  "You're a Colonel, isn't that enough, why do you want to make a name foryourself, Hector, aren't you happy here?"

  "Of course I am, but----"

  "Hector dear, I've been thinking a lot lately, thinking that perhaps theambition we used to talk such a lot of is nothing, after all. I am surenow there is only one thing in the world that matters--love; that'sreal, the other's only a dream."

  "What do you mean, Stara? This is against everything you used to say.Talk of inconsistency!"

  "I know, but you mustn't expect a woman to be consistent. Besides, Iwasn't in love then, but now I am, and can see things clearer. Oh, I amashamed when I think of the nonsense I used to talk. Dear, I don't askit, but couldn't you, wouldn't you like to give it up and be with mealways?"

  "Stara ... you don't mean? You ... can't. Oh, God, there seems to be acurse on me," and Hector flung himself face downwards on the grass.

  A look of desperate pain came over Stara's face, as she answeredhurriedly:

  "No, no, you need not fear. I was only thinking, you being so happyhere with me, that perhaps you had for gotten your ambitions."

  "I? Never, they're part of me. Oh, thank God, but you know, Stara, I'dhave done it, don't you? I'll keep faith with you."

  For a fraction of a second Stara hesitated, but, before she could speak,Hector went on, and the chance was gone:

  "You see, Stara, I must go back; they'll be finding out things if Idon't--fellows are so infernally inquisitive--and then your brothermight come to hear. By the way, he's no idea, I suppose?"

  "None whatever. I told him what you said, about being here on leavewhen you're supposed to be in England, and that if they knew there'd betrouble. Dick won't say a word."

  "And Polly?"

  "She knows, of course, that we love each other, Hector, any woman couldsee that. She's never told Dick though. I asked her not to, but,Hector, she's always asking me things, why we ... don't..."

  "What did you tell her?"

  "Oh, some lie, but she didn't believe it. Hector, do you know, I thinkif she knew the truth, and we were to go away together, she'd stand byus two."

  "Why are you always harping on this, Stara? I've told you the thing'spractically impossible, though of course I'd do it, if anythinghappened. Why, do you know what I have to live on now that I've givenup my income to her? Fool that I was! Two hundred a year besides mypay, and the last would stop once I leave, bar L120 a year."

  "I don't think I should mind, Hector. I'm a good housekeeper, and weshould have each other, which is everything, and perhaps in time yourwife might relent, and we could marry."

  "Damn her relenting, Stara; don't dream of it. I wouldn't do it foryour sake, as much as mine. Oh, why can't you be satisfied, we areeverything to each other now, and--and it's possible that if we weretied like that, you--I shouldn't--might tire, it's the freedom, don'tyou think, that makes love lasting?"

  "No, I don't, I hate those ideas. They're wicked and unnatural. It'sthe advocates of immorality who start such theories."

  "I'm not so sure, but about going, I should like to leave to-morrow, ifit could be managed. I can easily get leave later, you know, and comeback again."

  "When?"

  "Oh, in two or three months. I'll come when I can, you know that."

  "Very well, Hector, if you think you ought to. Oh, it's hateful, thisparting."

  "It's only for a time, Stara, and, as I'm going, I think we ought toreturn home now. I've my packing to do, and the train leaves earlyto-morrow morning."

  "I'll do your packing; I should love to. My brother shan't see, andPolly won't mind, I know. Come, as we must," and together they rodehome, Graeme for once talkative, but Stara silent.

  * * * * *

  Next morning, before the sun had risen, the woman's dream had come to anend, and Hector was on his way back to a man's life once more. Within amile of the station, at the top of the rise, where Stara had first seenhis coming, the boy pulled up his mules, and pointed backward with hiswhip at a speck on the road behind them, rapidly growing larger.

  "Missy Star," he said.

  "We'll lose the train," muttered Hector, but the boy, ignoring the hint,refused to move till the flying figure had caught them up.

  "Hector, I want you." Stara's voice was desperate, and her eyes wild.

  Graeme, with one glance at the station ahead, climbed down and went overto where she was waiting, the pony's flanks heaving with distress.

  "What is it, Stara? Quick! it's sweet of you to come after me, but the... train."

  Stara was silent, struggling with difficult words.

  "Stara, you must hurry. Lord! but there's the train in sight."

  "Hector, I--I, oh, I can't, I can't. I'll write. Good-bye, my owndearest," and Stara, wheeling sharply about, galloped away whence shecame.

  Hector stood staring after her, with a vague feeling of uneasiness inhis heart.