CHAPTER XLIII.

Esmeralda lay in her hammock slung in the shadow of the hut. It was a lovely evening with the day’s heat lingering in the air, and as she lay back, in perfect comfort, she could look over the superb tract of country upon which the sun was beginning to shed a glory of crimson and gold.

It is good to lie in a hammock at most times, it is peculiarly and particularly good so to lie on the brow of an Australian hill with an Australian view to look at; and if you happen to have just come through a dangerous and trying illness, it is about the best thing you can do.

Esmeralda looked very fragile, as if a violent puff of wind would blow her clean out of the hammock and into the valley below. She was pale still, the freckles had nearly disappeared, her hands were white and thin, but the light was beginning to return to her eyes, and though they were still wistful and[340] touched with melancholy, they had lost that wild and despairing expression which the doctor had watched for so many weeks. A bunch of flowers lay in her lap beside a book, but she was not reading, and she was scarcely thinking; she was just gazing across the valley to the opposite range of hills, in that dreary state which the invalid alone seems able to manage. Her mind had worked so hard through her delirium that it was taking a rest now; it declined to worry her, or, in fact, to execute its usual functions in any way whatever. She was just capable of feeling that it was rather good to be alive still, that it was decidedly good to be lying in a hammock with the murmur of multitudes of insects in her ears, the perfume of the flowers stealing over her senses. She was not even thinking of Trafford. Though neither the doctor, nor her two women nurses had mentioned his name, she had a vague idea that he was not very far from her. But she had not inquired for him; she was not quite sure that she wanted him; not so sure as that she should want her beef-tea in an hour’s time. She had seen Varley for a minute or two, and by a look and a kiss had granted him full absolution for his misdirected shot; she had asked after Taffy and MacGrath, and the rest of the boys; had even seen some of them at a distance, but she had made no mention of Trafford.

As a matter of fact, she was living in a kind of dreamland, in which all the characters of her past history were so vague, so intangible as to seem more like persons in some story she had read, than real living beings with whom she had lived and loved and suffered. Most invalids feel like this, and it is a very good thing for them that they do; for while the mind is asleep and dreaming, the body has time to look around and grow strong.

Mother Melinda came out of the hut presently, with a pitcher and a can in her hand, and stood beside the hammock to regard her patient with critical affection.

“How do you feel now, dearie?” she asked.

Esmeralda looked up at her with half-closed eyes, and the smile which repaid Mother Melinda for all the weary and anxious nights.

“Delightful,” said Esmeralda in a voice that was not so feeble as soft and sleepy. “I feel as contented as a fraud always does. And I am a terrible fraud, Melinda! I wouldn’t admit it to everybody, but I don’t mind telling you—because you know it very well already—that I am quite well, and quite strong enough to get up and go about as usual.”

[341]

Mother Melinda shook her head, and laughed.

“I should like to ketch you at it,” she said, with tender sternness.

“At any rate, you won’t,” said Esmeralda, with a soft echo of a laugh. “I’ve just discovered that lying here in the cool, doing nothing, and thinking of nothing—except whether I shall get two pieces of toast or one with my beef-tea—is just what I was intended for; and I give you fair warning, ’Linda, that I mean to lie here, and gaze about generally, as long as you’ll stand it.”

Mother Melinda looked at her lovingly.

“I think as how you are looking better and stronger, Ralda,” she said.

“Don’t you believe it,” said Esmeralda, closing her eyes with an obvious affectation of extreme weakness. “I’m not fit for anything but what I’m doing, and I mean to keep so for—oh, ever so long. Why, you silly old goose,” she continued, opening her eyes and flashing them suddenly upon the wrinkled face with one of her old looks, “I could take you up in my arms and carry you down to the stream and back; and I would if I weren’t so beautifully lazy.”

Mother Melinda laughed, and looked down at the ground with a curious little expression.

“The doctor’s gone down to the camp,” she said. “He said you might have anything to eat you fancied. Is there anything you’d pertikler like, dearie?”

“Yes,” said Esmeralda; “I should like a beefsteak, a big one, and some potatoes, and a custard pudding, with currants in it, and any little trifle of that kind suited to an invalid with a huge appetite; but I suppose it will be the usual beef-tea and the piece of toast. You wait a little while. I’ll have my revenge. I’ll shut you up in a hut, and feed you on beef-tea for a few weeks, and then I’ll ask you if there is anything you fancy, you cruel old woman!”

Mother Melinda laughed again—chuckled, rather.

“We’ll see what I’ve got,” she said. “I’m going down to the stream for water; I sha’n’t be long, and I shall hear if you call. You won’t feel lonely, will you, dearie?”

“Oh, go away,” said Esmeralda. “You know that I know that you only want to steal away and talk to the boys; I heard some of them in the wood a little while ago. Go and stay as long as you like,” and she turned her head away and closed her eyes.

A quarter of an hour elapsed, and she heard footsteps ascending the hill and stop beside her. She did not open her[342] eyes, but waited for Mother Melinda to speak; but when a minute had passed, and the exquisite silence remained unbroken, she turned her head and opened her eyes to find not Mother Melinda, but Trafford, standing beside her.

She did not utter a cry, but lay placidly gazing at him, as if she considered him a part of her waking dream. And as she looked, she thought, in a vague way, how handsome and tall and strong he looked, and how bronzed he was, and she thought that the expression in his eyes, as they dwelt upon her, was like that which they had worn the night of their marriage, just before they parted. Of course it was a dream; but the look drew the blood gradually to her face, and made her heart beat with a queer little throb. Then suddenly, very gently, and with a quiver in his voice, as if he were trying not to frighten her, he said:

“I have brought the water, Esmeralda.”

At the sound of his voice, her eyes opened wider, the color deepened in her face, and then left it paler; so that she looked, with her red-gold hair and her long lashes contrasting with the olive clearness of her face, and the deep tint of her eyes, like some exquisite tropical flower, with its wonderful harmony of hues and shades. She began to understand that she was not dreaming, but that this strong man was Trafford himself—her husband. But she did not quite realize his presence until he whispered her name again. Then she trembled a little and her lips quivered, as if she were panting.

“Esmeralda,” he said, very gently, very fearfully, as if he were afraid that the sound of his voice might frighten and trouble her. “Have I startled you? Mother Melinda said I might come. I have been waiting all this weary time—but I will go again if you wish it, if you are not strong enough to see me.”

She did not speak for a moment or two, then she whispered:

“Why—why have you come?” Had he come to upbraid her, as he had done the night they parted? She looked at him with her brows drawn together.

“Are you frightened of me, Esmeralda?” he asked, with a world of remorse and self-reproach in his voice.

“I don’t know,” she breathed. “Are you going to be angry with me again? Is it of any use?”

He knelt down beside the hammock, and his hand went out toward hers; but he drew it back; he did not dare to touch her.

“I have not come to be angry with you, Esmeralda,” he said. “I have just come to look at you—to hear you speak,[343] I won’t say another word to you; I will go away now, this moment, if you wish it, if my being here is too much for you.”

She looked at him questioningly. Her brows were still straight, her lips slightly apart.

“I am not tired,” she whispered. “What is it you want to say to me?”

“Only one sentence, Esmeralda,” he said. “And see, dearest, I say it kneeling at your feet. It is: Forgive me!”

She breathed quickly.

“Forgive you?” she said, wonderingly, her heart beating faster.

“Yes,” he said, his eyes eloquent with imploration. “I scarcely dare ask you, there is so much to forgive! Ever since we first met, I have wronged you, have cruelly misjudged you, have proved unworthy of you.”

She looked at him with a sudden dread in her eyes, a dread which gradually disappeared as he went on.

“But ever since we first met, I have loved you very dearly, though I did not know it at the beginning, and I have been true to that love.”

“Been true?” she murmured.

“Yes,” he said, earnestly; “there has been no other woman in the world for me since I saw you.”

There was truth in his accents, and the blood rose to her face as her heart throbbed with a joy which had long been absent from it.

“Not—not Ada?” she breathed, almost inaudibly.

“Not Ada,” he said, solemnly. “She passed out of my life when you entered it, Esmeralda.”

Her eyes closed, and a little tremor, born of her new joy, ran through her.

“I have enough to answer for,” he said, “without that. I have wronged you very deeply. I know now how innocent you were, how vilely I was blinded by my own jealousy, and the malice of a wicked woman.”

“You know?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “Norman has told me everything; the scales have fallen from my eyes; I see now that you were as pure as a lily, and incapable of what I deemed you guilty.”

She closed her eyes again, and when she opened them she looked at him through a mist of tears.

“I have come to ask you to forgive me, Esmeralda,” he said, “to tell you that I love you, have loved you from the beginning. But do not be afraid. I know how easy it is to[344] kill love; that though you may have loved me, my cruelty to you may have slain that love outright.”

She did not speak; and, after a moment, he went on, with bent head and eyes fixed on the ground, as if he dreaded to read his sentence in her face.

“If you wish it, I will go away again, and leave you in peace. I could not go until I had told you with my own lips—until I had confessed to you, and tried to obtain your forgiveness. I know that I do not deserve it, but I know, dear, how tender your heart is, and that you will not let me go without your forgiveness.”

She was silent for a moment, then she whispered: “I forgive you.” Her heart was throbbing with this new delicious joy, but perhaps because of the very depth and intensity of her emotion, her tone sounded constrained and even cold. And he had been hoping against hope for just a hint of tenderness, of love.

He stifled a sigh, and rose. He would steal away now, and leave her; he would not harass her and make her ill again by an emotional leave-taking. She had forgiven him, it was true; but it was evident by the tone of her voice that he had slain love outright. He forgot at that moment, or, in his timidity and self-reproach, did not attach significance to the fact that she had thrown herself between him and Varley’s avenging bullet. When a man loves as passionately as Trafford loved, he is always doubtful and despairing; it seems too much to hope that his love should be returned. He stood beside the hammock looking down at her—looking at the face with its downcast lids, with its flower-like mouth, the lips apart as if she were breathing painfully. The murmur of the bees filled the silence with a subtle harmony, the scent of the flowers in her lap stole over his senses; he thought that for all the years he should live, that Providence should lay upon him as a burden, he must think of her as she lay there in her beauty; and that the sound of the bees, the scent of the flowers, would ever be with him, to torment and torture him with a mocking reminder of all that he had lost. She was his wife, his lawful wife, and yet as divided from him as if she were a perfect stranger!

She had moved slightly, and the pillow had slipped a little. He noticed this, and instinctively he stretched out his hand to put it in its place, to make her more comfortable, as he would have done in the past; then he remembered, and let his hand fall to his side again; but the displaced pillow harassed him.[345] Surely, he might put it straight before he went? He would do it very gently—perhaps she would not shrink from him.

“Your pillow has slipped,” he said, trying to speak calmly, and, indeed, in quite a casual way.

“It does not matter,” she said; and, for the same reason as before, her tone was constrained and cold.

“Will you not let me put it right for you?” he asked.

She raised herself on her elbow, her eyes still downcast, the long lashes sweeping her cheeks, one hand grasping the edge of the hammock.

He lifted the pillow to its proper position, and, thinking that he had finished, she leaned back; but he was smoothing the pillow, and she rested on his arm. An electric thrill shot through him, and his face went white; hers grew crimson, and she raised her head and looked at him.

Only for a moment did her eyes meet his, but something passed from them to his very heart—something that made him utter a short, sharp cry. His arm tightened around her, and he drew her up to him and pressed her to him in a grasp that was steel and velvet combined. She made no effort to free herself, but hid her face upon his breast and lay there panting—and satisfied.

“Esmeralda!” he breathed. “You not only forgive me, but love me?”

“I have always loved you!” she whispered; and he could feel her lips move.

It seemed too wonderful to be true; that even a woman’s love could survive the blows he had dealt it.

“Say it again, dearest,” he said, “again! again!”

“I love you! I love you!” she said.

He let her fall back slowly in the hammock, his arm still round her, and as he knelt, he hid his face on her bosom.

“Poor Trafford, poor Trafford!” she said, with a faint and tender smile and a loving woman’s true insight.

“Yes, dearest, pity me!” he said. “Pity me for all my blindness has cost me!”

She laid her cheek against his head.

“I will make it up to you, Trafford,” she whispered in so low a voice that, but for the movement of her lips, he might have fancied that she had not spoken.

They remained thus for who shall say how long or short a time; not they. Then she said, very sweetly:

“I must go in now, dearest! Help me out of the hammock.”

[346]

He rose and lifted her in his arms. How light she was! It was as if he carried one of the flowers upon his bosom.

“I can walk,” she murmured. “I am quite strong again. I can walk; put me down!” But her arm did not unwind itself from his neck, and her head nestled closer on his shoulder, and he laughed as he pressed her tighter to him and carried her—as gently as if indeed she were a flower, some precious lily he had gathered on his life’s path—to the hut.

As he laid her on the bed, and bending over, kissed her not once only, and looked into her eyes, something cooking in front of the fire began to fizz. She looked beyond him at it, and laughed—the laugh of a happy child.

“It’s the steak!” she said.

He went to the fire and laughed also, as he dished up the steak and lifted the lid of the saucepan containing the coveted potatoes.

“It’s my supper,” she said. “You have come just in time, Trafford.”

“Yes,” he said, looking at her, “just in time!”

Half an hour later Mother Melinda came up the hill and glanced in at the window; the door was closed. She just glanced, then, with a silent chuckle of satisfaction and delight, turned, and went down the hill again. And not until she had reached the bottom did she laugh outright, and, with tears in her eyes, exclaim: “God bless my dearie! Oh, God bless my dearie!”