Cynthia Stockley (continued 2)

“Rotten!”

She then beat a spot of dust off her skirt with a riding-crop she held in her hand, stuck out her boots and stared at them. I observed that they were riding-boots of the kind that finish somewhere near the throat, and I thought how very hot and uncomfortable they must be for evening wear. She was evidently eccentric, for my eye mechanically travelling upwards made the further discovery that she was dressed in a riding-habit. Certainly it fitted her as though it had been painted on her. But what an odd garment in which to make an evening call!

It is quite simple for plump women to have well-fitting clothes. All that is necessary is to have the things made tight enough—the plumpness does the rest. But I have noticed that a silent manner nearly always accompanies that kind of good figure. Women who have it do not seem to have any desire to talk, and when they do it is rather crossly—almost as if they had indigestion. They are also very fond of sitting down.

It is the graceful, curvy woman who has a bad time at her dressmaker’s, being fitted and fitted and fitted. Personally, I did not own a rag that hadn’t cost me hours of weary standing and having pins stuck in me before a mirror.

The behabited lady had transformed the glances of her sulky eyes from her boots to me with such a disagreeable expression in them that I couldn’t help thinking how pleasant it would be to tell her these things. In the meantime, Miss Cleeve was speaking again.

“I can’t think what anyone wants up here,” she said, with an air of the utmost ennui. I looked at her keenly, for I had heard her name on my journey up. At that time girls were not plentiful in Mashonaland; in fact, Miss Cleeve had so far enjoyed the distinction of being the only one in the country. People had hinted to me that she would not regard my arrival with ardour, and I couldn’t imagine why. Personally, I am fond of other girls, and think them ever so much nicer than married women, who get most frightfully tiresome with their stupid airs of mystery and superiority. Just as though any one couldn’t be married if they wanted to! I think it requires far more cleverness in a charming girl to keep unmarried.

Annabel Cleeve had been described to me as “not exactly pretty but extremely fascinating”; and it was further said of her that she could marry almost any man in the country if she wanted to. But as I said before I didn’t think that so wonderfully clever.

Her complexion appeared to be pale, dusky, mysterious, everything that is romantic; but she had her back, quite by accident of course, to the rose-red lamp, so it was rather difficult to tell. Only I have known those romantic lamplight complexions to bear in the daylight an extraordinary resemblance to Indian curry. I couldn’t see her eyes very well, but I afterwards discovered that they were a pretty though rather cold grey. It was a pity that she always kept them half closed, for it gave her a rather blasé air. Like so many chic girls she hadn’t any girlishness at all about her; it seemed to have all been swallowed up in chic. Certainly her hat was very clever.

Mrs Valetta was the only one in the room who had not yet tried her claws on me, the reason evidently being that she was too tired.

She was a wicked-looking woman with weary manners. Even her coat and skirt hung on her as though it was worn out with fatigue, although it was really quite smart. After saying “De do?” to me she had sunk with a Mrs-Pat-Campbellish air into a low chair, and closed her eyes as though hoping it was the last act she need perform on earth. It was she who had the Persian-blue eyes; and die wore a felt hat slouched over them and fastened up at the side with a B.B. Police badge.

Quant-à-moi, I was not at this time at all smart. It is true that my Panama hat had come from Scotts, my grey velvet-corduroy coat and skirt had Lucile: rue de Rivoli in gold letters on its waist belt, and my shoes and stockings bore the stamp of the good Peter Yap. Nevertheless, I was not smart. Africa’s sunshine, dust, mail-bags, winds, rains, grass-ticks, mosquitoes, and mules had done evilly unto me and my clothes, and my appearance had not the original charm and freshness peculiar to it. Wherefore I felt very much out of tune with the world in general, and most particularly with these ladies who scrutinised me with such curiosity and penetration.

If they had shown the smallest scrap of enthusiasm or pleasure it would have been different. But no: there they sat, watchful and grim as man-eaters. With the exception of the leathery-faced one, of whom I afterwards heard that she ate, drank, slept and had her being on horseback, and never wore anything but riding-kit, they were all imperturbably cool and fresh in light dresses, though I thought it curious that no one wore a dinner gown. Perhaps it was because they had not dined, but only “partaken of a meal” like the remarkable one which stood before me on a tray. Judy had begged me to excuse it, saying that dinner had been over for some two hours and the boys had been obliged to scratch up a meal from the ends of the earth for me. It had that appearance. There was a very hard-boiled egg, a box of sardines, a dish of terribly déclassé potatoes, and a cup of tea. Accidentally, there was also a plate of tomatoes, freshly plucked, with a bloom on them like a mist on a ripe plum, and for these I was truly grateful. I cut them into slices and with my bread-and-butter made little sandwiches which assuaged my hunger and thirst at the same time.

The grey-eyed kitten again addressed me:

“Dear Miss Saurin, have you brought any poudre de riz with you? No one here has any thing but Fuller’s Earth, and you know how greasy that makes your nose.”

I had no such knowledge. However, I answered civilly:

“Yes, I have poudre de riz and every kind of thing made by Rimmel and Piver and Guerlain. My sister-in-law wrote me that these things were hard to get here, so I brought bags full.”

An electric wave of enthusiasm passed round the room, and for a moment Judy looked almost rapturous, until I added, “They are all with my luggage, which is coming up by waggon.”

“What!” cried Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. Miss Cleeve bit her lips, and Mrs Valetta, looking wickeder than ever, closed her eyes apparently for ever. Mrs Brand was the only one who remained unmoved, but it was clear that her tanned face and a powder-puff had never made acquaintance. Judy gave a little cold laugh.

“It might have been just as well to stuff a box of poudre de riz in your pocket.”

“Dear Judy, my pockets were stuffed with the necessaries of life—tea, sugar, soap, sometimes even bits of meat; they called it biltong, but it was really nothing more or less than dried meat.”

“Disgusting!” murmured Miss Cleeve. Evidently she had never suffered the exigencies of a coach journey. She must have arrived by balloon. They glanced coldly at my battered dress-cases and hat-boxes which stood piled by the door.

“All packed to the brim with absolute necessities,” I said. “The post-cart regulations allowed one to carry exactly sixty-four pounds. Of course I carried far more, but they charged me eight pounds, six shillings, and fourpence excess. The transport-waggon people promised to have my trunks in Salisbury in four weeks’ time, and I thought if I stayed about six weeks that would give me some fresh gowns to wear here, and an outfit to return in.”

In the smile which greeted my words as I explained this to them I could not but recognise grimness as well as malice. The horsewoman proffered some gloomy information.

“Your things will take six months to get up here—if they ever arrive at all.”

“Why, what is likely to happen to them?”

She shrugged, and spoke in jerks.

“Wet season coming on. Transport drivers take ten times longer than in dry season. Get stuck in mud-holes. Sit for weeks on river banks waiting for floods to go down. Roads sometimes so bad they abandon their loads. Leave them piled up by the roadside for next waggons to bring. Next waggons usually open them and help themselves to what they like best. Kaffirs also come and help themselves. Once when I was travelling with my husband amongst the kaffir kraals in Bechuanaland I came across a native girl wearing a pink satin ball-gown that I had last seen at my dressmaker’s in Kimberley and which had been dispatched by waggon with a lot of other things.”

I could not help wondering who would have looked funnier in the pink satin ball-gown—Mrs Brand or the black girl.

“Yes, and then there is the sad tale of Mrs Marriott,” chimed in Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, gazing at me with her striped eyes. “She came up here to be married, bringing her wedding-gown and a few things with her in the coach, while her trousseau and the other things for the house were sent by waggon in three enormous cases. Well, the coach had an accident crossing a river, and she lost everything she had with her, and arrived here in a grey skirt and a pink print shirt which she was married in. That was six months ago—but if you get up early-enough in the morning you will meet Mrs Marriott doing her shopping before any one is about, still wearing her grey skirt and pink print blouse.”

“Impossible!” I cried, petrified. “Well, there you are! Her three packing cases never arrived, that’s all.”

“But how frightful! Surely she could have been helped out with some kind of wardrobe. Surely you—” I looked from one to another of them.

“Oh, she’s not one of us,” said Judy carelessly. “She’s a Port George woman. We couldn’t very well offer to do anything. Besides, they say she is quite unapproachable. I believe the women here were ready to be friendly, but she rebuffed all advances.”

“She has other troubles, besides lack of a wardrobe,” said Miss Cleeve dryly.

“No one has ever been inside her house even,” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “Very silly of her, I think. In my opinion it always does one good to tell one’s troubles to some one else.”

At this Mrs Valetta gave a dry laugh that drew my attention to her, but she still had her eyes closed.

“Ah, Porkie,” said Miss Cleeve, “we haven’t all your simple, confiding nature.” Porkie, otherwise Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, threw her a glance that was neither simple nor confiding.

“Dear Anna, thank Heaven I am exceptional in having nothing to confide,” she retorted with a sort of perky significance.

How tired I felt of them all, and how disappointed! They were full of petty malice and empty bitterness and were making me just the same. I already felt a blight on the joy that Africa had waked in me. As day by day I had sped across the wide, rolling plains and rivers, in the generous sunshine, I had seemed to feel my soul expand and be set free from the littlenesses of life. Now here, right up in the heart of the wide continent where I had dreamed of finding simple-hearted people living happy, sincere lives—here were the petty things of life once more—empty malice, small talk, and aching hearts caused by a lack of poudre de riz! And not a sign of Lobengula and his six wives!

I finished my tomato sandwiches and sighed for my disillusionment. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe spoke me kindly:

“My poor child! you must be terribly warm in your heavy coat. Why don’t you take it off?”

“Yes, I think I really must,” I said, glad of a reason to rise and depart. “I am so very tired, Judy. I hope you will forgive me if I ask to go to bed at once.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, and they all chorused “Of course,” and began to put on their wraps to go. “It was horrid of us to come in so soon,” they said, “but we simply had to welcome you. It is sweet having some one new; it is so sinfully dull up here. Of course, knowing that you had arrived so recently from home, we couldn’t resist coming straight away. Do forgive us. Goodnight. Do rest. You look positively haggard with fatigue.”

That was the last poisoned arrow they flung at me. But I received it heroically, for I observed that Judy and Mrs Valetta, who still remained seated, had discarded their languor and weariness for a moment and were sharing a malicious smile. I should have liked to take down one of the assegais from the wall to them, but I had to content myself with saying dryly:

“It is really too charming of you all to welcome me so warmly!”

Mrs Valetta continued to smile in her sleep, but Judy resumed her languor like a wrap as the door closed on the others.

“Ah! we all live in each others’ houses up here—and know each others’ secrets. You will get used to this happy state of things if you mean to stay long, Deirdre.”

This last somewhat enquiringly, I thought; but I had no intention of issuing a statement at that stage. I made no response, only nodded good-night to Mrs Valetta and followed Judy to my room.

While she was lighting candles on the dressing-table she said:

“Nina Skeffington-Smythe was simply dying for you to take off your coat, so that she might see what kind of figure you have, and was dreadfully disappointed when you didn’t respond to her invitation.”

I stared at my sister-in-law reflectively, thinking how she had changed, and what bad luck it was to have to stay here amongst all these unfriendly women instead of being able to go right into the wild, deep heart of Africa. For the first time in my life I regretted not being a man. I even regretted my lions that were hyenas!

“Are we likely to be here long?” I asked abruptly.

“Heaven knows! I have begged Colonel Blow, the Magistrate, to let you and me go on to Salisbury to-morrow in the coach, but he won’t. He says that low we are here we must stay until the trouble with Lobengula is all over. You know, of course, that they are sending an expedition against him. Two columns are starting as soon as they have all the horses they want, and all the men from here are going to join them. I feel sure that Dick will go with the Salisbury Column if I don’t get back in time to stop him.”

“But you surely won’t try to stop him, Judy? Poor old boy! Fighting is his profession, after all, and how he will love to get back to it. Just imagine how you would if you were a man. I know I should.”

“That’s all very well, Deirdre, but Dick might get killed. And it’s so uncomfortable here, too,” she continued. “Mrs Valetta, and I, and now you, all stuffed together in this tiny house not big enough for one.” Her tone was frankly resentful.

“I’m awfully sorry, Judy. Of course, if I had known how uncomfortable I should make you I would not have come. But I had no idea until I was nearly here that this war business was so far advanced.”

“Oh, they have been making preparations for some time, but very quietly, so as not to give the Matabele the advantage of knowing our plans. But the time is close at hand now. Mr Rhodes is up in Salisbury, and Dr Jim is backwards and forwards all the time between here and Victoria and Charter, and the men everywhere are as excited as they can be over the chance of war. They are only waiting for a last consignment of horses, then they’ll go, and we wretched women will be left behind to be shut up in what they call a laager.”

“Even that might be interesting if there were not such a lot of cross, catty women about,” I thought, and was indiscreet enough to say something of the kind. Judy immediately fell upon me with a dagger.

“I always think it such a pity when girls don’t like other women,” she said, in a stuffy little voice. “It seems to me there is something lacking in a nature like that.”

“I do like other women, Judy, but I don’t think those who were here to-night liked me much. They made me feel like a newly arrived favourite in a harem.”

It was rather a rude thing to say, but really they had been very annoying, and Judy as much as any of them. She answered me in an extremely bored voice.

“You mustn’t fall into the mistake that women are jealous of you simply because they take an interest in your appearance, dear.”

“Oh, I don’t,” I said wearily. “I am quite used to having an interest taken in my appearance.”

This annoyed her very much, so she pretended not to hear, and continued:

“It would be rather absurd if you did, here, for all the Salisbury women are by way of being good looking, and really, dear, you are not looking your best. Of course, I know you must be very tired.”

Tired! After a journey of fourteen days and nights and adventures enough to turn my hair white! After being nearly drowned in rivers and nearly eaten by lions, and getting blisters on my heels and mosquito bites on my hands, and grass-ticks all over me, and being left alone on the veldt all night with tigers and hyenas! Tired!

I thought of all my sufferings and my weariness, my ruined complexion, the sunburn on my nose and the blister on my heel, and I could openly and frankly have howled aloud. But I saw that the expression on Judy’s face was neither of sympathy nor of sorrow. By an effort I controlled myself, and began to take my coat and hat and veil and things off. As I could see no pegs anywhere I hung them up on the floor, and as calmly as possible but very firmly I said:

“Do, please, let me go to bed.”

“Certainly, dear.”

How I wished she wouldn’t “dear” me in that insincere and meaningless way.

Chapter Four.

The Sun Calls.

“I know not where the white road runs, Nor what the blue hills are; But a man can have the Sun for his friend, And for his guide a Star.”

I awoke to the far-off chink of china, a babble of native voices in the back regions of the house, and a glare of sunshine bursting through a small canvas window.

I closed my eyes again, and lay for a long time thinking of the soft, sweet-aired September mornings in Ireland, all grey and misty—trying to believe I was back there in my chintz-curtained bed in my chintz-covered room with the salt sting of the Atlantic coming in through the windows on the faint peat-scented breeze. I made myself believe that the chink of china was the chink of the morning tea-cup on Nora’s tray, as she came in with my letters and a bunch of violets and a soft bright:

“Good-morning to you, Miss Deirdre! I hope it’s not waking you I am.”

At last I opened my eyes and stared about me. Ah! what a glare! Alas! how far off was Ireland, and what a different place this to my rose-chintz room! But what did that matter after all? I could go back when I chose, and in the meantime this was a new and strange land, with fascinations of its own that could not be disputed. Sleep had freed my heart from the paltry vexations of the night, and the spirit of the morning pervaded me once more. I felt nothing but glad to be alive in the gay and buoyant sunshine of which the room was full. It flickered on the bare white walls, and danced upon the pale shining mats that covered the floor. Afterwards I found these to be native mats made by the Mashonas. Every one uses them on their floors, and for verandah blinds. The natives bring them round to the door and one buys them for a shilling apiece. The walls of the room were bare and whitewashed, but they looked soft and powdery, and perhaps that was why there was nothing on them anywhere. The dressing-table was a draped affair, without legs, and so was the wash-hand-stand. A tall strip of unframed mirror stood on the former, leaning against the wall; on the top left-hand side it had a broken corner, over which a lace handkerchief had been arranged. At the foot of the mirror were some silver toilet articles and a poudre de riz box with a faded pink satin puff resting on it. There were no flowers, no pictures, no photographs. My dressing-case stood open on a chair, as I had left it the night before, and my clothes were still hung up on the floor. I sighed.

The little sigh I gave echoed back to me across the room, causing me to turn hastily towards a screen which was placed down the room, dividing it. It was a dull pink screen with golden storks meandering across it, and it might or might not have come from Japan, but seemed out of place in Mashonaland. It did not quite reach from wall to wall, and, to my astonishment, just beyond the top of it I could see Judy’s face lying on a pillow. I had fallen asleep so swiftly the night before that I did not even know I was sharing the room with my sister-in-law.

She was in bed and still asleep. Her fair hair lay in two plaits down the folded sheet. Her lips were pale and slightly apart; her cheeks, faintly tinted, grew rosier towards the nostrils. She was still pretty, but she was losing her complexion, and the peevish lines I had noticed the night before showed more deeply round her babyish mouth. Her hands, resting before her on the quilt, had the calm, complacent look of hands that have grasped their fate and have got it safe. Her fingers were badly manicured, but her broad, gold wedding-ring shone with an assured, defiant glare.

She was a good deal changed from the Judy who had been the prettiest, daintiest girl in Wilts five or six years before. Dick’s heart had been a house of many mansions until the hunting morn when he had first met Judy following the Duke of Beaufort’s pack and had gone down before her grey eyes and pretty, appealing manners. Thereafter no more mansions in his heart, but only a chapel for adoration and prostration. Everything and every one else had gone by the board. I have seen that single-hearted devotion in husbands before, and always in the nicest kind of men; but I have noticed that it does not invariably make the marriage a wild success. The woman usually gets spoilt and selfish, and begins to think she is far too good for her husband. It is rather a sad sight then to see a fine man wasting his heart on some one who despises him for doing it.

For a year or two after their marriage it had been painful to those who loved him to watch Dick making ducks and drakes of his money and chances of a military career under the spell of his adoration for Judy. For her sake he resigned from his regiment when it was ordered abroad, and eventually left the army to have more time to be with her. For her sake he took a lovely house in Mayfair and lived with brilliant extravagance, throwing the dibs to the four winds as Aunt Betty (who has a respect for money) put it, until even his large income began to give out. But Judy (who, as the daughter of a poor baronet, had never been able to indulge her taste for the social life she adored) continued on her merry, expensive way until things got actually desperate with them, and one bright morning Dick was obliged to announce to her that unless he meant to live on his mother (which he didn’t) they must pull stakes for some quiet little place in the country, where inducements to spend money would not be so pressing.

Judy was broken-hearted at the thought of going back to the life from which she hoped she had escaped for ever, but she consoled herself by choosing Surrey as her future home. In fact, she consoled herself so well that in a few months the financial position was worse than ever, and it really came at last to a question of Dick’s taking the remains of his fortune to try for a fresh throw of the dice in some other country. Africa was chosen and they departed, Judy weeping and reproaching every one but herself. Dick had bought an ostrich-farm ready stocked, in the Free State, and for a time all went well; Judy said she adored the life of riding and driving and they made many friends in the capital which was close at hand. Then suddenly the ostriches, afflicted by some mysterious malady, began to die by scores. In a few months poor Dick was thousands of pounds to the bad, and the horizon scowled once more. Judy did her best to persuade him to let mother help him out of his difficulties, a course he had hitherto resisted with all his might, though my mother’s heart and purse were always open to him. Judy wrote and begged me to use my influence with him, and I did, but while things were still unsettled my mother died suddenly, and almost directly afterwards came the American Bank crash, reducing us all to comparative poverty, and making poor Dick’s horizon darker than ever.

But there was not much American respect for money in Dick. He was all Saurin and happy-go-lucky Celt, and I believe that except for Judy’s sake he did not in the least mind being in deep waters. I gathered, too, that he was rather pleased if anything to break away from ostrich farming, which, he wrote me in confidence, was but a dull dog’s life. The next I heard was that he had left Judy in Cape Town, and joined the pioneers who were to open up Mr Rhodes’s new country in the north. Before many months Judy had joined him; and in love with the country and the men who had found it, he ventured the last of his capital in land near Salisbury. With the intention of making his permanent home there, he had started upon what promised to be a prosperous future in farming and horse-raising.

They had one little son, whom they had left in Durban, and who was to be brought up to them as soon as the trouble with the Matabele was finally adjusted.

I sighed once more as I looked at my own slim fingers. I had been too tired to take off my rings, and an opal and a diamond or two winked wickedly at me. I wondered if my hands would be like Judy’s some day—calm and complacent and badly manicured! Just because some good man would come along and admire them and kiss them and think them the most beautiful hands in the world, and thereafter fold them in his breast while he himself took the wheel and did all the guiding through stormy seas, and all the hard work on land of fighting and gripping and parrying for place and position and money! It seemed to me that it would be rather hard on the good man if one didn’t keep the hands just as fair and alive and beautiful as when they first attracted him: and rather mean to let them grow plump and complacent and gripless and neglected.

Of course, Dick was my brother, my wild, gay-hearted brother, and the handsomest boy in Ireland, and Judy was only my sister-in-law. And of course, no one ever thinks their sister-in-law quite nice enough for their brother. I wished to be quite just. Anyway, early morning reflections are always a mistake, so I gave them up.

I hopped softly out of bed, tipped up the canvas window, and peered out at the little township. Wattle-and-daub houses everywhere, some of them beehive shape, like kaffir huts, some of them barn-shape like the one I was in: but all with thatched roofs and some with verandahs, stuck here and there with apparent aimlessness, but not without a certain picturesque effect. Streets that were merely wide stretches of grass with a foot-path in the middle and wheel-ruts at the sides. A bush or a wild tree growing casually before a door. A porch made of packing-cases and clambered over by grenadilla, or a clematis-wreathed verandah, struck an individual note here and there. A plant with an enormous leaf and a floppy, sulphur-coloured flower seemed very popular and prolific. I afterwards discovered it to be the ubiquitous pumpkin.

There were many waggons about, all of them piled up with things, as though ready for departure.

I rather especially noticed a square-built hut, the walls of which rose no higher than about three feet, and from thence were open to the high-pitched thatched roof, except for native mats let down here and there in narrow rolls like blinds. It was rather like a primitive Japanese tea-house, and I thought how lovely it must be to sleep there at nights with all the mats rolled up and the stars peeping in. Evidently it belonged to a man, for just before its door sat a ring of black boys jabbering and cleaning a man’s boots and a man’s stirrups and other articles of riding-kit, whilst another boy was rubbing down a jolly chestnut mare with the same hissing noise grooms make at “home” when they are grooming. At a second glance I recognised the handsome head, the long graceful flanks, and the white hoofs of “Belle.” So her master was here, and lived in this glorified tea-house!

A little wave of gladness trembled through me, I knew not why. A good way off I could see the glint of galvanised-iron roofs—evidently the shops; and in the centre of the township was a big brisk building with a tall conning-tower rising from it, and a high-walled yard beyond. I recognised the post-office where the coach had drawn up the night before.

A dear little ridiculous, consequential place, I said to myself, and laughed with a heart as light as a feather, for the air that came in at the window was like champagne. Nevertheless, I still had post-cart ache, and decided that a day in bed would be the only real cure for my utter bone weariness. I slipped back amongst my pillows.

Judy suddenly woke up, yawned, looked at her hands, drew one of them up to carefully examine a spot on it, then let her eyes travel round the room until in the course of time they encountered me. Then she gave a great start and put up her hands to her hair.

“Oh, Deirdre, how you startled me! I had quite forgotten about your arriving.”

“Merci, ma chérie,” I laughed, “but I hope your cook has not. One thing Africa has done for me is to provide me with a perpetual appetite. I don’t know yet whether it is a good thing or not.”

Having hidden her hands under the counterpane my sister-in-law regained her complacency.

“My dear child, it is a very bad thing; it is simply mockery, like all the other favours Africa bestows, for there is nothing here to appease your good appetite. I hope you will not expect buttered eggs and grilled ham, etc, or you will be terribly disappointed. Reimptje never gives us anything but mealie-meal porridge, and eggs boiled as hard as stones.”

“I met those luxuries on the journey up.”

“They are all any one ever has for breakfast in Mashonaland.”

“In that case I shall go to sleep again for a week,” I said, and turned my face to the wall.

“Oh! how unkind of you, Deirdre, when I am longing to hear all the news about everybody.”

So we gossiped awhile, and I told her all the home news, and she explained to me how she came to be in Fort George and away from Dick. It appeared that a slight epidemic of typhoid fever had broken out in Salisbury, and every one had become very much alarmed, as its origin could not be discovered. The hospital sisters were coping well with cases, but many men had decided to send their wives away for a while until the reason of the outbreak had been discovered. As several other ladies were starting for Fort George Dick had persuaded Judy that it might be a good thing for her also to get a little change.

“We came down by waggon with an escort of men, and it was awfully jolly and amusing at first,” said Judy. “But we are all rather sick of it, and would like to go back. At least I would. I don’t think Mrs Valetta cares very much, for she has an awful husband and is delighted to be away from him. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, though she pretends to adore her wretched little Monty, is not at all in a hurry to go back to him. She and Anna Cleeve are living in a tent together and affect to be enormous friends, calling each other by pet names, but they will have a terrible quarrel one of these days. Mrs Valetta lives in the hut next door, but there is an entrance from it into this, and she has her meals with me and is obliged to come in here to dress, as her hut has no looking-glass. I hope you won’t mind her coming. Of course she must see herself.”

I did not recognise any such necessity on the part of so wicked-looking a face, but I said nothing, and presently, after Judy had dressed and gone to make some inquiries on the subject of breakfast, Mrs Valetta, swathed in an ashen-blue kimono that matched her eyes, came wearily in and stood before the dressing-table. She began to take hold of some curls that were lying about on her forehead and to fluff them up with a hairpin. In the meantime she looked in the mirror at me, examining me carefully.

“Aren’t you going to get up?” she asked. “Your sister-in-law promised to take you round to the tennis-court this afternoon. Every one is very anxious to see you.”

“How kind of them,” I said, “but I really am too tired, Mrs Valetta. The thought of tennis in my present state makes my spirit faint.”

She considered me thoughtfully, still through the mirror.

“I think you will be foolish not to come. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe will tell all the men that it is because you are so burnt and blistered. They will get quite a wrong impression of you.”

I answered cheerfully: “They can get a fresh one when they see me. But do their impressions matter?”

This, for no earthly reason, annoyed her. She cast me a look of mingled irritation and curiosity which I received calmly. At twenty-one one can bear with a prepared heart the piercing scrutiny of “something over thirty.”

“Oh, yes: you will find that they matter. One has rather a bad time in this country if the men don’t like one.”

I could have told her that men always liked me, but it seemed brutal to inflict unnecessary pain.

“Really?”

“For one thing they have all the horses, and there is very little to do if one doesn’t ride. But, of course, that won’t affect you.”

“Oh, why?” said I, opening my eyes wide. “I’ve brought a habit with me and I adore riding.”

I thought of “Belle’s” white feet and my own tingled to be in the stirrups.

“Ah! but your vanity will take you much further than any Mashonaland horse,” said she, and loafed wearily from the room.

Really, that was très drôle! I couldn’t help laughing, first at her cross-patchiness and secondly at the idea of my being vain. For, of course, I am not vain at all, only these antagonistic women aroused my dormant cat, and made me want to say arrogant things. I felt sure that if I did not they would walk all over me, and that is a thing I never allow any one to do. It is bad for them.

The sense of disappointment I had felt the night before returned to me, but it was accompanied by the spirit of fight. If these women wanted battle, well they should have it, and I would fight them with their own weapons. However, it behooved me first to put mine in order. I presently arose and from my dressing-case secured a hand-glass and a pot of common or garden hazeline, which I had found to prove a more useful friend in time of need than all the Oriental creams that were ever buried with Persian princesses and rooted out again by the owners of beauty-parlours in Bond Street and Fifth Avenue. Having retired to my bed once more I fell to studying my appearance with an earnestness I had never before given the subject.

The old tragic look was peeping out of my gay face as usual. I jibed at it as always: but really I believe that without it I should not have been so charming and original looking.

My mother could never watch me long without tears coming into her eyes. She would say:

“Oh, Deirdre, what puts that look into the back of your eyes?”

And I would answer:

“Darling, what look? I was just thinking of a book, or a ride, or a new gown—nothing sad at all.”

“Well, it must mean something, Deirdre!” she would declare. “I fear for you. I believe you are predestined to some terrible suffering or sorrow, and your soul knows about it and is afraid.”

“Nonsense, darling,” I always told her. “I’ll never let anything make me unhappy. No one shall turn me into a tragedy. I know too much about the joy of living.”

“Oh, Deirdre, don’t talk like that. It sounds as if you were daring Fate.”

So I was. I had always thought of Fate as she had been represented to me in a queer book of fancies and fables by a sardonic old French author.

“Fate is an old hag with a basket full of painted apples. She hands you out one, and you are so foolish as to take it, and when you bite it and find it rotten she smiles grimly and says, ‘I told you so’ (though she had not). And when you don’t like the taste of the paint she says, ‘But you must eat it to the core. Perhaps it will taste better there.’ (But it does not.)”

A Fate like that ought to be defied, and I felt sure that if every one did so she could never harm them. Tragedy is in us, and not in externals: Emerson says so. I refused to be a tragedy.

I laughed at Fate, and considered my complexion. Like everything about me it was unusual. It had a rich cream tint that blended perfectly with my wallflower eyes and hair. My mother arranged my colouring for me before I was born. She had a passion for reds and browns and ambers, and ardently desired to have a daughter with such colouring, so for all the months before I was born she used to have her rooms heaped with marigolds and wallflowers and nasturtiums and sit amongst them. People said she was a crazy American woman, full of eccentric ideas and notions, and perhaps she was; but she got what she wanted. For the velvet reds and browns and ambers of those simple but lovely flowers did reproduce themselves in my eyes and hair—at least every one said so—and the tint was in my skin, too, in an indescribable sort of way, and the effect was not at all unbecoming to my small, narrow, and extremely retroussé face. Did I ever say that every single thing about me turns upwards?—my chin, nose, cheekbones, lips—all have that curly, odd, rather fascinating upward tilt, and every single hair on my head turns up at the ends. Yes, I am very retroussé. Of course, I don’t say that it is pretty; but it is rather original I think.

After all, the sun had not done my skin so much harm as I thought. Indeed, I had often been in worse case after a week on the river, or a day’s hunting in hard weather, and thought nothing of it. As for my eyes and hair, “Time with her cold wing” might some day wither them, but Africa had certainly done them no harm so far. However, I decided to anoint myself in a royal manner with cold cream, and take a full day’s rest. Incidentally, I unpacked my war-paint and plumes, and shook the creases from my coats of mail.

Chapter Five.

The Heart Calls.

“All charming people are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”

On the second day after my arrival I descended upon my enemies in open field, or rather on open court. Judy, having reviewed my toilette before starting, was suddenly smitten with a violent headache, and said that Mrs Valetta would chaperon me to tennis.

In ordinary circumstances I should have felt distinctly mean about appearing amongst people who had for some time been cut off from shops and civilisation by about eight thousand miles of rolling land and sea, in a pale yellow muslin gown concerning which Lucile considered she had received special inspiration from Heaven, and a black chip Lentheric hat which no woman could look upon unmoved. However, I was not at that time considering the feelings of other women, but the ways of certain members of the family felis. It had come to my ears, through the kindly offices of my sister-in-law, that Mrs Skeffington-Smythe had informed the world at large that I was suffering from a boil on my nose and fifty-six mosquito bites variously distributed over the rest of my features. Miss Cleeve had contented herself with saying that she personally did not care for the new shade in hair—it had a pink tone in it that was bizarre. What Mrs Valetta said had not yet transpired, but looking at her as she slouched beside me in her tired coat and skirt, I felt sure that it was something equally malicious.

We arrived at the court in an hour of brazen heat. Four men were playing a sett, and several others were clustered round a tea-basket and Mrs Brand, who still wore her habit. On the other side of the court was a little group of women sitting in canvas chairs with white umbrellas over their heads and needlework in their hands. I was informed that these were the Fort George women—“frumps and dowds of the most hopeless order.” However, they appeared to be very happy and content in spite of this utter depravity on their part, and they had a number of nice, keen, clean-looking men with them. These did not stay for any time, having apparently business of their own to attend to.

“Husbands!” said Mrs Valetta scornfully, “and mostly shopkeepers and farmers at that.”

This naturally lessened my interest in them, for I did not suppose I should meet them if they belonged to the tradespeople class, and, in fact, I rather wondered what they were doing there at all. I had not at that time learned that in a new country like Mashonaland men can, and do, turn their hands to any trade or calling that is clean, without in the least prejudicing themselves or their future. Most of those nice, keen-looking men had left good professional livings to come adventuring to a new, sweet land full of radiant possibilities, but until some of the possibilities materialised the main thing was to get a living in the best way that offered. But as I say, I did not at the time realise these things.

Mrs Valetta in her rôle of chaperon languorously introduced the Salisburian side of the court to me. Between that and the Fort George side was evidently a great gulf fixed. I did not, however, think any of the men on the chic side desperately engaging. There was an ancient doctor with baggy cheeks and the leer of a malicious wild goat in his left eye; a sepulchral-looking parson; a man with a beard, whose first cousin was a duke, but who wore dirty hands and an unspeakable shirt without a coat, and several boys of sorts (all scions, it transpired, of noble houses). But I never take the slightest notice of boys or beards.

The men on the court were better; a big, grave man with a frolicking laugh—Colonel Blow, the Magistrate; the Mining Commissioner, a sleek, fair man; a rather handsome, chivalrous-looking young fellow called Maurice Stair; and a man with turquoises set in his ears, and blue eyes that compelled me to look his way the moment I reached the court, and then to drop my lids with the old, strange weighted sensation on them. I did not look his way again until, all introductions over I was seated, when I put on my most cynical expression and let him see that I was not observing him, but the game.

He was not as tall as any of the others if you came to measure by inches, but his figure had a strong, careless air, and the distinction of his head appeared to give him an advantage of about thirty inches over every other man in sight. His hair was certainly getting thin, and I was delighted to observe it. It was really impossible to bother for a moment about a man who had such hair. The black hank of it hanging down was not beautiful. He looked about forty, too. Still, he couldn’t have been that: no man who was old could have gone after the balls as he did. When I watched him I remembered the Bible words, “Like a swift ship upon the waters.” Of course, I knew all about sculpture, having lived with it and been brought up to it, so to speak, and I could not help knowing that only a beautifully built man could move like that. I could not help knowing it, but it did not interest me; in fact, it bored me, and I looked away from his careless glance when it came my way as carelessly as ever he looked in his life.

Presently the sett finished and the players came briskly towards the Salisburian side. But they were skilfully intercepted by Miss Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who chose this moment to arrive most gloriously arrayed.

“Yes, but why have you got on your best stars and stripes this afternoon?” the baggy doctor loudly demanded of them. He was evidently a person who said what he liked to every one. They turned away from him, disdaining to answer; but I knew why they were so glorious.

Miss Cleeve made haste to walk off with Colonel Blow to the end of the court, where there was a rustic seat evidently belonging to John Dewar and his sons, for their names were printed everywhere in black letters over the packing-case wood of which it was composed.

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe who had halted the blue-eyed man was reproaching him plaintively because he had not been to call on her since his return.

“But I haven’t had a minute since I got back,” he protested.

“You’ve had time to call on Mrs Valetta. Why couldn’t you have found a moment to come and see Anna and me?”

Mrs Valetta turned and bit at her:

“Kim and I have known each other for many years,—

“Old friends are best— Old loves, old books, old songs.”

She broke off the quotation at that, smiling a little acrid smile. These things did not interest me in the least. I merely felt that I detested Mrs Valetta and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, and most of all the detestable man they were squabbling so crudely about. Mrs Valetta had returned to her business of introducing to me a large queue of freshly arrived men. She presented each with a brief biographical note, regardless of the protests of the victim.

“This is our disreputable postmaster, Mr Mark Bleksley. Plays the banjo divinely, but steals our letters.”

“Oh! I say—”

“Mr Maurice Stair—quite eligible—five hundred a year—Assistant Native Commissioner, and not bad-looking.”

“Handsome, Mrs Valetta—”

“These are Hunloke and Dennison. They keep a shop and rob us shamefully. Mr Hunloke is an American lawyer by profession, but he finds that overcharging us for bully beef pays better than law, and gives him more time for picnics.”

“I could take action on those statements. They are scandalous and libellous.”

“As for Tommy Dennison—”

“Please don’t rob me of my good name, Mrs Valetta. It’s all I have left. I’m as eligible as Stair, anyway.”

“No, Tommy. You are a younger son—and you have a past. Every one says you have.”

“Yes, but it’s past.”

“This is our only real Earl—Lord Gerald Deshon—Irish, penniless, and raving mad. You are a great friend of Miss Saurin’s brother, aren’t you, Gerry?”

“Yes, but I object to that biography. If you will listen to me, Miss Saurin—”

I did listen, but they all talked together, surrounding me and making a great deal of noise and saying the silliest, wildest things about themselves and each other; and a few yards away was that hateful voice, low and level, with the disturbing crake in it that suggested power and the habit of issuing orders. Whatsoever his orders were to Mrs Skeffington-Smythe she was evidently disinclined to carry them out.

“Nonsense!” she was protesting. “Let us go and talk to Anna. Don’t you think it is time you made up your quarrel with her? What did you fall out about, by the way?”

“You are mistaken. I’m sure Miss Cleeve has no quarrel with me.”

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe laughed gaily.

“You’re a fraud, Kim. Every woman has a quarrel with you.”

I hadn’t the faintest desire to hear these enigmatical sayings, but they all talked at the top of their voices, brandishing each others’ affairs. It appeared to be true that no one’s secrets were their own in this hateful country.

Mrs Valetta had broken up the crowd round me, ordering them to go and pick up sticks to boil the kettle for tea. They straggled away, complaining and abusing each other, to a patch of bush about five hundred yards from the court. The Earl was sent to Mrs Brand’s hut to fetch the milk which had been forgotten. I now saw myself menaced by the approach of the beard, and the thought of flight occurred to me, but at that moment the argument between the man and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe ceased.

“Oh, very well, since you are so very insistent,” she said crossly, and turning to me added sweetly, “Dear Miss Saurin, how is your poor nose? This is Major Kinsella. He is dying to inquire after it.”

If this was meant to cover us both with confusion it did not have the desired effect. At her words the smile suddenly left his face, and he bowed courteously; the steel-blue eyes looked into mine with a grave serenity. I could not but know that he was incapable of such gratuitous rudeness. Wherefore, instead of snubbing him, as I had intended to do, I bowed back to him and bestowed upon him the bright, cold smile of a frosty morning: I had the satisfaction of knowing that he recognised the quality of it, if Mrs Skeffington-Smythe did not. She changed her tactics.

“Major Kinsella, if you do not find me a seat I shall faint, I am so hot and tired. Do let us go over and sit in the shade with Annabel. It is much cooler there.”

Major Kinsella was something of a tactician himself it appeared.

“I hope you can have Miss Saurin’s seat in a moment. I am just going to ask her to play with me against Blow and Miss Cleeve.”

“I play terribly,” I said coldly. But he blithely announced that they all did, and no one cared a button; the main thing was to annoy your opponents as much as possible. As that rather appealed to my frame of mind at the moment, I eventually allowed myself to be beguiled to the court, where another sett had just broken up, Major Kinsella shouting unceremoniously to the others as we walked:

“Blow, come on. You and Miss Cleeve against Miss Saurin and me.”

The game was not uninteresting. My partner, whom Colonel Blow addressed as Tony, did all the work and only left me the slow balls, which I gracefully missed. The rest of the time we talked: at least he did. Secretly I preserved a bleak manner. He could not fail to plainly understand. But as I did not wish the whole world to know that I even cared to be cold to him, I filled in any prominent gaps in the conversation with a soft little laugh that he knew perfectly well was not meant for him, but that seemed to vex Miss Cleeve very much. For some reason not very apparent she lost her temper early in the sett, and said quite crossly that if we did not pay more attention to the game it was not worth while going on. That was très drôle, considering that we were winning all the time! I thought so, and Major Kinsella said it, laughing gaily. Her only answer was to slam the balls into me as hard as she could, and as I was out of practice and she a remarkably good player we should have come off badly in the end if it had not been for my partner’s speed and skill. I did not like him in the least, but I had to admit he could play tennis like a fiend.

Later, we approached the tea-table, which was a large packing-case presided over by Mrs Brand, and covered with a beautifully embroidered tea-cloth belonging to the postmaster, who kept bragging about it, and saying that it was the nicest cloth in South Africa, and how he had haggled for it at Madeira until the coolie was black in the face, and got it for half price.

Several of the men who had returned from the wood hunt with a few sticks in each hand lay upon the ground in an exhausted condition. The rest of us sat in a wide circle round the packing-case, and the men who had no seats took up a Yogi attitude upon the ground. The tea had a smoky flavour, but somehow it was the nicest tea I had ever tasted, and the smell of the dying fire of wood branches was fragrant in the air, seeming to remind me of some old sweet dream, until, glancing up, I saw Major Kinsella breathing it in too, like some lovely perfume, while he looked at me with a curious smile in his eyes. I knew then that we were both remembering the same thing; not a dream at all, but a real memory strangely poignant.

The sun had fallen to the horizon line and lay there like a great golden ball, sending long rays of fire into our very faces.

In those last searching beams, playing upon us so mercilessly it was revealed to me for the first time that though all were cheerful and merry every face about me wore some trace of stress or storm. For the first time I observed that men whose laughter was blithe enough had haggard eyes; that jests came gaily from lips that fell into desperate lines a moment later. On faces that were like tanned masks there were marks that dissipation might have made, or careless sins, or I know not what mischance of Fate. The women under their heavy veils and pretty hats had, to my suddenly sharpened vision, a pathetic disillusioned look, and some were careworn, and in the eyes of some there was the fateful expression of the losing gambler. Anthony Kinsella’s dark countenance, too, was scored with deep lines between the eyes and about the mouth—hieroglyphics I had no gift to read, and his eyes were as inscrutable as the points of blue in his ears.

For the first time I forgot all the things that annoyed me in these people, and began to like them with pity in my heart.

Were these the claw-marks that the witch Africa put upon those who dwelt in her bosom? Were these the scars of her fierce embrace? Surely not. Surely a witch’s cypher would be finer, more subtle, something secret yet plain as the sunlight to those who could read. What was it? Where was it? I sought it in the faces round me, and after a time I believed I found it, in the nil desperandum air that each flaunted like a flag. It was Hope. God knows what they hoped for—each for something different perhaps—but that was what woke the jest upon their haggard lips and brightened their disillusioned eyes; that was the secret gift the witch put into their hearts, the masonic sign she wrote across their brows. Hope!

“Hope—the heroic form of despair!”

My heart strangely thrilled with the thought that if I had read aright the witch’s symbol then I, too, was of the initiated. I was one of them—if only for a time!

While I thought and felt these things, I was vaguely aware that they watched me in a curious, searching way, as if I had for each of them some hidden message I had not yet delivered. Perhaps it was that coming from “home” and being quite new to the country I had a different look to the rest of them, I cannot tell; but there it was—they jested and laughed and gossiped with each other, but always their eyes came back to me with that wistful, searching glance. And my clothes seemed to have an extraordinary charm for them. One would have supposed I had dropped from some wonderful land from which they were life exiles, and that the glamour of that fair, lost country hung about me still. I saw men’s eyes examining my shoes and the tucks in my gown; even the one great La France rose in my hat had some magic; and the women looked so wistful that I felt tears rising, and was miserably ashamed of myself for having put on my prettiest gown to annoy them. It seemed to me then that even if they had been cats, I had been the worst cat of all. Lord Gerald Deshon said to me boyishly:

“May I sit next to you, Miss Saurin? you smell so nice.” And when the old doctor picked up my glove which had fallen, he gave it a little stroke with his hand before handing it back, as though it were something alive.

The sun sank out of sight at last, disappearing in a billowy sea of wild-rose clouds. Golden day departed, and silver eventide was born.

Gold for silver! I cannot tell why those three little words stole through my mind and settled in my heart, as we walked home under a great canopy of purple haze full of coolness and the scent of evening fires: but it seemed to me suddenly that they were the most beautiful words ever written and the meaning of them more beautiful still.

The entire party conducted Mrs Valetta and me to our doors. The women seemed loth to lose sight of us, and the men talked feverishly of commandeering all the horses in the town for a moonlight picnic. Unexpectedly to me, somehow, Major Kinsella killed this delightful plan by saying quietly: “No, the horses are not available.” The crake in his voice had become suddenly most pronounced; perhaps that was why the men, who had been so keen for the picnic, accepted this dictum without a word, but I thought the fact rather curious. Mrs Brand and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe were the only people who did not abandon the idea immediately.

The latter petulantly demanded reasons and told him that he did not own all the horses in the town, any more than he owned all the hearts. Mrs Brand said sturdily:

“I don’t know what you are up to, my dear Kim, but don’t you lay your hands on either of my horses.”

He smiled but made no promises, and instead of giving reasons to Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to discuss the possession of hearts with her. I said good-bye hastily and went indoors.

Judy rid of her headache had cheered up and put on a pretty gown, but her hair was done anyhow and her manner unchangingly languid.

After dinner we spent the evening playing cards at Mrs Brand’s. She had a really comfortable two-roomed brick house lent her by the postmaster, on the condition that he could drop in whenever he liked. However, some gay spirits had rigged up in the hall a toy Maxim belonging to a mining engineer, and this was trained on to the front door and loaded with “mealies” for the benefit of the postmaster, in case he should “drop in” at the wrong time. Really these were the silliest people!

Somehow the evening did not prove so interesting as the afternoon. Almost all the same people were there but to me there seemed a lack of fire about the proceedings, even when Mrs Brand had a supper of curried eggs sent in from Swears’s to rouse us, and a delightful dessert consisting of the contents of grenadillas mixed with port wine, was served in champagne glasses.

The man called Stair attached himself to me in a quiet, unassuming way that I could not object to. He talked little but seemed to be content to sit near me and look at me with his rather romantic dark eyes. Neither Major Kinsella nor Colonel Blow appeared.

Incidentally, and without asking questions, I learned a great many things about the former. Off and on, he was the main topic of conversation during the evening. His name cropped up faithfully every five minutes. When Lord Gerry said that he had certain information that “Kim” was going to be in command of the Mounted Police that would be formed as soon as the trouble with Lobengula was over, Mrs Skeffington-Smythe said acidly:

“He behaves as if he were in command of the country now.”

“It wouldn’t be such a dusty thing for the country if he were,” a boy cockily announced; but this was rank treason to the gods in charge, and he was hooted down and told to go to bed.

“I wish I had his future,” said some one else.

“Even if you had to take his past with it?” a woman asked (Mrs Valetta).

“Certainly: that wouldn’t hurt me.”

“It might hurt a few women though,” sneered Mrs Skeffington-Smythe.

“How unfair women are!” said Lord Gerry. “If a man said a thing like that he would have to back it up or take the consequences.”

“Oh! I am quite ready to do both,” she answered perkily, and glanced at her great friend Miss Cleeve, who merely stared at her cards.

“You can’t blame a man because women are fools,” said the Mining Commissioner, a slight man full of heavy philosophy. Judy, with a prim air, abruptly changed the subject, but in five minutes they were back to it again, like cats to cream.

It transpired that “Kim” was short for Kimberley, where he had dealt with diamond mines, and made and lost a fortune.

“But wasn’t that a very long time ago?” I was surprised into asking. For I had passed through Kimberley and found that its day of glory had departed.

“Long? why, yes, it certainly wa-s,” drawled Mr Hunloke, the lawyer, wagging his head. “But Kim is no newly-hatched birdling.”

“Haven’t you observed that there’s no wool on his head where the wool ought to grow?” said one of the cheeky boys of whom I thought there were far too many about.

“No, I have not,” I answered disdainfully.

“Well, it’s getting mighty sparse,” he proclaimed, with increased cheekiness.

“Oh! that’s holy living,” said the doctor, and leered his goat-like leer.

I thought what horrid people they all were. It appeared that Anthony Kinsella was not an army man as English people understand the term. His rank had been gained in various bodies of African Mounted Police which he had belonged to in the intervals of making and losing money in the gold and diamond capitals. He had a great head for finance they said, but in the midst of successful undertakings and deals he would break away and disappear, and the next heard of him would be that he was living with his boys in a lonely part of the veldt, or had rejoined for a time some old corps of his. He had come adventuring to South Africa when he was quite a boy, knew every inch of the country, and was looked upon as almost a colonial.

“Almost, but not quite,” said Gerald Deshon, “he is one of us. Also, he is a born leader, and no colonial was ever that, though I daresay some will come along by-and-bye as the years roll on.”

“But why does he wear turquoise ear-rings?” I asked involuntarily, thinking no one but Lord Gerry was listening.

I was mistaken.

“Some woman stuck them in his ears, I suppose,” said Mrs Valetta fiercely; and she and Miss Cleeve glared at me across their cards. I stared at them in surprise for a moment, then laughed, though I was not greatly amused.

“I never thought of that.”

“You would have if you had known Kim long,” said Mrs Brand dryly.

“I’ve heard that there have been more men hurt than you can count on your fingers and toes through a too pressing curiosity about those ear-rings,” some one remarked.

“Yes, a fellow on the Rand once nearly died of that complaint,” added Tommy Dennison. “It is a subject that Kim will stand no ragging about.”

“She must have been a very pretty woman,” grinned the doctor.

I suddenly felt very tired and low-spirited and longed to go away from them. I was sick of their wretched card-party. I wondered what all the “frumps and dowds” were doing and their nice business-like men, and was inspired to make a remark.

“Do the Fort George men spend their evenings talking scandal also?”

There was absolute silence and then all the men began to grin.

“You can search me!” averred Mr Hunloke, but his partner answered blithely:

“Oh! they’re getting ready to tackle Loben.”

“There’s a lot of dirty work attached to an expedition and some one’s got to do it,” Gerry Deshon said. “Blow and Kinsella are up to their eyes, and a lot of the other fellows here are experienced men in wars with niggers. None of us would be of much use at present.”

“It takes all sorts of men to make a war. Perhaps if we are no good now we may be when the fighting comes along.”

I was rather attracted by this quiet, modest little statement made by Maurice Stair.

Every one walked home with every one else as usual, and discussed what they should do the next day to kill time. In the absence of any authority some bold spirits reverted to the moonlight-picnic plan for the next evening, but a man said decidedly:

“No good! Kim has got down some inside information from headquarters, and won’t let the horses a mile away from the town.”

An important resolution that we should all meet at the tennis-court the following afternoon was passed, and my sister-in-law was invited to invite every one to supper and cards in the evening.

“Oh, very well,” said she, swathed in languor as usual. “But I’ve no genius for entertainment. You’ll have to fish for your supper.”

“All right, we will,” they blithely cried, and announced to me, “You can bank on us, Miss Saurin. We’ll be there.”

I did not doubt the fact, but it failed to interest me. I, too, was wrapped in weariness. Life in Africa seemed to me to be inconceivably petty.

Chapter Six.

Love Calls.

“Ah, Love! there is no better thing than this, To have known love, how bitter a thing it is.”

On the Fort George side of the court next day I noticed a woman I had not seen before. She was handsome and rather extraordinary looking, and had a number of men talking to her; but the did not join the Fort George ladies, and for their part they took no notice of her at all. I wondered why, for they had struck me as being pleasant, friendly souls, kindly disposed to all the world.

She had rather a sallow skin, that made her brilliant hair and bright red mouth all the more amazing; and there was an odd, defiant air about her, yet something curiously wistful in the glances she sent across the court at me from her murky brown eyes. She laughed a great deal with the men talking to her, but I thought her laugh a little too merry. In a tailor-made fashion she was exceedingly well dressed—quite the best turned out woman I had seen so far, though Anna Cleeve certainly knew how to put on her clothes if she only had any to put on. I wondered why this pretty woman was unhappy, for even in my limited experience I had discovered that it is generally the woman who has missed happiness, who tries to fill in the little round hole in her heart with clothes—the smartest and prettiest she can find. Happy women usually have too much in their lives to bother about making a fine art of dressing. Of course, with girls it is different; they naturally love pretty clothes and they have a right to them.

I wished she would come round to our side of the court and let me see her properly, but she did not. Later I observed that the rest of the women only looked at her when she was not looking; at other times they looked through her and past her and over her. At last I became aware that she was taboo. Even the men who stood about her were not the nicest men, and I observed that no one went from our side to speak to her, except Major Kinsella, who, as soon as he arrived, shook hands and stood talking for some little time, at which her pleasure was obvious; afterwards the looks she cast at the other women were more defiant than ever. Consumed with curiosity I addressed a query to Judy sitting next to me.

“That person?” said she, looking another way. “She calls herself Rookwood, I believe.”

“What has she done?” I asked. It was so very evident that the poor wretch had done something.

“Oh, don’t ask me,” said Judy in a far-away voice. But Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who sat on my other side, was not so reserved.

“Do you see that big fair man with her? That is Captain Rookwood. Handsome, isn’t he? She lives with him.”

“Do you mean she is married to him?”

“Married to him—not at all. She is married to a man called Geach, in Cape Town, but she ran away from him with George Rookwood, and they have been living together for six months now. Her husband by way of revenge refuses to divorce her. Isn’t it insolent of her to come here amongst us?”

“Of course she always has a dozen men round her,” Judy supplemented in a low voice; “they do so love a déclassée woman, don’t they?”

Afterwards I learnt that the man Geach was an enormous brute of a half-Dutch colonial, who drank, and had been in the habit of beating his wife constantly, and had once dragged her all through the streets of Claremont by her amazing hair. Another time he had dipped her in the sea before a crowd of people, and had afterwards been horsewhipped by the crowd.

Of course, both as a Catholic and as a femme du monde I was agacée at these things. I knew that none of Mrs Geach’s sufferings singly or together constituted any excuse for her running away with another man who happened to love her and would be good to her. It was to be supposed that she knew this, too, and that if she did such a terrible thing she would not only be committing a mortal sin, but must thereafter be struck off the rolls and disqualified for any kind of social life. However, she had chosen to do it; so now she had a merry laugh and a defiant mouth, and gave more attention to her clothes than most women.

In spite of her sins I could not help being thankful that there is no law, religious or worldly, that forbids one to feel sorry for wistful-eyed sinners. Also, I began to dislike Mrs Skeffington-Smythe very much indeed. It struck me that she arrogated altogether too much holiness to herself, and that a little charity and loving-kindness would not be out of place in her moral make-up. I was mentally arranging something polite with a bite in it to say to her, when Major Kinsella came and sat down beside me in the chair Judy had just left, and after that I was too busy arranging polite bites for his benefit to remember Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and her malice.

It had been raining all the morning, drenching, thudding rain that flooded the land with small lakes and rushing rivulets; the first taste of the “wet season,” every one said, though it was not really due until November. I had looked forward disconsolately to a dreary afternoon indoors. But by two o’clock every trace of wetness had disappeared with the extraordinary haste that distinguishes the drying up of the rain in the High Veldt. Only the freshly washed land gave up a ravishing odour tinder the hot sunshine, and the sky above was a turquoise plain, across which some giant hand had moved, sweeping all the billowy clouds into one great mass in the west. There they lay piled one above the other in snowy splendour. A blaze of hot light poured down on to the court, making the women droop and blench in their chairs. But my veins sang with delight. Never had I known such delicious heat, and I loved it, and felt like a marigold flaring and revelling in the golden shine. It seemed to me that I had never really been alive before I felt the heat of the African sun. I said so to Anthony Kinsella, and his blue eyes flashed at me.

“You will never be able to live away from it now.”

I laughed, but I suddenly felt the clutching thrill again.

“Oh, one could not live here always,” I said abruptly. “Away from music, and books, and great speakers, and sculpture, and pictures—”

“The veldt is full of pictures—look at that one.” He glanced at the turquoise plain and the billowy clouds. “And can you tell me you have never heard its music—on the banks of a river under the stars?”

I could tell him nothing. I could only look away from his eyes.

“Great speakers!” he mused. “You must hear Cecil Rhodes some day telling the boys to extend the Empire.”

I did not speak.

“Books and sculpture—they are good, but ‘has life nothing better to give than these’?”

“I don’t think so,” I said firmly, but found myself adding a moment later, “I am not sure.”

He answered, “Africa will make you sure. She has a way of making it worth one’s while to stay with her. And if she loves you she will just put you in bonds and keep you, whether you will or no.”

“She can never do that to me,” I said, almost vehemently. “I am too exigeante, and I do not like bonds. Let us pray that she will not love me.” I essayed to laugh lightly, but my heart was beating in my throat, and an unaccountable agitation shook me. It seemed ridiculous to be so moved about nothing, sitting out there in the steaming sunshine with all life smiling. We were both staring before us away across the court and its players to the amethystine hills on the edge of the world. He did not look at me, nor I at him, but in a low voice that none but I could hear he said a strange thing:

“For your sake I could go back to prayers—but do not ask me to pray that.”

Mrs Valetta came in to look at the mirror as I was hunting for something for dinner.

“You needn’t change,” she said. “Just turn in the collar of your dress and sling a fichu round your neck. I’ll lend you one if you haven’t got one.” She had something in her hand that looked like the tail of an old ball-gown.

“Oh, no, thank you,” I said fervently. “I have too much respect for a good gown to treat it in that fashion.”

I made haste to spread upon the bed a little black lace frock that I had brought for ordinary home use to wear in the evenings. Judy strolled in and gazed dejectedly at it.

“Every one will think it fearfully sidey of you to wear that,” she said at last, quite animatedly for her.

“Oh, but I am sidey,” I announced, laughing. For some reason I did not understand I felt as though I had a happy red robin in the place where my heart used to be. But Judy and Mrs Valetta met my gaiety with scowls. I tried to propitiate them, for I felt kindly disposed to all the world.

“It is not really an evening gown, only a little demi-toilette—long sleeves and a V; and I have nothing else. Still, I won’t wear it if you have any real objection, Judy.”

But already her interest in the matter was dead. As for Mrs Valetta, she had left the room utterly sick of life. I hardly recognised her for the same woman half an hour later, when I went in to dinner and found her seated there,—in a chrysanthemum-chiffon gown covered with Indian embroideries. Her corsage was composed of about three sequins, a piece of chiffon the size of a handkerchief, and a large diamond brooch.

Annabel Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who were dining with us, were also en grande tenue. My poor little black lace frock would have looked quite dowdy amongst them if it had not happened to be of such a distinguished cut. Even Judy had slung an evening gown of sorts upon her languid bones.

Unfortunately, the meal was not in keeping with our brilliant toilettes. The soup had a terrible flavour of tin, and was followed by floppy-looking shoulder of mutton which had the appearance of having been but recently slain. I remembered that I had seen Mafoota, the cook, leading a forlorn, predestined-looking goat by its horn that morning, and I could not but connect the two facts. The eyes of the potatoes, huge and black, glared at us dully from their dish, and a boiled ladybird reclined upon the infinitesimal helping of cabbage that was apportioned to me. No fish, no entrées, no wines; mountains of pumpkin. Every one except Anna Cleeve and I took a whiskey and soda, and that may have been some help. For dessert some woolly pudding, made of pale blue rice, with American canned peaches. I had eaten some lovely peaches at the Cape, but it takes American enterprise to penetrate into the wilds of Africa. Judy spake the thing that was when she said she had no genius for entertaining. I made no bones about bantering her on the subject.

“It is easy to see there is no man about the house, Judy. Such a dazzling banquet could only be served at a hen-party.”

“Nonsense,” said she, smiling idly. “I have trained Dick to live the simple life too. He doesn’t care a scrap what he gets now. What is the use of worrying about the menu? There is nothing to be got here in any case except tinned things and goat.”

“Yes, but they needn’t taste of the tin. And goat should be disguised. As it is I recognise this one. Hardly a decent interval has elapsed since I met it walking with Mafoota.”

They all laughed. There was something to be said for life in Mashonaland. It certainly induced a sort of gay tolerance for general discomfort. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to brag about a lovely goat curry she had had for lunch the day before, that no one had been able to tell from curried prawns.

“I daresay,” said Judy; “but you and Anna have Mrs Brand’s Adriana to cook for you. I have no one but the boys, and you know what they are. I’ve told them dozens of times about taking the eyes out of the potatoes, but there you are—just look at them.”

“They’re looking at us,” I objected.

“Why not have them roasted whole in their jackets?” suggested Mrs Valetta. “They’re much nicer that way, and it would obviate the peeling difficulty.”

“I never thought of it,” said Judy, looking surprised. “As for supper to-night, I haven’t the faintest notion of what people are going to eat. Let us hope they won’t be hungry.”

I reflected that if they had all dined as badly as we had they would be ravenous, and for the honour of the house I said so with such delicacy as I could command. But delicacy was wasted on my sister-in-law.

“It is no use their bringing sybaritic appetites here,” she said. “Cheese sandwiches and a whiskey and soda is the best I can do, and it ought to be good enough for any one—unless you will undertake the menu and serve something better, Deirdre.”

“Will you let me?”

“Certainly, I give you carte blanche. Do anything you like, dear, and begin on the coffee. Did any one ever taste such stuff as these boys make?”

So I went out into the kitchen, which was really a back verandah closed in with native matting, and was full of smoke and jabbering boys. The utensils were all very inferior. The spout of the kettle was off, and the water had to be boiled in a large iron pot, while the boys crowded round me, staring solemnly and falling over each other and getting in the way. But the quality of the coffee was good, and when at last the water boiled I achieved. It took a long time, though, and while I was busy I could hear the knocks at the front door and the laughter of new arrivals. When I took in my coffee-pot the room was full of the smoke of cigarettes, and everybody wanted to taste my brew. Afterwards they raved about it, and complained bitterly that there was not enough to go round. So I went back to make more, but this time I brewed it in a big enamel jug. Just as I was dropping in a tiny pinch of salt to flavour it and make all the grounds settle at the bottom, a shadow fell across my hands, and looking up I found Anthony Kinsella leaning in the doorway and observing me with the deepest interest.

“I think that is what you have done to me,” he observed solemnly.

“What?” said I in astonishment.

“Put a pinch of salt on me.”

Our eyes met, and we both burst into laughter.

“I don’t think you are very tame,” I said.

“Tame! This is the first soirée I’ve been to in this country. They’re quite out of my line.”

“I know what brought you to-night,” I said.

“So do I,” he answered swiftly, with that glance of his eyes that made my lids fall.

My heart experienced an extraordinary contracted feeling, as though some one had taken hold of it and was holding it tightly. Then I remembered all the enigmatical sayings I had heard about this man, and his dangerous attraction for women, and in a moment I recovered myself and answered with a mocking smile:

“You have heard rumours of the great spread I am going to put before my sister-in-law’s guests to-night. It has got about what an excellent cook I am.”

He opened his lips, to make some further saying, but I gave him no time.

“Come and taste my Turkish coffee,” I said, and walked out with my jug, colliding with Mrs Valetta, who was evidently coming to look for us.

“You are wanted to play poker, Kim,” said she curtly. “Do play with me; you are always so lucky.”

“Ah, but I am going to be unlucky at cards in future,” he oddly answered as they followed me in.

I got more compliments for my coffee. Every one said it was delicious. Greedy people asked for second and even third cups. Colonel Blow was heard to state that he had never tasted anything like it since he was in Paris a hundred years ago.

“That is just where I learned to make it,” I said gaily. “In my racketty student days in the Quartier.”

Every one looked amazed and I suppose it was rather an amazing thing to say.

“In your what days?” asked Miss Cleeve faintly.

And Mrs Valetta said in a curious voice: “Can you possibly mean the Latin Quarter of Paris?”

“I can, indeed,” quoth I affably. “I once had a studio there for six months, and all the art students used to come in the evening and make coffee and Welsh rarebit, and every delicious imaginable thing.”

“My sister-in-law’s guardian is an American artist with eccentric ideas about educating girls to see every phase of life,” said Judy in the stuffiest, snuffiest kind of voice. “Of course, Deirdre had a chaperon.”

“Yes, and she was far more racketty than I,” said I with malice prepense. Elizabet von Stohl would have fallen down dead if she could have heard herself so traduced! But I was feeling very much annoyed with Judy for speaking in that way about dear Betty and her lovely liberal ideas. The men for some reason or other thought my remark very amusing, but the women all looked frightfully disdainful, except Mrs Brand, who spoke one of her brief, eloquent sentences:

“It must have been rippin’.”

There were peals of laughter, and I looked at her in astonishment, and found that she had quite a friendly enthusiastic air.

“And so is this coffee rippin’,” said Gerry Deshon. “You’ll have to give us all lessons, Miss Saurin, or we’ll never dare ask you to supper.”

“Oh, that’s nothing to what I can do,” I bragged. “You should taste my cup—and I’m a frightful dab at rum-punch.” I had all the women very cross by now, so I thought they might as well stay so. The men, on the contrary, were as gay as larks at heaven’s gate singing. “And I’m going to give a Quartier Latin supper to-night,” I told them; “Welsh rarebit, les apôtres sur les bicyclettes, devilled eggs—”

“There are no materials in the house for all these things,” protested Judy crossly.

“Then we must commandeer them,” said Major Kinsella. “We’ll make up a foraging party at once. Come on and open your winkel, Dennison. Hunloke, buck up.”

Tommy Dennison was the cheeky Oxford undergraduate whose father owned about forty thousand acres somewhere in Scotland and one of the smartest yachts to be seen at Cowes; but Tommy was a younger son and a black sheep, so he kept a shop in Fort George with Hunloke, the long-nosed barrister. They were always proclaiming bitterly that no one ever paid their bills and that they should shortly go bust.

A small but select party of buccaneers was formed, including Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, Mrs Brand, and myself. The others had their cards already dealt and their half-crowns staked on the table, so they had to continue the game whether they liked it or not. Anna Cleeve and Mrs Valetta did not appear pleased, and Judy gave me a chaperony sort of look of which I took not the slightest notice. She then remarked with great point and significance that the night air was very dangerous. But the others cried her down saying that it was balmy and healthy, and the only air, in fact, that was any good at all. Mrs Brand said she would chaperon me, but as soon as we got out of doors she went off with Gerry Deshon. Some of the others ran ahead with Mr Hunloke to get the keys of the shop, and I found myself walking alone with Anthony Kinsella.

It was a lovely night, full of a sort of veiled radiance, shed from a deep purple sky embroidered with silver stars. Strange insects in the grass were calling to each other shrilly, and heavy on the air hung the divine odour of wild clematis of which almost every little house had a drapery over walls or verandah.

Anthony Kinsella plucked a spray from a wall as we passed, and put it in my hand without speaking, but our hands touched and I saw his intent eyes for a moment. I fastened the flower into the front of my black gown, and the scent of it will stay with me all my life. I suddenly felt so happy I could have sung aloud. Africa seemed all at once to have turned into a land of fair dreams, in which I was a happy wanderer, travelling towards my heart’s desire. I did not analyse my feelings nor ask myself any questions. I only knew that my eyes were unsealed to the beauty and mystery of life.

In a few moments we had reached the shop—a galvanised-iron building with “Hunloke and Dennison” painted in huge black letters across its roof. The others had already arrived with the keys, and we were admitted into a perfect paradise of tinned goods. Candles were hastily burst from their packets and stuck in lighted rows along the counter, and the general public was invited by the owners of the shop to “pay their money and take their choice.” This, however, was a mere form of speech. Apparently no one paid for anything in happy-go-lucky Mashonaland.

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was helped up on the counter and walked along it, inspecting the things on the top shelves and handing them down. The rest of us made dives at anything we liked the look of, and the winkel of Messrs Hunloke and Dennison resounded with shouts of glee and triumph.

“Olives!”

“This lovely pink curly bacon—just the thing to make bicycles for my apostles to ride on. Banzai!”

“Hooray! here are some anchovies!”

“Say! Six cans of oysters!” cried Mr Hunloke himself. “I didn’t know we had these left, Tommy. I’ll shew you fellows how to make clam chowder. I’ve got to show you.”

“Who says tinned pineapples?”

“Fids I gloat! Sardines à l’tomate. All we want now is the toast—that’s easy!”

“You’ve still a case of Pommery-and-Greno left, Tommy, my man. Trot it out!”

“Yes, and what about that Bass’s ale you and Hunloke keep all to your own cheek?”

“Oh, Miss Saurin, I’ve found some crystallised fruit! And hurrah! here’s a big bottle of eau-de-cologne!”

Every one howled with delight at this artless testimony from Mrs Skeffington-Smythe that in her at least the legitimate business of foraging for commissariat had become merged in the wild spirit of the filibuster. Some one began to softly sing,—

“Loot! Loot! Loot!”

At last, after selecting about two waggon-loads of articles, including champagne and claret for “cup,” a large bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of toilette soap, and several strings of blue beads, we stood and gazed with the eyes of conquerors upon the wondrous heaps. The question then arose as to who was to carry these things to the theatre of war. There was great argument about this. A peculiarity about African men is that they have a great objection to carrying anything. They would far rather argue about it for two hours and then spend another two looking for a boy. Eventually three wild men engaged to find boys for the task.

“Yes! even if we have to pull them out of kingdom come,” they averred. The rest of us started for home. How it came about that Anthony Kinsella and I were once more alone together I cannot tell. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe disappeared into the moonlight with Mr Hunloke and some others. Mrs Brand was ahead again with Gerry Deshon, though I could not but observe that the direction of her march was not in the direction of home. Her voice came floating back to me:

“Don’t go in without me, will you? Remember that you are chaperoning me.”

“Will you mind if I call at the post-office?” asked my companion suddenly, out of the silence that encompassed us. “I expect an important wire from headquarters.”

Of course I did not mind. I minded nothing but that this enchanted hour must soon be over. Slowly we sauntered onwards through the silver night, and came at last, however much we loitered, to the post-office. It was closed, but a light shone in a window, and Major Kinsella rapped and hailed the mad postmaster by name:

“Bleksley, hullo!” Instantly the window was opened, and the divine performer upon banjos put out his blond rumpled head: “Wire come, Bleksley?”

“Not yet, but the mails from Victoria are just in by runner. If you could wait a few minutes until I unseal them and sort out the private letters—”

Major Kinsella hesitated, looking at me.

“Of course—certainly wait,” I said hastily. “I don’t mind.”

“Thank you,” he said. “If it were my own business it could rip—but it’s the country’s.”

“I shan’t be more than five or six minutes,” said the postmaster. “Would you like to go up into the watch-tower to wait?”

He handed out a key through the window. The watch-tower adjoined the post-office, and had been built for the double purpose of overlooking the prison-yard and for the wide outlook it afforded of the surrounding native kraals. The view from there was notoriously charming, and I had heard all about it from several people and been told that I should see it by moonlight. This seemed to be a good opportunity.