A Galahad of the Creeks; The Widow Lamport

"They have found out! they have found out! Fly, Hawkshawe!"

"What the devil does this all mean?" said Hawkshawe angrily, and yet with a sickening foreboding in his heart. He snatched up the great brown envelope and read with whitening lips. It was, in brief, an order from government suspending him pending certain inquiries that were to be made, and adding as a rider that he was not to leave Pazobin until the final orders of the governor had been communicated to him. He did not notice a small note that dropped out from the official inclosure, but Ma Mie stooped and, picking it up, handed it to him. It contained a few lines from Peregrine telling him to keep up heart; that he, Jackson, was sure the charges were trumped up and would fall to the ground. The letter closed with an earnest assurance of sympathy and a brief intimation that his successor, Phipson, had already arrived, and was of necessity staying with Jackson, there being no other house available for him. The blow had fallen at last, and fallen just as Hawkshawe had almost completed his most brilliant departmental achievement. He guessed instinctively whose hands had struck it-the wretched half-caste Pozendine and his former enemy Iyer were leagued together in this. Perhaps they had no proofs, but that was, after all, a straw to clutch at. He knew he was guilty, and for the moment he was overcome. He sank back into a chair with an oath, and his hand slid of its own accord to the butt of his revolver; but Ma Mie was quick.

"Not that way! not that way!" she cried as she clung to his wrist and wrenched the weapon away from his after all not unwilling hand.

But a still more terrible trial awaited Hawkshawe, and that was the formal delivering over of his office to Phipson. He was treated with the greatest consideration, but this sympathetic treatment only added to the agony, though it was difficult to say who felt it most, honest young Phipson, with his soft heart, or the proud and guilty man whose place he had taken. When it was all over, Hawkshawe went back to his house and shut himself up, going nowhere-not even to his garden gate-doing nothing, but morosely sitting in his long cane chair smoking and drinking.

"It is too cruel of them not to let the poor man go away," said Mrs. Smalley; and Habakkuk thought that if he were to go and see him Hawkshawe might be cheered up a bit.

"There is no use, doctor," said Jackson. "I went myself, but could gain no admittance; perhaps it would be wiser to leave him alone. He will come out of this trial all right, I hope-"

"If ever he lives through it," said Phipson, and they all understood, though no one spoke another word.

Smalley now turned the conversation by speaking of a mission school he had founded at Dagon, which had flourished in so remarkable a manner that he almost thought it advisable to go and live there himself.

"And leave Pazobin?" said Jackson. "Why, we couldn't do without you, doctor."

Habakkuk was flattered at the compliment, and explained that after all it was only an idea that might never come to anything, and he and Phipson strolled off together to look at some plants, for Phipson was an amateur gardener and Smalley an enthusiast.

Ruys and Jackson were, alone. "You surely do not think that Dr. Smalley will move to Dagon?" he asked.

"Why not?" was the reply. "If his work takes him there, and he feels a call, he must go-and of course I."

"I know," interrupted Jackson, "of course you will go also to aid and help him." Their eyes met, and his fell before the limpid light in hers.

"Of course," she said slowly, "there is no other thing for me to do, unless I were to stay here and look after what is left. There is much to do, you know. And now take me to the garden. I want to see what those two are looking at."

It was a wilderness of a garden for all Smalley's care, and one might easily have been lost in it. Side by side they walked down a pathway, and in the far distance they caught a glimpse of Phipson and his host poring over a row of flower pots. Jackson was about to keep straight on, when Mrs. Smalley deliberately turned into a bypath, and he followed her, admiring the perfect outline of her figure and the easy grace of her walk. "Isn't this an odd place?" she said, as on taking a turn they came upon what was evidently the ruin of an old temple. All that remained, however, was the plinth and a single griffin of monstrous size, that stood up above the shrubbery around it and glared down upon the intruders. "Fancy if such things really lived," and she dug the silver-mounted cane she carried into the plaster.

"They did, I think, in the old days," replied Jackson. "It must have been just such a monster who guarded Castle Dolorous and carried away the White Lady to keep her a close prisoner."

"And of course a youthful knight came and blew on a silver bugle, and then there was a fight."

"Yes, and the knight won, and the fair lady gave him a gage to wear, and perhaps-"

"Oh, never mind the perhaps-she gave him her gage, did she? What did she give?" and as Ruys said this she loosened with her hand a bunch of mignonette that was pinned to her dress.

"Oh, a ribbon or a kerchief, or maybe a flower, and the knight wore it as a charm against all evil, and a light to guide him on his quest."

"Yes," she said dreamily, "the good old days-I would we were now in them. I can not picture a knight in a tweed suit-can you? How would a gage look on that?" and with a sudden movement of her hand she placed the flowers against Peregrine's breast and held them there.

"Will you let it rest there?" His voice sounded strange and hollow to himself. Ruys bent forward and fastened the flowers in his coat slowly and deliberately, standing close to him as she did this, and a mad longing came over the man to clasp her to him, to ask her to put her white arms round his neck and say she loved him, to tell her she was loved with a love that could only end with his death. But he held out somehow, God alone knows how, and when Ruys had pinned the flowers over his heart she said softly:

"There, that is my gage; remember, it is to be an amulet to guide you to the right."

The sweet scent of the mignonette floated around him, there was a dreaming look in Ruys's face as she met his look, and now her eyes fell before him, and she half turned her face away to hide the pink flush that came into her cheek. There was a moment of breathless anxiety to the man when he felt that he must yield, but he righted himself with a mighty effort as he said:

"I will keep the gage forever, Mrs. Smalley, although I am afraid I am but an unworthy knight."

Neither spoke a word after that, but, as it were, instinctively turned to leave a place which was so dangerous to both. They walked back together until they once more reached the broad road, and then Ruys turned abruptly.

"I have got a headache, Mr. Jackson, and I think I will go in. Don't tell my husband; it is a mere trifle. See, there are Mr. Phipson and he talking; go and join them. I-I-want to be alone."

She turned and walked slowly down toward the house, and Jackson stood still, staring after her with an uncomfortable feeling that her last words suggested an understanding between them that did not exactly exist. He bent his head down till his lips touched the flowers she gave him, and then he went forward to meet his host and Phipson. In the meantime Ruys reached her room, and, having carefully shut the door, deliberately proceeded to have a good cry. It was a sheer case of nerves with her, and the nerves had given way. She had played with edged tools and now found that they could cut, and began to realize that she was almost if not quite in love with this impassive youth. The woman was a curious mixture of good and bad. She laid herself out to do a wrong thing, and took a keen pleasure in so doing, then would come the reaction and bitter regret. She went down on her knees in an impulsive manner and prayed to God to forgive her sin, and she vowed then and there to dedicate her life to his service. Then she got up, washed off the traces of her tears, and came down to her husband. The mail had come in, and Habakkuk was seated reading his paper. "Have they gone?" she asked.

"Yes," replied Habakkuk, "left about twenty minutes ago."

She sat down on a rug near her husband's feet and rested her head on his knee. Habakkuk put down the paper he was reading and stroked the soft curls on her head with a gentle hand. She looked up after a while.

"Did you mean what you said about going to Dagon?"

"Why?"

"Because, if you did, I want you to go at once, and take me with you."

"Why, little woman, what is the matter?"

She got up impatiently. "Oh, you men-you men! Will you never understand?"

CHAPTER X

AN ATONEMENT

Ruys. – Can I give back? Well, then I will restore.

Death pays all debts.

Maraffa: A Tragedy.

In a solitary room of his house, shut out from the light of day, Hawkshawe was drinking himself to madness and to death. The weary weeks dragged themselves on, one after the other, in connection with his case, and yet nothing was done beyond the order which kept him under judgment. The government had not as yet even decided what steps they were to take in the matter. Called upon for an explanation, Hawkshawe had sent up a long memorial, full, as memorials always are, of points that did not bear on the question. He clutched at any straw to save himself, and there was without doubt a good record of good work done by him. Practically, however, he was already condemned, and the governor had made up his mind almost as soon as he heard of the case. He was a man whose muscular morality could endure no backsliding, and the taint of the old days still hung around Burma. He had sworn to purify it, and he meant to keep his word. "These are the men," he said, referring to Hawkshawe, "that we want to get rid of, and any excuse should be seized upon, for they have dragged the name of Englishmen in the mud; of course, however, Mr. Hawkshawe must have every opportunity of defending himself."

The head of the police, to whom these words were spoken, went away with misgivings in his heart about Hawkshawe. "He'll get over the bribery and corruption part of the affair," he said to a confidential friend-in other words, to his wife. "There's no real proof except the statements of those dismissed scoundrels and half a dozen other blackguards; but the other thing will smash him, and, with all his faults, he is very nearly my best man."

"And he ought to be turned out," said the lady. "I have no pity for men like Mr. Hawkshawe."

The chief remained silent, knowing that here argument was unavailing, but nevertheless he still regretted Hawkshawe's fate. And from this it will be inferred that a long connection with the seamy side of mankind had more or less blunted the fine edge of his susceptibilities, and that he was prepared to use any tools if they served his business, which was the suppression and detection of crime; and perhaps he was right.

In the meantime Alban Hawkshawe slipped down with frightful rapidity. He was like a man sliding down a snowy slope beneath which yawned a precipice, and he was reaching the abyss at a frightful pace. He would have killed himself had he dared; once he had almost done so, but the little hole in the muzzle of the revolver he held to his mouth looked so pitiless that he drew it back shrinking. His nerves were weakened, and there was a terrible bodily fear of that death which he felt could alone be his release. It was open to him to have left Pazobin and run the chance of arrest; but the very attempt at flight would establish his guilt, and he was quick-witted enough to see that his only chance was to fight, and, although the waters were over him, yet his arm was stretched out to grasp the one little straw in which there might be safety. Strange as it may seem, he began to feel an injured man. There was the shame and indignity of being kept a prisoner at large, to feel that every one around him knew of his fall, to know that they knew him guilty, to know that they who crouched before him formerly were laughing over their opium pipes at his downfall. The very servants knew it. He saw this in their faces. These thoughts drove him faster and faster on his course, and he vainly tried to flee from himself in the stupor of drink. And then the time came when drink did not produce forgetfulness. But Ma Mie clung to him with the affection of a dog. She endured his abuse and his blows, for Hawkshawe had reached a stage when he was no longer restrained from violence because the object was a woman. The poor creature tried to keep him from his besetting vice; she brought out all her little arts which were once wont to please and to beguile, but to no purpose. Hawkshawe insisted on having her about him, but it was not to console; it was because he wanted some one upon whom to work off the fits of semi-madness that came on him. His servants fled in terror, and after a time he began to feel that he could not bear to be alone. His excited brain conjured up strange images about him, and finally the wild beast within the man awoke in its full strength, and he was no longer a human being, but had gone back to that early time when man was as savage as a tiger is now. It seemed as if the soul had flitted from him while he still lived. He had now got out of hand entirely, and Ma Mie dared not approach him, but she hung around trying to anticipate his wants and watching his progress with a sickening heart. Finally the time came when she went mad also, for one night Hawkshawe put a fearful insult on her. She drew her dagger to kill him, but he had strength to wrench it from her grasp and flung her to the corner of the room, where she lay stunned and bleeding. After a time she picked herself up and stepped out of the room without a look at the wretched Hawkshawe and his still more vile companion.

"Order her to come back," said the woman who was with Hawkshawe; "I want her to attend on me."

"So she shall," was the brutal reply. "Here, Ma Mie!" he shouted, but there was no answer. He got up and staggered to her room. It was empty, but from the open window he saw her figure as it flitted down the road, and a wailing sob reached his ears. "By God, she shall come back!" he yelled, and, bareheaded as he was, reeled out of the house, followed by the mocking laughter of the she-devil within.

* * * * *

They had just dined, and Peregrine, leaning back in his chair, was listening to a plaintive little melody played by Phipson on his fiddle. Phipson fiddled; he did not play the violin, but his fiddling was very sweet and good to hear. He finished his little air with a flourish, and, resting the instrument lightly on the table before him, said, "I wonder you don't play something or other; it is a great distraction!"

Jackson had no time to answer; almost as the words left Phipson they heard footsteps rushing up the stairs, and Ah-Geelong's voice raised in expostulation. The next moment Ma Mie burst into the room. She held in her hand a bundle of papers, which she flung before Jackson. "There," she half screamed, "I give him up; he is a double traitor! O Hawkshawe, Hawkshawe!"

"Yes, Hawkshawe, Hawkshawe!" answered a mocking voice, and Hawkshawe stepped in, holding Ah-Geelong out at arm's length before him with a grip of iron. He shook the Chinaman like a rat, and, flinging him behind him, sprang straight at Ma Mie and struck a terrible blow at her. It was well that Phipson saw what was coming and hit up Hawkshawe's arm. The next moment the madman had flung himself on him, and the two rolled over together. "He's choking me, Jackson!" and Peregrine woke up as from a dream. With the assistance of Ah-Geelong he managed to free Phipson, but it took the united efforts of all three to hold the maniac down. Hawkshawe, when he found that he was overpowered, lay perfectly still for a moment, a white foam round his lips and his eyes shifting nervously about in their deep sockets like those of an ape. He then said quite quietly, "Let me up; the game is played out. I can do no more." Ah-Geelong gave a warning glance, and whispered to Jackson, "Plenty dlunk." But both Peregrine and Phipson felt that he would attempt no more violence, and, ordering the Chinaman to stand back, helped him to rise, which he did slowly, and then glared round him with his restless, fiery eyes. "Where is my wife?" he asked, and then they saw for the first time that Ma Mie had gone. The thought that she had escaped him seemed to rouse him to fury again. "Devil!" he shrieked, and made a dash for the door. Peregrine and Phipson were before him, however. "For God's sake, sit still and pull yourself together, Hawkshawe!" said Phipson. He looked at them and, throwing his head back, laughed, and his voice was as the howl of a beast. "Sit still! How can I sit still? There is something broken in my head; there are the fires of hell in my heart. A devil is ever leaning over my shoulder, and- Ma Mie, you traitress, where are you? Let me pass," he shouted, "or I will- Ugh! there it is!" He turned and, glancing over his shoulder, saw Ah-Geelong moving softly toward him, and then with a bitter curse sprang backward out into the veranda, and the next moment there was a dull thud below, and all was very still. They picked him up gently and bore him to Jackson's own room. Phipson ran for Smalley, and when Habakkuk came he looked at the man carefully. "I will do what I can," he said, "but no human art can save him; he is most fearfully injured. I doubt if he will live through until the morning." But when the morning came Hawkshawe was still alive, and when the sun sank he was not dead. There was one who came and took her place by the sick-bed as if it was her right, and neither of the three men had the heart to forbid Ma Mie. All through the long hours she never left him, and they were her hands that lifted his head as the last breath came and Alban Hawkshawe passed away. He never once regained consciousness, and it was only his extraordinary muscular vitality that kept him living for so long a time.

When it was all over and Smalley had gone, promising to come again with the morning, Phipson and Peregrine went back downstairs to the dining-room and there sat up together. Sleep was impossible, and to both of them death like this was a new and terrible thing. It was then that Ah-Geelong came in softly and brought a message from Ma Mie to say that she wished to see them. "Ask her to come in," said Peregrine, and she came. She held in her hands a small inlaid casket, which she placed on the shining woodwork of the table. Her eyes were tearless, but her voice trembled as she spoke. "See," she said, "what was my husband is lying dead above, and dead in dishonour. I have come to make his memory clean and to restore-" With a quick movement of her hands she opened the casket and scattered its contents on the table. It was full of precious stones, and above them all coiled the ruby bracelet, and the evil light of the gems seemed to blaze and sputter through the night. "I restore, as he would have restored if God did not make him mad; here they are, jewels for which he sold his honour and I my soul. And now good-bye. You were good to him, and you saved my life. Ma Mie will never forget."

They let her go without a word, and she passed out into the darkness forever from their sight.

CHAPTER XI

THE PATIENCE OF HABAKKUK SMALLEY

To-night I pass the narrow straitsWhich lead unto the Unknown Sea.God, who knoweth the hearts of man,Make Thou my pathway clear to me!Voyage of the Tobias.

Ruys's repentant fit soon began to pass away, and there seemed every prospect of an aftermath of backsliding. She had honestly and soulfully tried to mend, and for a few weeks everything went smoothly-at least outwardly-for there was a hard struggle going on within. Then she began to think the air was getting too pure for her to live in, and then in her desperation she again opened up the subject of the removal to Dagon, and to her surprise and joy found her husband met her more than halfway in this. She had no very definite object in urging the move beyond that it would enable her to flee an ever-present temptation. It would have been well for Smalley if he had seen what was going on, but Habakkuk had never gauged that wayward heart. With all his love for her, he had never been able to understand his wife. It was a mystery to him how she had ever come to marry him, how he had ever come to ask her to share his lot. She had accepted the offer in one of those capricious moods in which women of her nature do absolutely anything, and she was, in fact, nothing more or less than a refined and educated Ma Mie, without, perhaps, the rugged nobleness of the Burman woman. When she first knew Habakkuk he had just thrown aside a lucrative practice as a physician to enter the ministry with a view to going on the Eastern mission. This in itself was sufficient to attract an emotional woman, and there was something also in the innate nobleness of soul within his ungainly frame that drew her toward him. She had one of her "good" fits on. Here was something so very different from the smart young men of her set who worshipped the almighty dollar, and dreamed of the almighty dollar, whose one idea was to amass a fortune, and to whom a business operation which successfully brought a friend perhaps to ruin was a creditable thing. She felt that marriage with such an one was a moral abasement, and so she signalled, in that silent way that women know, to the strong and loving nature that was hovering near her, and he came at her call. Something within him, he knew not what, prompted him to speak, and he simply told her of his love, and turned to go. It never for one moment crossed him that he would meet anything but a refusal, and when she softly called him back and put her hand in his, he was unable at first to realize that his apparently absurd ambition had been crowned with success. They were married, and almost immediately left for the East, and almost as immediately Ruys began to repent of the step she had taken and wished herself back again. Those smart young men who worshipped the almighty dollar-after all, they were not so bad. She began to contrast them with her husband, and then she began to be miserable. Habakkuk saw this much, that she was miserable, and put it down to seasickness. By the time he reached Burma he reflected that his wife had about fifty different characters, and could slip on one as easily as she slipped on a dress. He was a sensible man and resigned himself to his fate, and then she trampled upon him because he yielded, and he bore it all with a silent misery eating at his heart. Then after a time his love seemed to sleep into a kind of intimate friendship; but Ruys saw this, and would fan it all up again, and, as soon as she succeeded, relapse into an icy dullness that made life almost unendurable. It was their last evening at Pazobin; the parsonage had been practically dismantled of its ornaments, and Ruys, with a straw hat in her hand, stood in what was once her very pretty drawing-room. Habakkuk stepped in with his slouching gait.

"I wish," said she, "you wouldn't stoop so. Why don't you hold yourself up? There!" and she straightened him; "if you always carry yourself like that it would be so different."

"I'll try," said Habakkuk. "I must enroll myself as chaplain to the Pazobin Volunteers. There are six men in the regiment, but I'll get drilled. Will that suit?"

She was in a gay mood, and laughed blithely. "Yes, it will do very well, and I shall have to work some colours and give it to the gallant regiment. But you are not to go with them when they go fighting dacoits," and she came close up to him. Habakkuk for once plucked up courage, and, putting his arm round his wife's waist, kissed her, and to his surprise the caress was returned. He could hardly believe it, but she disengaged herself from his arm and said, "I want you to go down to the boats and see that everything is ready, like a dear; then you can come back for me, and take me on board."

Habakkuk felt that he could have gone to the end of the world. He was off in a moment, and went away holding himself very erect.

His wife looked after him with a strange smile on her face. "I have got him away for a good hour, at any rate," she said to herself, and stepping out into the garden walked slowly down to the ruined temple, and when she reached there she looked around as if expecting some one. "I wonder if he will come?" she said, and almost as the words escaped her Peregrine walked quickly across the side and came straight up to her. "I only got your note this minute, Mrs. Smalley," he said; "of course I was coming to see you off. It will be a great disappointment to Phipson. There was news which took him out this afternoon. Our friends the dacoits are to the fore again."