Wild Honey—Part II. (continued 2)

For it must here be admitted that the spectacle of a woman holding out her soul in both hands for Maryon Hammond to play with, or walk over, or throw into the fires that burn and consume not, was not an altogether novel one to some at least of those present; it had been witnessed before in various parts of Africa—and the entertainment, it may be mentioned, is not a pretty one when the man concerned is not worrying particularly about souls. People said that Marie Hammond took toll of women’s souls for something a woman had once done to his own, long ago in his own country America; but none knew the rights of the story.

Then there was his friendship with the beautiful Cara de Rivas. No one had been quite sure how far, if at all, her soul had entered into that matter; but it was certain that tongues had been set a-wagging, for Maryon Hammond’s friendship was a dangerous if fascinating thing for a woman to possess, unless she happened to be the woman he was going to marry. And Cara de Rivas was already married. That was the trouble. For Nick de Rivas, a big, handsome, if slightly morose fellow was plainly something less than sympathetic with his wife’s mid-summer madness; even though, until Hammond called his attention to the matter, he had appeared to be blind and indifferent to the fact that he had a pretty and charming wife.

There had been considerable relief felt when de Rivas in spite of his home and large mining interests being in Mashonaland suddenly decided to take his wife away on a trip to England.

“And no bones broken,” sighed Rhodesians, though they sought in vain for confirmation of that or any other legend in the stony stare of Maryon Hammond. They were a romantic people those Rhodesians in the far-off days of 1896, with no rooted objection to illegal adventure, but though Hammond was neither good nor beautiful he had endeared himself to the country in many ways and everyone was glad to think that his stormy career was likely to come to an end in the peaceful harbour of marriage instead of in some more tragic fashion. And no one could help rejoicing that Fate had arranged for the advent of Jack Heywood’s sister while the de Rivas were still away, and that the whole affair was likely to be fixed up before the de Rivas’ return which, by the way, after the lapse of nearly a year had already been signalled.

The Hammond-Heywood engagement then, was announced about two weeks after the ball at the Club, though everyone knew perfectly well that it had been signed and sealed, so to speak, on that night, the extra two weeks being thrown in as a concession to conventionality and a sort of bonus to the men who had been about to propose. Besides Miss Heywood had a family in England whom it was Hammond’s business to consult and beguile, and consultations and beguilements take time as well as money when they have to be conducted by cable. In the meantime, it was plain to see that Love had found Maryon Hammond at last, and that he was loved openly and gladly back. It was for all the world to see—as patent as the silver stars on a purple African night. He would walk rough-shod over everybody in a drawing-room or cricket-field or polo-ground to reach her side, and she would openly and obviously forget everybody else in the place and in the world when he was there. No matter how big or how curious the crowd these two were alone in it when they were together. People said that it must have been a strange, almost piquant, sensation to Hammond so expert in secret intrigue, so versed in the dissimulation and duplicity of illegal adventure, to be at last conducting a love affair in the open, reckless of the eyes of men, and the tongues of women, because for once the woman in the case had nothing to fear! Be that as it may, a passion so fine and frank and careless had never before been seen in a land where great passions are not rare, and Salisbury genuflected before it in all reverence and admiration.

It was at this propitious juncture that the de Rivas elected to return. Their home was not in Salisbury but about seventy miles off, out Mazoë way too, and incidentally not above ten miles from Hammond’s own camp, but they put up at a hotel in town for a week or two to give Mrs de Rivas time to recover from the fatigue of a long coach journey, and be welcomed back by old friends. Promptly all the women in the town went to call, and take the news of the Hammond-Heywood engagement.

The Spanish Inquisition is no more, but the gentle art of putting the question accompanied by the watching torture has not yet been lost. Even when malice is absent, who can eradicate curiosity from the feminine temperament? Cara de Rivas’ dearest and most intimate Inquisitors were tender for her, however. They considered it only human that they should desire to know how she was “taking it,” but they had no coarse intent of putting questions. Merely they hoped to extract a few answers—eyes and lips and incidentally clothes tell so much!

And behold! two of the answers were entirely unexpected.

The first was that Cara de Rivas was as deeply in love with her husband as he was plainly and profoundly in love with her. This was for all the world to see and all the world proclaimed it instantly; but the other and charming piece of news was more subtly distributed. Women conveyed it by means of their eyebrows, with benign little smiles, and cryptic remarks, such as that—“It was all for the best;” “It would make such a bond”; “No more dangerous friendships;” “It would help the poor thing to forget (if there was anything to forget)!”

Afterwards, all wise people let the story of “the dangerous friendship” die and be buried, as all things that are dead as nails ought to be buried and put out of sight. And no one but a few scandal-lovers talked of anything but the speedily approaching marriage. The men of Salisbury made Bernard Carr’s life a torment to him, accusing him of being busier than a hen with a tin chicken getting Maryon Hammond’s trousseau ready, while they went into the matter of that same trousseau with profane and particular detail. For Carr was Jonathan to Maryon Hammond’s David, and his love for his friend was outrageous and notorious, passing all bounds. Like the mother of Asa he had made an idol in a grove; and the name of the idol was Hammond. The other friend and partner of Maryon Hammond was Girder, a dry, lean fellow of cynical disposition, professing affection for neither man, woman, nor dog; but throughout the long sun-smitten days and rain-soaked nights of that wet, hot January, he was the only man who refrained from joining in the general ribaldry at Carr’s expense, just because Carr, the perfect friend, neglected his own affairs to put Hammond’s in order, so that the latter might in due time marry and leave the country. While Hammond, gay of heart and wonderfully brilliant of face considering he had no looks, irreproachable always in white duck riding-kit—grande tenue for Salisbury—idled away the sunlit, starlit hours with the moon of his desire that knew no wane.

Strange that the affair of Maryon Hammond’s trousseau should occupy the minds and tongues of his friends far more than the threatened rising of the natives! But that was ever the way of Rhodesians in ’96. “Take care of the affairs of your neighbour,” ran their motto, “and the affairs of the country will take care of themselves.” Besides, the natives had threatened so often; it was absurd to be disturbed about them.

The growing restlessness and insolence of the Mashona tribes kraaled in the Salisbury, Mazoë, and Lomagundi districts—that is, within a sixty-mile radius of the capital was in fact notorious, and many of the outlying farmers and miners professed uneasiness; but the Native Commissioners whose business it was to know such things scoffed at their fears. The notion of a rebellion amongst a tribe of people long down-trodden and brow-beaten by the fierce Matabele, and now for the first time enjoying prosperous and unharried life under the white man’s rule found the Commissioners sneering incredulously.

“Makalikas show fight!” scoffed Brebner, Head of the Native Department and terror of every black face from Vryberg to Blantire. “Great Lord of War! There is not one ‘liver’ among the whole fifty thousand of them. But of course they’re cheeky—all niggers are when they get fat, and it takes only one good season with the crops for that. Moreover you must remember that it is now about six years since the Matabele knocked annual spots off them, and they are beginning to forget who it was stopped that by smashing the Matabele. Therefore they are cheeky, also inclined to think they are great. But you give me ten men and three Cape ‘boys’ and I’ll settle the hash of any ten thousand of them in this blessed country.”

This last to the Administrator for whose permission he was nagging to go and “remonstrate” with the ringleaders of a tribal fight down Victoria way. The Administrator smiled at the word. He was aware that Brebner invariably “remonstrated” with a riding-whip, but being a wise man and one who had lived a great part of his life amongst natives he was also aware that Brebner’s mode of argument was the best and only one properly appreciated by “our poor black brothers in South Africa” as they are fancifully described at Exeter Hall.

So, eventually, Brebner and suite were allowed to depart upon their hash-settling expedition. They rode out one pink dawn and the veld swallowed them up; thereafter peace fell upon Salisbury, and all talk of a native rising was dismissed. The discussion on Hammond’s trousseau was resumed at the Club.

Only Hammond himself did not think it good enough to stay on with his bride in a country which seemed to him unsettled and breathing of war, and he did not hesitate to state his intentions in spite of jeers.

“Why, hello, Marie!” they mocked him at the Club, and quoted remarks from the Gadsbys:

“White hands cling to the bridle rein!” “You may carve it on his tombstone, you may cut it on his card, That a young man married is a young man marred,” etc.

“That’s all right,” laughed Hammond serenely. “But I’ll take a year off for my honeymoon just the same, and you fellows can put things straight with the niggers. Afterwards, I’ll come back and congratulate you and bring up the new machinery for the Carissima.”

The Carissima Gold Mine belonged to Hammond and Carr and Girder, and looked like panning out wealth untold in the near future.

“Oh, you’re crazy, Marie,” said Billy Blake, Head of the Mounted Police, striving to be patient with the renegade. “Love has gone to your head. There isn’t going to be any row with the natives. Compose yourself, my son.”

Hammond composed himself as requested in a large lounge chair, his feet on another. Leisurely, and with obvious enjoyment of his pipe he explained that in his opinion Love and War were each good and great and highly desirable things, but he preferred them separate.

“They don’t mix,” said he; “so we’ll divide them this time. You can have the war all to yourself, Blake, and I’ll—” he flushed under his copper skin and added gravely, for he made and took no jests on the subject of his amazing happiness, “It’s a long time since I’ve seen Kentucky—I’ll take a trip home.”

“Oh, you ought to take medicine, Marie—”

“Take a rest—”

“Take a drink—”

“Man, I tell you—”

“Show me the chief of these tin-pot Makalikas who has got the gall to fight—”

“Why, you’ve got nerve to clear out—”

They clamoured and jeered about him, but he remained cool. His personal courage was too well known for there to be any doubt of it. He had more than earned his laurels as the most daring of scouts in the Matabele trouble of ’93, and many another “little war,” and could afford, if so inclined, to trim himself from top to toe with white feathers without likelihood of being misunderstood. So he left them to wrangle it out among themselves, and it being after dinner and a whole three hours and a half since he last saw Diane, he went to call on her at the house of Mrs Tony Greville, and Boston, as usual, slouched beside him.

Now Boston as a dog and a gentleman deserves a few words to himself. He was a large, dust-coloured bull-terrier whom Hammond had raised from puppyhood, and in whose muscular carcass the man had by rigid training developed many of his own physical characteristics—that is to say, though Boston was of large ungainly build and always appeared to flounder rather than to walk, he was really as speedy as a greyhound, brave as a lion, and silent in his movements as Fate herself. He could track down anything, and scout with the best man in the country (who happened to be his master), but he spent most of his time tracking that same master; for it was one of the practical jokes and never-failing joys of Salisbury to hide Hammond from his dog. Boston would go through fire and water to regain his love—even the great Ice Barrier wouldn’t have stopped him long—but the moment he had Hammond in sight he would assume an air of cynical indifference, and with his hands in his pockets, so to speak, lounge up and sling himself down with a weary air as though he’d given up all idea of finding what he was searching for,—certainly not Hammond at all! As for Hammond, he loved his dog as he loved few men; it is doubtful whether, if asked to choose between Boston and his best friend for company in exile, he would have chosen the man.

Knowing full well for what destination his master was now bound, Boston presently went ahead, and before Hammond had reached the house of Tony Greville, where Miss Heywood was staying because Tony Greville was Jack Heywood’s best friend, Boston had returned to report that Miss Heywood was not in her usual place in the verandah. Neither was she in the drawing-room; and search by the servants found her absent also from her bedroom. It was only when Boston set his blunt nose towards the Gymkhana Ground that Mrs Greville remembered to have seen Diane strolling off in that direction directly after dinner.

“She’s not quite herself this evening, I think, Marie. There were a lot of women here when she got in from her ride with you, and I fancy she overheard something she didn’t like. That wretched little gossip Mrs Skeffington Smythe was here.”

Mrs Greville looked a little anxiously into his face, and the hard, blue eyes looked back unflinchingly, but as he walked swiftly in the direction of the Gym Ground, alone and with his mask off, his face showed signs of strain.

The night under a rising moon was clear as crystal, and he had no difficulty in descrying Diane’s figure across the course where he and she since their engagement was announced (escaping for a little while from an army of friends) often walked in the evenings. Some of their dearest moments had been passed sitting where she now sat on the pile of heavy timber by the Grand Stand.

Boston, arrived before his master, sprawled at Diane’s feet, and she was gazing before her at the moonlight coming up in waves from the horizon, flooding all the land with cold silver light. Something colder than the moonlight gripped the man’s heart for a moment, but he held out his hands to her and spoke her name as though he had nothing to fear. She stood up quickly and put out her hands too—but with a difference; in her gesture there was a subtle suggestion of defence, of warding off something—and when he would have taken them in his, she drew back.

“No, Marie—not yet—there is something you must tell me—”

He stared at her. She was deadly pale, but the moon itself was not more composed, and her eyes had the same steady glance as his own. Her question was spoken in a very low voice.

“Were you ever in love with—another man’s wife?”

His face darkened. Prepared as he was, the unexpected form of her question took him unawares. He had anticipated something to which he could give a firm, clear denial—but to this, what could he say, who had so much on his conscience!

“You ... listening to scandal, Diane!” he said at last, and the reproach in his voice reached home. She faltered a moment, not answering at once, and they stood looking at each other, less like lovers than two duellists measuring each other’s strength.

“I will believe anything you tell me, Marie,” she said gently, at last; “I ask nothing better than to hear that it is only scandal.”

He could not afford to hesitate any longer.

“If you are referring to my friendship with Mrs de Rivas, I may say that in that at least I am innocent. Her husband neglected her; I was sorry for her; our so-called friendship was a concerted plan to bring him to his senses, and it worked like magic. They are now extremely happy.”

But he had waked something new in Diane Heywood; she looked into his eyes with the cold curiosity of a child.

“Why should your friendship be so terrible a thing for a woman? Why should it bring a man to his senses?”

“Oh, dearest! for God’s sake, don’t ask questions the answers to which will only hurt you?”

“But I must know, Maryon,” she said proudly. “I have never lived amongst lies and shadows. Everything must be clear and clean about me. If you are innocent in this matter—of what is it then that you are guilty?”

The mad longing of the unshriven soul for confession swept over him then. He too would have all clear and clean about him, for once and all, cost what it might.

“Oh, just of being a blackguard,” he said, and all the pent-up bitterness, and self-mockery and self-loathing of years came out in the low-spoken words. “Just of being a scoundrel and a coward as far as women are concerned—of robbing, looting—taking all and giving nothing in return—playing pirate and cut-throat in the great game of love, careless of what anyone suffered.”

“You!” she whispered. “You whom I have looked upon as a knight of chivalry—a Galahad—all that was fine and noble!”

“Oh! Diane, I have never pretended to be any of these things—never wanted you to believe it—I am only common earth—common or garden earth. But such as I am, I love you—I ask you to take me with all my sins.”

There was a long silence.

“But why, Maryon?—What changed you from the man God meant you to be, to this?”

She loved him. For all her wounded pride and anger and horror, for all his black sins, she loved him, as women will love through everything, in spite of everything; and she longed for some word of extenuation that would justify the forgiveness she could not withhold.

“I loved a woman years ago, and she was faithless. She left me for another man. My wife ran away with my best friend.”

“Your wife?”

“Yes. Oh, I meant to tell you everything before you married me, Diane—only, I was putting it off as long as possible. I left America because of that, and came out to this country. Then, one day, after many years, I found myself up here living next door to the very man and woman who had been false to me—for whose sake I had been divorced in America so that they might marry and be happy.”

“Divorced?”

“And they weren’t happy after all. She loved him but he was neglecting her, and she turned to me again for help. I found a kind of cynical amusement in helping her out. So there you have the whole story, Diane—not a pretty one, God knows, but, in this instance, not a guilty one so far as I am concerned.”

But the girl stood stammering at him, one word on her lips. “Divorced?”

“You must believe that I meant to conceal nothing from you, Diane. I have already spoken to de Rivas and his wife and told them that you must know—though no one else need ever suspect. And if you choose it, if you will still take me in spite of my sins—and, darling, I believe you will, we’ll get out of this country and go back to my own—”

“But, Maryon,” she broke in, despairingly, “you do not seem to understand that this ends everything between us. I am a Catholic—do you not realise?”

“A Catholic? I don’t care what you are—”

“But don’t you know that we do not recognise divorce—that in my eyes you are still her husband—will be her husband until one of you dies?”

It was he who stood now staring and stammering.

“You would let your religion come between us—separate us?”

“Oh, Maryon—my religion is me—It is what I feel myself—it is deep in me. One cannot escape from what one has felt and believed all one’s life.”

“But the thing is impossible,” he cried wildly, fiercely; “I cannot lose you. You must leave your religion—What does a good woman want with religion?—Our Love shall be your religion—I will be your religion—I will never let you go.”

“Hush, Marie, you don’t know what you are saying,” she said gently. “We must part. I can never, never marry you.”

And despite her gentleness she stood like rock against the battery of his words, though he reasoned, pleaded, beguiled, even cursed, in his pain and wrath. Her heart turned to water, she was sick with love and pity for him, but through all she clung to her faith as a sailor might cling to a rock in a blinding, wrecking storm. For nothing he could say could she contemplate treachery to her people, her life-long principles, her God. Not so does the Catholic Church train its daughter against the hour of temptation.

When at last in the bitter madness of defeat and loss he caught and crushed her in his arms, kissing her savagely, she stayed silent, too proud to struggle in those iron arms, but cold, cold as snow; until at last the cold purity of her penetrated him like a lance of ice, piercing his heart.

“Forgive me!—forgive me, Diane—I am a brute—I am mad!” he muttered, and stumbled away into the night.

After a night of drenching rain, the camp out at the Carissima Mine lay sparkling in the morning sunshine. It was five a.m. with the promise of a golden day. Birds were twittering in tree and bush and wet leaves flickered and twinkled like diamonds, throwing off a myriad points of light. From the thatched roofs of the half dozen large huts in the clearing, steam arose, mingling with the blue spirals from newly kindled fires.

Hammond dressing leisurely in his hut looked out through his open door and the beauty and promise of the day seemed to take him by the throat, for he turned away from it with a face darkened and convulsed.

“God! What a day!” he groaned as a man might groan who has had a knife jabbed into him. For it is thus that Nature hunts and hurts those who loving her are yet a law unto themselves. Since he had lost Diane, all beautiful things struck at him with wounding, hurtful hands.

He had a sudden longing to let work go to the deuce for that day, to take horse and his desolate heart away to some lonely wild place where he could be absolutely alone, unobliged to speak or be spoken to by any; but he knew that it was impossible to think of such a thing. Girder and he were the only white men in the camp, and he could not leave all the work to Girder. The Mine Manager had been laid low by fever, and the sub-manager had taken the Cape cart and driven off with him the night before to Salisbury Hospital. As for Carr, he had been away on business for some days in the Lomagundi district.

It behoved Hammond to get his breakfast over and start for the native compound. There was a matter of three hundred boys or so to round up and hustle to their labours down the shaft. He threw a glance round for his boots, a special pair he kept for negotiating the wet sloppy clay at the bottom of the mine, and, seeing them nowhere, whistled for his body servant.

“My mine boots, Pongo,” he jerked in the vernacular at the sleek-eyed Mashona who answered his signal. It transpired that the boots had been forgotten and were still in the saddle-hut covered with the dust and mud of yesterday! After receiving Hammond’s comments on the subject, Pongo disappeared in a hurry to fulfil his neglected task.

“And tell Candle to rustle with my breakfast,” roared Pongo’s lord like a lion in pain, and Candle at the sound did not need telling, but rustled to such good effect that in five minutes breakfast stood steaming on the rough wooden table that was pitched under a tree in the middle of the clearing. Girder very spick and span in white moleskins emerged from another hut, and Hammond, dressed all but his boots, and impatient of waiting, thrust his feet into a pair of silk slippers sent him at Christmas by his sister (and brought out by accident to the camp) and strolled out to join his friend at the table.

The three partners had been in camp for nearly six weeks. After that night on the Gymkhana Ground, Salisbury had no further hold for Hammond and he left the next morning, accompanied by Carr, grave and unquestioning, and followed a day or two later by Girder. He had never opened his lips on the subject of his changed plans, and he did not need to. Carr knew that the trouble was deep, and guessed the cause. Later, Girder brought the news of the broken engagement as briefly announced by Jack Heywood with whom Hammond had encompassed a short interview before leaving.

With the exception of a remark or two on the subject of the storm during the night, the two men took their breakfast in silence. Girder was at no time a talkative fellow, and, of late, Hammond’s mood seldom invited gaiety. This morning he had not yet recovered from the savage misery that had smitten him in his hut, and still preoccupied was not his usual observant self, or he would have noticed something unnatural in the atmosphere of the camp.

About three hundred yards off from where they were sitting, a construction of heavy beams forming a rough hauling gear marked the mine’s mouth, with the power-house and a number of small shanties grouped beside it. Beyond, and almost hidden by this group of buildings was the kraal or compound occupied by the natives who worked the mine. It was merely the usual collection of fifty or more rough dagga huts with thatched roofs drooping almost to the ground and lop-sided like a lot of old battered straw hats, surrounded by a high dagga wall; and from it came the usual morning sound peculiar to Kaffir kraals—a low humming sing-song of voices, with an occasional tap or boom on a vessel of metal or skin. What Hammond should have noticed and did not, was that his natives were humming a war-song—one of those monotonous chants, flat and unmusical, yet full of some hidden power to stir the blood of a savage to dreams of reeking assegai and the crashing thud of knobkerry upon skull. The few “boys” loitering among the white men’s huts, all personal servants, cast furtive glances tinged with surprise at the indifferent faces of the white men. Certainly Inkos Girder was but a new hand—only a year or two in Africa; but Inkos Hammond was an induna (Chief; captain) who knew all things, and had fought in many Kaffir wars! Clk! Surely he must hear that song in the kraal and know its meaning!

Hammond indeed would probably have waked in a moment to a sense of something wrong, but, as it happened, his attention was suddenly averted by the sight of a man on horseback tearing full-tilt towards the camp.

“What the—”

“Who the—” They both stood up as the horse came clattering into the clearing, and its rider gasping and haggard flung himself down. He was one of de Rivas’ assistants out at the Green Carnation Mine—a young Scotchman called Dent, well known to them both.

“The natives are ‘up.’ They’ve murdered everyone in our district except de Rivas and his wife,” he burst forth. “You fellows had better get your horses and scoot for Mazoë before—.”

“Steady, Dent,” said Hammond in a voice like cold steel. At the first mention of trouble, he had thrown his eye around and in a flash heard and seen the danger signals about him—his servants’ faces, the timbre of the song in the kraal, the sudden dead silence which, with the horseman’s coming had fallen on camp and kraal, and—the rustle of feet creeping up behind the mine-head shanties!

“Pull yourself together. My boys are observing you. Get your revolver from your hut, Girder, and all the ammunition you can lay hands on, but keep them out of sight.” (He had his own revolver on him—too wise a citizen of Africa ever to be without it.) “Sit down, my dear fellow,” he now added heartily to Dent, and called for fresh coffee, sitting down himself too, but with his face towards the mine-head. Girder coming back casually from his hut resumed his chair. Speaking in an ordinary voice, smoking, and pouring out coffee, Hammond questioned the Scotchman and elicited facts.

The natives had set to work at four o’clock that morning, and systematically visiting every farm, hut, and tent within the district had butchered the surprised and defenceless occupants. Everyone at the Green Carnation taken unawares had been knobkerried or assegaied to death—except de Rivas and his wife who got warning in time to barricade themselves in their ranch. Dent had been with them and the two men had managed to drive the demons off for a time, but it was certain that they would return. In the circumstances, de Rivas had ordered Dent to try and get away by means of an old mine working that came right up close to the back verandah of the house and bring help to them, for Mrs de Rivas was a sick woman and could not travel any distance except in comfort, and well protected.

“They can’t last out long,” finished Dent dismally. “Half their ammunition is gone—Mrs de Rivas is in hysterics most of the time—if I don’t get help they’ll be done for in a few hours—I must push on to Mazoë and—”

His sentence was broken off by the smart snap of a revolver. Hammond was firing across Girder’s shoulder, not once but many times.

Snap—phit! Snap—pht! Snap—pht! And the grim eyes of the man behind the revolver snapped and flashed too, as he picked off one after another of those who led the advancing horde. In less time than it takes to write it, five of the leaders were groaning in the dust, and the murderous band behind had fallen back dumbfounded, staring like fascinated rabbits at the man who now advanced on them still covering them with that gleaming deadly revolver and his ice-cold deadly glance. At last, he flung them a few brief words in their own tongue.

“Get down to your work in the mine. Anyone who loiters will be shot—like these things here.”

They gazed at the “things” for a silent moment, then cringing before the white man like the dogs they were, they dropped assegais and knobkerries in the dust and retreated sullenly, step by step, to the mine mouth. Girder close behind Hammond, opened the little gate leading to the enclosure round the shaft and hustled half a dozen boys into the power-house to set the cage going. Then, one by one, with downcast looks and modest mien the boys filed into the cage and were lowered in little companies down the mine. Hammond stood by silent, dominating, the sunshine glinting on his revolver barrel, Boston, casual and indifferent, lounging beside him. The two other men, unobliged even to draw their guns, contented themselves with speeding up an occasional loiterer by means of a brisk application of the boot. In the end, every “boy” of three hundred was at the bottom of the shaft, except those in the power-house. Hammond approached them.

“You too—get in,” he remarked briefly, and they got in, humble and sleek, with air deprecative of giving so much trouble. Dent and Girder took possession of the power-house and worked the cage, for as is well known, two white men can do the work of six natives any day in the week. Afterwards they cut the steel ropes that held the cage and it fell crashing to the bottom of the shaft.

“That’s all right,” said Hammond at last. “They’ve plenty of water, and a couple of days with empty stomachs will take the cheek out of them. At the end of that time, if all goes well, we’ll be here to let ’em up again—if not, so much the worse for them.”

“The blessed tinkers!” was all that Girder permitted himself to remark.

“Now you fellows,” said Hammond briskly, “take your horses and beat it for Mazoë, hell-for-leather. Get a party together—half a dozen guns and make for the Green Carnation. I shall go on ahead and help de Rivas hold out.”

“I’m coming with you,” said Girder carelessly. Hammond looked at him coldly.

“You will kindly do as I ask you, Bill. If you meet trouble between here and Mazoë, as you probably will, and one of you is potted, there is still a chance of the other getting in to give the alarm.”

Girder merely smiled. Hammond knew that obstinate smile, and he also knew there was no time to lose.

“Don’t be a fool, Bill,” he said brusquely. “We are not in this for glory, or fun, or friendship. Just remember there’s a woman in the matter, will you?—a sick woman. What you two fellows have got to do—or one or other of you—is to get together a big enough party to convey her in a cart to Mazoë. If you are delayed you will probably find when you reach us that we have left the ranch and taken to the bush. The house won’t be safe once the ammunition has given out—and I know the country all round there like the palm of my hand. There are plenty of places we can lie doggo in until help comes. But you must get help, and get it quick. Take the fresh horses, you’ve farther to go than I. I’ll take Dent’s. Go on now, Bill. Don’t be pig-headed—and take charge of Boston will you? I don’t want him with me. Where is the beggar?”

No one knew. A moment before he had been lounging idly against the power-house, his tongue lolloping from his mouth, his eye expressing boredom; a moment later he simply was not. It is hard to say what instinct had bidden him make himself scarce in a manner as swift and unobtrusive as possible, and turn into a motionless, sand-coloured ant-heap about fifty yards from the road down which anyone leaving camp must pass. No one had time to look for him and no one would have found him in any case. Hammond let loose a bad word, gave Girder’s hand a parting grip, and skimmed out of camp on Dent’s horse.

Within a quarter of a mile of the Green Carnation, he dismounted, and, leaving the horse in the bush, advanced under cover and with great caution towards the ranch. It was then that the rough rocky ground and thorns under foot brought him the realisation that he was still wearing the pair of silk slippers made and sent him by his sister for a Christmas present.

It was a little dell-like place—not more than ten feet by six, hollowed out by the heavy streams that in bad weather came rushing down the slopes of the kopje above it, darkened by the thick bush all round, full of small sharp stones and thorns, and red ants that stung like wasps, with not a single smooth tree trunk or flat rock to lean against. Still, it was a hiding-place; and to three people it had been for as many days, a haven and a home. Three people—to say nothing of the dog!

It was indeed Boston who lay in one of those triangular positions which only a dog can find reposeful, his head on a stone, his tongue lolling languorously from his mouth, one eye closed, the other cocked on his master. For Hammond seated uneasefully upon a small rock, his arms round his knees, his empty pipe in his mouth, was plainly busy on an intricate problem, and Boston too was interested in the solution of that problem.

Close beside them, touching feet with Hammond and the dog, de Rivas half-lay, half-leaned in the cramped space, painfully shifting his wounded leg every few minutes. Between his lips was a thick white mimosa thorn which he bit on when he shifted, as a wounded soldier might bite on a bullet to keep in his trouble. Mrs de Rivas lay sleeping on the men’s folded coats.

“Well—what next, Hammond?” asked de Rivas in a whisper. They had been obliged to whisper for days; the natives were all round them in the bush, searching; but Hammond had chosen his retreat well, and the odds were against discovery so long as they lit no fires and were not heard talking. It was characteristic of the man, however, that this business of whispering annoyed him more than any of the risks and hardships of the past few days. To have to whisper on account of a lot of murdering niggers!—When all he wanted was to get out and beat the brains out of a score of them—and he would too if—

Mrs de Rivas gave a little moan in her sleep. So he whispered, in spite of his fierce desires.

“I shall start for Salisbury to-night.”

“Salisbury!—on foot?”

“It’s no use trying Mazoë. Something’s gone wrong there or Girder would have been back by now.”

“But Salisbury is seventy miles!”

“Sixty when you know your map.”

“Well, sixty!—without food! And you’ve got no boots!”

It was no use offering his own. He was a big man and his feet were on a generous scale. As for Hammond, he could not forbear to smile when he looked at the travesties from which his toes protruded—a few rags and ribbons of dark blue silk.

“No; but I’ve got feet.”

He had indeed—the most famous feet at Harvard in his time, and in Africa at any time. All the same, he cursed himself for criminal carelessness in leaving his camp improperly shod; for he too knew that sixty miles barefoot through an enemy’s country, over krantz and kop and rough unbroken ground, was not going to be the funniest thing that had ever happened to him. Still, they couldn’t sit whispering here forever, and Cara de Rivas had got to be saved.

She had stood the strain well up till now, but it was doubtful if she would last out much longer. And she must not die. No woman in the same case would be allowed to die if he could help it. But only he knew the stain and disgrace it would be on him to let her of all women die, whose death would give him his heart’s desire.

When de Rivas spoke again, his whisper had grown fainter. His thoughts appeared to have taken the same direction as Hammond’s.

“How am I going to keep her alive, Hammond? She can’t go on without water.”

“I shall fill the can before I start, and you must try and make it spin out for three days. I promise you I shan’t be longer than that.”

Fortunately they had thought to bring a can with them in their hurried escape from the ranch, and Hammond stole out every night and filled it from the river not two hundred yards away. De Rivas’ wounded leg entirely incapacitated him from doing anything; Hammond had been obliged to carry him more than half the way on the night of their flight.

“Three days!” de Rivas was thinking to himself. “He can never do it even if he had boots!”

Three days was too short a time in which to walk to Salisbury and bring back help. Three days was only long when contemplated from the point of view of a man whose larder is empty, and whose death lurks in the shadows.

“What am I going to give her to eat?”

“I’ve thought of that too,” said Hammond quietly. The other man looked up questioningly. The problem of provisions had been a haunting one ever since they arrived in their refuge. If Hammond had a solution to it now, why not before? But Hammond was apparently not inclined to be communicative. He merely sat there staring at Boston; and Boston as though suddenly aware of something personal in his master’s attention rose suddenly, and in his silent, floundering way came over and laid his nose on Hammond’s knee. Hammond after a moment or so raised the dog’s head in his hands and looked into the golden brown eyes, tender and trustful as a woman’s, far more trustworthy than many women’s. Then, for Maryon Hammond, he did a strange thing; he bent his head and kissed his dog’s nose. De Rivas bit suddenly on the thorn between his lips, and looked away. He had seen Hammond’s eyes, and it is not good to see the eyes of a strong man in pain. He knew now what Hammond meant to do to keep him and his wife alive during the next three days.

When Cara de Rivas awoke from her long sleep of exhaustion it was dusk, and she found herself alone with her husband in the dell. She crept to his side and kissed him with a whispered inquiry for the pain of his wound. Then:

“Where is Maryon?”

Unfalteringly, without the flicker of an eyelid, de Rivas repeated the lesson in which Hammond had instructed him.

“He has gone to get water—and Cara,—he has had a great stroke of luck—got a buck in a kind of primitive trap he fixed up last night. We shall have meat for several days.”

“Meat—but no fire!” she said, a little spasm of horror contracting her weary face. He put his arm round her.

“Dearest, this isn’t the time to be squeamish—for my sake, and for the sake of our little kid to come—just think of it as sustenance—close your eyes and get it down. Lots of sick people have to eat raw meat by order, and think nothing of it. And thank Hammond—don’t forget to thank Hammond before he goes, for—all he has done for us.”

“Before he goes?” she cried with frightened eyes. “Where? Why?”

Gently, with more confidence in his words than in his heart, he explained Hammond’s plan to her, and her eyes brightened. She had faith in Maryon’s plans; they always “came off.” And it would be only three days! It was a long time—but Marie would come back with help, and they would both he saved.

Suddenly, without a sound of his coming, Hammond was with them, carrying the can of water, and something wrapped in long fresh grass. Immediately Cara cried:

“Boston? Where is Boston, Marie?”

“I parted with him down by the river,” said Hammond, adding after a moment: “He is busy with part of the buck I got.”

He did not speak for a long time after that, seeming very intent on what he was doing—tearing the sleeves of his coat in strips to bind round his feet. His shirt had been used up for de Rivas’ wound. After he had finished this, the only preparation for his journey, he sat talking cheerfully to Cara for awhile, asking for messages for friends in Salisbury, and inviting her to choose the men she wanted for her “relief patrol.” Hardly in keeping with these gay whispers were his words in de Rivas’ off ear, as he thrust his revolver into de Rivas’ off pocket.

“I’ll take yours instead. It may serve to smash a skull with, at a pinch.”

Now de Rivas’ revolver was empty; it was Hammond’s that contained the one cartridge for a certain emergency—the frightful emergency which all brave men who take charge of women in a savage country must be willing to face! But Cara, whom this little incident chiefly concerned, knew nothing of it. Almost light-heartedly she bade Hammond farewell, thanking him as her husband had told her for all he had done, far from knowing how much that was, and how much it might be before the end.

At the last, de Rivas held out his hand and said hoarsely:

“If you don’t mind shaking, Marie—and saying you forgive me?”

It was the first time since he stole Maryon Hammond’s wife that he had used the name that once in college days was sweet between them. He would hardly have dared now, but somehow he felt he owed it to Hammond’s generosity to dare, if only to let the other man smite him with the just word of wrath. But Hammond took his hand. They were all in the shadow of death.

“And me too, Marie?” whispered the woman through her tears.

“That’s all right, Cara,” he said gently, taking hers in turn. A moment later he had gone upon his way.

In the Salisbury laager, which was the Salisbury prison put into a state of defence, with sand-bags and waggons all round it and machine guns pitched on every eminence, the air was charged with gloom and rage. It was not because of war; Rhodesians after ’93 were inured to war and had learned to accept philosophically its bitters with its sweets. What hurt them now was that this was not war, but black murder. There had been no decent open fighting—only secret, savage murder of men and women in far places. Murder—and worse! Men bit their mouths close on revolting stories that it would do no good for the women to hear; and women came into laager, night after night, white-faced and sick of heart. The whole country was “up” in rebellion, but except in Matabeleland there had been no actual fighting. Overwhelming small isolated bands of men cannot be called fighting—but it was the nearest approach to it that the Mashonas had made. That was what they had attempted in the case of the Mazoë patrol. On hearing that there had been wholesale slaughter at Mazoë, and that the survivors (mostly women and children) were huddled in a house waiting for the end, twenty-six picked men had ridden out from Salisbury to the rescue. They had reached Mazoë just in time—and getting the women, children, and wounded men into a waggon protected by sheets of corrugated iron, set out on the return march to Salisbury. These twenty-six men had had to fight every inch of the way with thousands of natives, but not one dead or wounded man of the gallant band was left by the wayside. As they fell, their comrades picked them up and thrust them into the waggon, and thus in some wise or another came back one and every man of the famous patrol!

Carr with an arm shot off and his horse shot under him, was one of those who had to lie helpless and raging amongst the women—raging because he knew nothing of the fate of his best friend! All that he knew was that the bodies of Girder and Dent had been found on the outskirts of Mazoë. One of the Carissima boys was reported to have stated that Hammond had gone to the help of the de Rivas. But it was now known that de Rivas’ place was burnt to the ground and not a living soul left at the Green Carnation. Small wonder that the bitterness of Carr’s heart was as the bitterness of the heart of Job in the last stage of his torment!

It was now generally believed that everyone in the mining districts who had not managed to escape at the first alarm to Salisbury was of the doomed and dead. Diane Heywood looked into Bernard Carr’s eyes and saw that belief there and her face took a deeper shadow upon it. From the first entry of wounded refugees, she had offered her services to the good nursing nuns, and striven in ardent labour and many a weary vigil to dull her heart’s fierce pain. When once she and Carr had read each other’s misery he forgave her for what she had done to Hammond (though he knew not what it was), and they were friends for ever after. She was often by his bedside, reading sometimes, or talking a little, but more often both were silent, thinking of what they dared not speak.

Oh! to see his eyes again! To know that he was still on God’s fair earth!—not cut down, beaten to his knees with knobkerries, assegaied by foul cowardly brutes whose courage was only in their numbers! Only to know that he had had a fair chance—out in the open with a gun in his hand, not trapped in a hut as so many had been! But all that had happened at the Carissima remained dark and unknown; and the mystery of its fate lay heavy on the hearts of those in Salisbury laager.

Then late one afternoon shouts on the clear April air! Shouts and cries, hoots and yells of triumph from afar—nearer, nearer, until right at the laager gates; then crowds of men rushing in, all thrusting, heaving, shoving to be near a central figure—someone being borne high on men’s shoulders!

Diane, standing in the verandah of the gaoler’s house where Carr lay sick, shaded her eyes with her hand to see better through the sunset rays. They were calling Hammond’s name—but was that Maryon Hammond?—that haggard, tattered wreck, brown with dirt, disfigured by thorn-scratches and dried blood, ragged, shirtless, with bare arms sticking through a sleeveless coat!

Yes, it was Maryon Hammond; he looked up at her as they carried him past, and it was as though he saluted her with a sword.

Ah, God! if she could have gone to him and taken his head to her breast. But how could she?—he was not hers but another woman’s! All she might do was rejoice that a brave man still lived. Blindly, with faltering feet, she found her way back to Carr’s room where she had been sitting when the noise came. She wanted to share the news with someone—someone who loved him too. Afterwards they sat silent in the twilight. Carr with a man’s philosophy was content now and could possess his soul in patience until Hammond came to him. But Diane knew not what power helped her to sit there so still, listening to the sounds in the gaol yard. For they had not discontinued for a moment, those sounds. Always men’s voices continued to rise and fall, shouting excitedly, crying Hammond’s name, questioning, even it seemed remonstrating. There was much jingle of harness too, and the sound of horses being led out. At last, a wilder hubbub than ever, an uproar of mad hurrahs, cheer upon cheer ringing on the evening air, then—the thud of horses’ hoofs and the rattle of cart wheels!

Some word he caught in all that wild bedlam of sound made Carr spring out of bed and tear down the passage that led to the verandah, with Diane Heywood running after him.

“What is it? What is it? Where is he?”

After the first amazed stare at this madman in pyjamas there were many to cry him the news.

“He’s gone back again!—What do you think of that? After doing sixty miles in his bare feet!—Gone back to get de Rivas and his wife! Our fellows, twenty of ’em were ready to go alone—but nothing on earth or off it could stop him from going too—not the Judge, nor the Administrator, nor an Archangel from heaven—said they could never find ’em without him—or might find ’em too late! His feet are all to bits—I tell you, man, he hasn’t got feet any more—only some black currant jelly!—They’re so bad he has to ride in a cart!—but he would go—he would go. Whether he’ll ever come back again—with those feet—”

But he did come back. It took longer to bring in the two refugees than it had taken Maryon Hammond to walk the distance in his bare feet, for there was fighting to be done on the return journey; but Cara de Rivas and her husband were safe and sound in Salisbury at last, none the worse for their three days’ vigil.

And once more a man riding on men’s shoulders looked up at a girl in the gaol verandah and saluted her with the blue glance of his eyes; and she with her hand raised to her forehead saluted him in return, as a soldier might salute a conqueror, her eyes full of pride. For only she and he knew how great was this victory in which lay their defeat.

“Do we think Victory great?”

“And so it is.”

“But now it seems to me when all is done, that Defeat is great, and Death and Dismay are great!”

Long before they came to fetch her, she had heard the news—the bitter, tragic news. It was on all men’s lips.

“His feet are gone. Nothing can save Marie Hammond’s feet—the fleetest feet in Africa!—gone!—done for! Nothing but amputation can save his life—and he won’t have it done!”

It was true. He refused to have it done. He lay and laughed in the doctors’ faces.

“Take my feet off? Leave me to spend the rest of my days on my back—or crawling about the earth like a maimed rat? Oh, no, my dear fellows!—No job for you to-day?—nothing doing! All right, I’ll be dead before morning if you say so. That’s not such bad luck either. I think a good long rest is indicated anyway. I’d like a rest, by Jove! Only I should like to be left alone now, if you don’t mind, with my pal Carr—and—Ah! yes, if Miss Heywood would stay too—? Leave us three alone, will you, until the end?”

Diane Heywood never left Salisbury. A grave kept her there, and you may find her there to this day, tending the sick and sad, helping all those whose burdens seem too heavy for their shoulders.

Chapter Four.

Watchers by the Road.

The sky-line was scarlet from east to west, and above the scarlet lay massed bronze. The rest of the world was composed of tan-coloured kopjes and rocks, and the road along which the Cape cart dolorously crawled, resembled a river of dust rising in mountainous waves through which the setting sun loomed like a blood-red heart.

It was the road from the Transvaal to Tuli, and the cart had been travelling along it for hours, but was still many miles from the wayside hotel where a night’s rest for man and beast was waiting; and the offside leader had gone dead-lame, while the other three horses appeared to have lost all enthusiasm for life. On the crest of a rise, the cart came to a standstill, and they stood with hung heads and quivering barrels panting under their lathered harness. The driver descended; a burly Cape boy, he had the thick mouth of a Hottentot and the hang-dog swagger of a low-class Boer; but as far as horses were concerned he was an angel from Heaven. When he spoke to his beasts, they lifted up their despairing heads trembling like lovers to his voice, seeming to stand together again with fresh resolution while he rubbed the nose of one, slapped another’s soapy flank, and once more examined the leader’s foot. Afterwards he emitted a kind of resigned grunt and stood chewing a bit of grass he had plucked in stooping. The two men crammed in the body of the cart with several dogs, guns, and a mass of shooting-kit looked on grimly. They were merciful men who hated to see a beast suffer, but they also hated the prospect of a night on the veld without provisions or blankets. They were weary as only a day’s travelling in a Cape cart under the hot sun can make men weary; dead beat, begrimed, and hungry. Moreover they were in a hurry to reach their destination; if they had not been they would have waited for the weekly mail-coach instead of chartering a special cart.

The significance of the driver’s grunt was not lost on one at least of them, a dark man burnt almost black, with hard blue eyes and a grim lip, who looked as though with a red handkerchief on his head instead of a slouch hat he would have made a first-class pirate. Never handsome, a broken nose, and a deep scar which began over one unflinching eye and finished somewhere in the roots of his short thick hair had not softened his appearance. Yet no woman or dog (the two have strangely similar tastes where men are concerned) would have glanced twice at the other man (a well set up, good-looking fellow of thirty), while Dark Carden was about. The latter, however, if he returned the glances of women with interest, also knew something of men and horses, and because of this he now saw very well that the leader was done for and the driver resigned to a night on the veld. Disentangling himself from the shooting-kit he threw himself out of the cart, and the dogs leaped after him barking joyously.

“This is a damned look-out, Swartz!”

“Yes, Baas,” assented Swartz, not unamiably. “The leader’s leg is gone for store, and the others are done up. We can’t make Webb’s to-night.”

“How far is it?”

“About thirty miles yet.”

Carden looked at the man in the cart.

“Feel inclined to tramp it, Talfourd?”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Talfourd. “Do you?”

“Not much!” said Carden smiling. “We’ll camp. After all we’ve got the buck.” He gave a glance to the back of the cart where a beautiful little net buck still warm, but with the glaze of death over its eyes was suspended. Then his keen eye travelled swiftly over the surrounding country. The dust was subsiding, and it could be seen that they were in a wild place of lonely kopjes and immense patches of grey-green bush. Far off, taller, greener trees growing thick and close as moss outlined the banks of the Crocodile River. Across the midst of the scene, round kops and through bush, curved and curled the dusty white road that led to Tuli, and thence upwards and onwards through Mashonaland and Matabeleland to the North.

Swartz had begun to outspan the horses, knee-haltering each so that they would not roam too far.

“They’ll be safer than they would have been fifteen or twenty years ago,” he announced. “It was somewhere about here, on the banks of the river that Baas Kavanagh, the great hunter, was killed by a lion.”

“By George!” said Carden softly under his breath, and his blue eyes took on a misty look that softened them curiously. He was thinking of Francis Kavanagh, the big, lawless, lovable Irishman who hailed from his own part of Ireland—County Carlow, and had all the magic of the west in his voice and eyes. Kavanagh had been the hero of Carden’s boyhood dreams, the man who first inspired him with a love and longing for Africa. His thoughts went back in a straight line to the day when, as a college boy, he had last shaken the hand of the Explorer, famous even at thirty for his travels and exploits. He had told Kavanagh of his intention to come to Africa as soon as college days were over, and the hunter had warmly urged him to come as soon as possible to join a projected Expedition into a part of Africa that had not been penetrated. Carden had indeed left Ireland within two years of that time, but by then Kavanagh had died accidentally and mysteriously as men do die on the veld, with nothing but native rumour to tell of the manner of his death; and Carden with no friend to join, and too poor to fit out waggons for the hunting, adventurous life that lured him, was obliged to make for the comparatively civilised places where money was to be made. Destiny led him to the Diamond Fields, where, gradually absorbed by an unexpected gift in himself for finance, and fascinated by the life of danger and excitement, he had been caught in the big money-making whirlpool, and had stayed. Then when the current set for the Transvaal where the Game was even keener, and the life wilder, with gold for stakes instead of diamonds, he had gone with it, and continued to play the great Game for all he was worth. But always, always he meant to leave it some day, and go where his dreams called him, to the wild, strange spots and lonely places of Africa—sometimes he seemed to hear them calling in the night with a voice that was like a woman’s voice. But in the morning he had gone back to the Game, the money-game, which is one of the most fascinating in the world, and was in those early Rand days full of “battle, murder, and sudden death.” If he had missed hunting lions he had closed with many a human tiger, as his scars, hard eyes, and grim mouth testified. Though usually the top tiger, he had sometimes been brought down himself. Twice he had made and lost enormous fortunes; and now, only moderately rich, but on the eve of a great financial coup that if properly brought off would make him a millionaire, he had suddenly thrown down the Game, and leaving the haunts of money set out for the wilds. He had listened to the voice of his dream at last, and more than ever it had sounded like the voice of a woman; only sweeter than any woman’s voice he had ever heard. In haste, yet with the steady purpose of one who carries out a long-formed plan, he had fitted up his waggons, sent them on to Tuli, and was now on his way to join them and three friends there. His intention was to be away for a year and a half at least, and perhaps longer.

And the end of his second day’s travelling had brought him thus unexpectedly to the place where Francis Kavanagh had died! Ah, well! God rest him for a fine Irishman, a lawless lover, a true friend, and a brave man! The mist cleared from Carden’s eyes and his usual unfeeling, not to say stony, expression returned. He cast another alert look over the country, and instantly espied at some distance a broken-down cattle kraal, and near by it the stooping figure of a Kaffir gathering mis. In a straight line from there, pitched on the side of a kopje, and by reason of its colouring hardly distinguishable from the bush about it was a grey stone house; a light spot in front of it might have been the flicker of a woman’s dress. There was also the gleam of a fire.

“That’s a farm, Swartz. Whose place can it be?”

Swartz gazed in the direction indicated, and his stolid countenance took on a certain degree of interest.

“Ach wot, ja! That must be old Johannes de Beer’s, the transport rider’s place, yes! I heered he had come to live about here, but he won’t be no good to us, Baas. A slegte kerel! Says he hates the rooi-neks and would like to shoot them like schelm wherever he meets them on the veld.”

“Ah! What part is he from?”

“The Transvaal, Baas. But he’s different from other Boers. He lived in Delagoa Bay when he was a young kerel and went a trek once on a Portuguese gunboat and learnt a lot of slegte ways from these dago sailors. I’ve heard that he is all covered with red and blue anchors and animals that he had made on himself.”

“Very interesting,” said Carden dryly. “We may as well see what this genius can do for us, Tal. If he won’t put us up for the night we may at least be able to buy some bread to eat with our buck. Come on.”

“Gad! I’m glad to stretch my legs again,” said Talfourd getting stiffly out of the cart. Preceded by the bounding dogs they made their way to the house. As they drew near they recognised the typical Boer farm—a low sprawling building with high stoep and verandah. The white thing Carden had noticed was, as he had supposed, the dress of a woman sitting on a wooden bench by the door. About thirty yards from the house was a fire with a large three-legged pot over it, and another woman, a Kaffir with a shrewd withered face squatted beside it stirring with a long metal spoon. A blue vapour rose from the pot and the scent of roasting coffee beans was on the air. One lonely, sinister-looking tree grew by itself to the left of the stoep and a baboon chained to it barked hoarsely at them as they approached. The old Kaffir regarded them with unfriendly eyes, but the woman in the verandah rose and came down the steps and they saw that she was a young girl, slim and straight in a pink print dress with her face far back in a print sunbonnet. All that could be distinguished in the failing light was that like most Boer girls she had a fine complexion. Carden took off his hat and shook hands with her in the Boer fashion, addressing her in good Dutch.

“Dag Jefrouw! Is this Johannes de Beer’s place?”

“Jah Mynheer. This is Greis-Kopje (Grey-hill) farm,” she answered. Her voice was surprisingly soft and melodious, and it seemed to Carden that he had heard one like it before.

“Our cart has broken down, and we want to know if Mr de Beer can put us up for the night. Perhaps we could speak to him?”

“He has gone to Pretoria,” said the girl. “There is only Grietje, Yacop, and me here.”

“We cannot do anything for you,” said the old woman who had approached, and stood by with the spoon in her hand. “This is not an hotel, and the old Baas would be angry if we took you in.” She scowled at them, but when she saw Swartz who had come up behind them her features slightly relaxed, and she gave him a curt nod.

“This is pretty tough,” said Carden, putting his hat on the back of his head in an absent-minded way and laughing a little. “Well! We’d better go back to our buck, I suppose, and make a fire in the open. We can get some sleep anyhow.”

But the girl suddenly began to speak. Her speech had a queer little twist to it that made it unusual, but the ugly Dutch fashion of clipping the ends of words betrayed that she was colonial and jarred Carden’s fine ear.

“Oh, no,” she said excitedly, “Grietje is mad. You mustn’t go away. Of course we will do all we can for you. Come inside. Don’t mind Grietje. Would you like some coffee?”

“Wouldn’t we?” said Talfourd. “And if we could only have some soap and water—”

Carden said nothing but stared keenly into the girl’s “cappie” trying to see her face. She led the way indoors and they followed her, Talfourd limping with weariness. But fatigue was gone from Carden’s face. Something in the way the girl walked and in the lines of the slim young figure in the faded print dress refreshed him like wine.

From the verandah they entered a large low room remarkably unlike the usual Eat-kammer of a Boer house. It is true there were guns in the corner, karosses on the furniture, and skins on the floor; but the things were arranged with taste, and there were flowers about; a big jar of wild jasmine on the chimney-piece with long fronds trailed upwards over a fine pair of koodoo horns nailed near the ceiling, and on the table a native bowl full of leaves and bright wild geraniums.

“What a capital room!” said Talfourd full of enthusiasm; but Carden always and ever remained silent.

“If you will sit down I will see about a room for you,” said the girl, in her soft voice and bad accent. They protested that they wished to give no trouble, but she opened a door and disappeared, returning after a matter of five minutes to lead the way to a bedroom which astonished them even more than the Eat-kammer had done. It contained only one bed, a very white and nice one, but there was a sofa, large and comfortable-looking, covered by a beautiful leopard kaross. Rough dark tables had white calico cloths edged with narrow lace upon them. A white wooden shelf on the wall held a few books and again there were flowers everywhere.

“If you do not mind using my room to wash and rest in until supper time,” said the girl, “there will be two rooms got ready for you by to-night. Please lie down and rest if you wish to.”

She left them and they stood staring at the bed with its white counterpane. It was so simple and dainty, so obviously a girl’s bed. Talfourd threw himself on the sofa.

“H’m!” said Carden. “I suppose I’ve got to camp on the floor? It won’t be the first time anyway.”

In the meantime he poured out water in the white enamel bowl and got rid of some of the dust under which he was hidden. Afterwards he wiped up with his handkerchief the splashes he had made, and left everything as dainty as before.

“Be careful to leave the wash-hand stand as you find it Talfourd,” he said, with something very like command in his voice. But there was no response from the weary Talfourd who was sleeping like a child. Carden smiled and looked about him for wherewith to do his hair, but when he saw the little wooden brush and white bone comb he made shift to groom his back head with the flat of his hand, after which he carefully hid the brush and comb on the principle that what was too good for him was certainly too good for Talfourd. He had discarded his tie in the heat of the day, and several buttons of his thin silk shirt were undone exposing a tanned, muscular throat; he carefully fastened them up, and though they came undone again a moment or two later he did not notice it so concentrated was he on his thoughts, whistling softly under his breath while he moved about the room. When he had quite finished he roused Talfourd, told him to get a bustle on him, and opening the door went back to the living-room.

Candles had been lighted, and the table laid with a spotless white cloth, cups and saucers, tin plates, bone knives and forks, and a large loaf of the brown meal bread known as simmels broot. A fine savoury smell of riet buck crisping and singeing on red embers came from outside where Swartz and Grietje, now reinforced by the old Kaffir who had been picking up mis, were officiating over the fire. Carden sat down by the open window, and presently a door from another part of the house opened and the girl came in, carrying a pot of coffee. She had taken off her cappie and by the flickering candlelight Carden saw the smoky black hair growing above her brows like the glossy spread wings of a raven; the bar of golden freckles that lay across her nose; her silky curved mouth; dewy, mist-coloured eyes that like all eyes that have looked long on great spaces were full of dreams of forests and rivers, and seemed to reflect the shadows of far blue mountains. God had been good to her. She was lovely as a flower.

She sat down on the other side of the table and she and Carden looked at each other. The pupils of the man’s eyes expanded, giving a curious intensity to his glance, and something in hers seemed to leap out like a swift radiant spirit to him and become his. She gave a deep sigh and her lids closed, as though some living vital thing gone out of her, she were dead, or asleep. For an instant she stayed so, then rose quietly and went out of the room. Carden breathing heavily like a man who has been running, and with a rushing sound in his ears, heard her speaking to the servants at the fire, and a moment later Talfourd came in with the bustle he had been told to acquire.

The girl sat with them at dinner, serving them daintily to the luscious venison, and cutting big slices of the simmels broot that tasted like wheat with the heat of the sun still in it. Later she poured them out cups of the coffee whose beans had so lately been roasted over Grietje’s fire. She had little strong hands burnt a pale brown by the sun.

Afterwards the two men walked up and down smoking in the moonlight that was bright as daylight only softer and more tender. It transformed the walls of the mean farmhouse so that they seemed to be made of alabaster with the shadowy branches of the lonely tree etched in ebony upon them. In the distance the broken-down kraal looked a gracious ruin. A little wind had risen and drifting wraiths of cloud gave the impression that the moon was racing across the sky with one lone silver star following her deathlessly. When they came back to the verandah they found the girl sitting on the wooden bench, and with her permission they sat beside her.

“By Jove! What a night!” said Talfourd, and feeling well after a rest and an excellent meal began in a very fine tenor voice to sing:

Have you forgotten, love, so soon, that night, that lovely night of June, When down the tide so idly dreaming, we floated where the moon lay gleaming? My heart was weary and oppressed, by some sweet longing unconfessed, When like an answer to my sighing, your hand in mine was gently lying.

When he had finished, the girl said in a low tremulous voice, “Sing again!”

So he sang Tosti’s Adieu; and then Schubert’s Serenade. Such sounds, such words had perhaps never before been heard in the vicinity of the little farmhouse. Yet who can tell! Carden’s Irish imagination evolved the idea that many beautiful things must have been spoken and thought before the flower-like girl by his side had been born. He stirred a little on the old bench at the thought, and the girl stirred too, putting her hand down beside her as if to rise. Carden did not see her movement, but by some strange instinct his hand went down too and found hers there, and finding it took it. She left it for an instant in his, then tried to draw it away; but he held it closely as he always held things he once took a grip on, whether they belonged to him or not, and she left it there. So they sat listening hand in hand while Talfourd sang his last song to them.

I want no star in Heaven to guide me, I need no sun, no moon to shine, While I have you, dear love, beside me, While I know that you are mine. I need not fear whate’er betide me, for straight and sweet my pathway lies, I want no star in Heaven to guide me, while I gaze in your dear eyes. I hear no birds at twilight calling, I catch no music in the streams, While your golden words are falling While you whisper in my dreams. Every sound of joy enthralling, speaks in your dear voice alone While I hear your fond lips calling, while you speak to me, my own.

Again the girl’s strong little hand fluttered like a bird under his, but he held it fast. He liked things that tried to flutter away and escape from him.

I want no kingdom where thou art, love, I want no throne to make me blest While within thy tender heart, love, Thou wilt take my heart to rest. Kings must play a weary part, love, thrones must ring with wild alarms, But the kingdom of my heart, love, lies within thy loving arms.

At last, Talfourd proposed to go to bed, but first he wanted to know what the plans were for the morning. Swartz was called up and a discussion held. There were no horses to be had at the farm, for it appeared that old de Beer had taken away the only two he possessed.

Swartz’s plan was to take the best horse of the four, ride on to Webb’s and bring back a fresh span in the evening; and Carden thought it a good plan, if Miss de Beer would allow them to encroach so far upon her hospitality.

“We’ll earn our dinner, if there is any shooting to be got about here,” he said.

“Oh, yes; plenty of red-wing partridge, stem buck, and duiker.” She was standing opposite him now, having escaped in the general movement.

“Much matatendela also,” volunteered the old native man Yacop who had come up to take part in the indaba. Carden laughed.

“They’ll do for you, Tal; guinea-fowl need a sprinting athlete after them, and you are younger than I am.” He looked very boyish and happy as he spoke.

“All the more reason why I should go to bed at once,” said Talfourd. “Good-night, Miss de Beer, and many, many thanks for pouring oil and wine upon us the way you have done. You have been a good Samaritan indeed!”

“No; it was you who found me by the roadside,” she answered with a grave little smile, but she looked at Carden only. He lingered behind with her, hoping she would come and sit beside him again, but she did not move from where she stood leaning against the verandah pole. Swartz and Yacop had gone back to squat by the fire, and the former had produced the inevitable concertina that every Cape boy knows how to manipulate. Carden and the girl stayed listening to his melancholy strains, though it seemed to the man that it was the surging of waves in his ears that he heard, and little drums in all his pulses beating a call to arms.

Dark Carden had been loved many times and loved carelessly back, but never had he met the woman he wanted to take and keep for ever in his life. He had an idea that such a woman existed, in Ireland, if anywhere. Certainly he had long ago decided that he would never marry any but a woman from his own land; and she must be beautiful, accomplished, well-bred, and virtuous at that. Nothing but the best was good enough for Dark Carden. But he was in no great hurry to find this ideal wife. Life and women had treated him too well for him to be in any hurry to change his ways and curtail his liberty. In the meantime he had put away all such thoughts for awhile.

The spell of the wilderness was on him and it was stronger than any spell he had ever felt. Passing strange to find this flower of a girl blossoming here on the very edge of the wild! and more than passing sweet to linger awhile, sharing the moonlight night with her, stirred by the forbidden magic of her girlhood. For girls to him represented forbidden fruit. Everything else in the orchard might be reached after, or climbed for, by those who like himself had the nerve and taste for the pastime. But girls, however ripe and inviting, however close they leaned to the gathering hand, were not for this orchard thief. It was the one clause in his code concerning women which he had never broken. True he had not been greatly tempted, for girls had never held any extraordinary allure for him. The more astonishing then to find himself so troubled by the sight and sound of this one. When he thought of that something which had come winging its way from her eyes to his, and of how her hand had fluttered under his and then lain still, content, the blood tingled through his veins; he was glad to be alive.

A longing to hear the voice which charmed him in spite of the jarring Dutch accent made him break the spell of silence that had fallen on them.

“I do not even know your name,” he said in the gentle way he had with women.

“Frances,” she answered as gently. “Frances de Beer.”

“But you are not Dutch?” he said, though it mattered little to him if she declared herself Siamese or a native of Timbuctoo. The important thing was that she was she, a beautiful, alluring, and forbidden thing.

“No; my mother was an Englishwoman who married a Boer. I am the love child of an Irishman.”

A wave of astonishment mingled with pity surged through him at her strange words, and all the tragedy they implied both for her and the mother who had borne her in suffering and sorrow.

And now he knew why this girl’s eyes were deep and full of dreams, why her hair framed her face like the spread wings of a raven, why her mouth was curved to the shape of a kiss incarnate.

She was the child of two eternal things: Love and Sorrow.

He sat very still thinking. The pity of it all took hold of his heart and an impulsive longing rose in him to do something to set things aright as they should be, for this beautiful child. Yet the sins of the fathers! Who can pay for them but the flesh and blood of those who made the debt? Who can set aright what has been wrong from the first? What place in the world was there for this love flower of the desert?

Supposing he, Wilberforce St. John Carden were to marry her! The tingle came into his veins again at the thought, and a song sang in his blood. But his brain knew that it was a fool’s idea. What place in his life for the simple untaught child?

It never occurred to him to doubt whether she would marry him. He was too trained a student in the school of women’s looks not to know what gift she had given him with her eyes whether consciously or unconsciously, at their first encounter. And every instinct urged him to lay hot impulsive hands on it, to take and keep it, as he had taken and kept her hand. But his brain remained cool and clear. He had his code to keep. The girl was impossible to marry. That fact put her out of his reach definitely.

He sighed deeply. He did not know that he sighed, but the girl heard him. It seemed to him that he had come a long way, and passed through some extraordinarily poignant ordeal. As a matter of fact it was only a minute or two since she had last spoken that the girl spoke again, continuing her narrative.

“My mother lived in this house with her Boer husband who was very cruel to her. The only pleasure she had was to sit here sometimes and watch the road. One day when her husband was away in the Transvaal an Irishman came along the road. He was a hunter and an adventurer, and my mother said there was a magic in him that no woman could resist—unless she were of his own country; for all others he was one of those who must be followed when they call, and I think he must have been, for one so sweet and good as my mother to have forgotten all for him. He took her away to his waggons, and they were going away together to the Interior but a lion killed him over there by the river.”

“What was his name?” asked Carden, though he already knew. He knew now whose musical voice had echoed up old memories when first he heard her speak.

“Francis Kavanagh. My mother told me when she was dying, but no one else has ever known, except Grietje—and now you.”

“Why do you tell me?” he asked, though he knew the answer to that too. Perhaps she did not hear, for she gave no response, only made a little foot-note to her tragic tale.

“She made me swear a solemn promise, by her sin and his.” A moment later she added:

“But I can never help being glad that I am not the child of a Boer.”

“Yet you have stayed on? You still live with the Boer who was so cruel to your mother?” Somehow it was difficult to reconcile this strange fact with her, but doubtless she could explain. She could.

“I do not. He is long ago dead. I live here with Johannes de Beer my husband.”

It seemed to Carden that the night changed and turned cold. The stars looked faint and dim, and the moonlight that had been so beautiful erstwhile grew a strange dull grey, the colour of death.

He too felt cold, and old. All the fatigue of the day descended upon him in a heavy cloud, and he suddenly had a great longing for sleep and forgetfulness.

“Ah, yes—your husband,” he said in a vague way, like a man whose thoughts are elsewhere.

“He used to pass this way often with his waggons, and my mother thought he would make me a good husband. When she was dying and I had no one in the world he promised her to marry me and take care of me. I try to mind him well, and he is not unkind.”

Later she said:

“He bought this farm and came to live here because it has always been my home—and I like to watch the road.”

He did not ask her why. The boys by the fire got up and shuffled away to their blankets. The old woman was long since gone. These two were left alone in the silence and the moonlight.

“Did you think that someone for you would come along the road some day?” he asked at last, coming very near her and looking at her mouth. After a moment she answered with a little sobbing sigh in her throat:

“But I must always remember the promise I made to my mother.”

He came close to her and gripped her hands; his eyes full of hunger, and longing, and caresses searched hers; his lips were almost on her lips.

“What was the promise?”

A wave of colour passed over her face and her eyes darkened with tears.

“I think you know,” she cried miserably.

“You must break it,” he said firmly. “You are mine—you must come with me.”

“No,” she said crying, “I cannot.”

Her face bright and pale in the white light was like the face of a brave boy looking on death. The heat and madness went out of Carden. He took her hand very gently and kissed it, then he walked away into the night.

But out on the hot scented veld he thought of the gifts in her eyes and madness came upon him again. A promise! Can the dead bind the living with promises? Can a sinner make a saint out of her child by laying an injunction on her young soul! He laughed loud and bitterly in the night, and the birds stirred in the trees at so strange a sound. A “bush baby” curled in some distant clump of mimosa began to wail, and the dog that had followed his master from the farm whined uneasily. He had walked far and long. The swift rush of the river was close at hand, and the whereabouts of the farm could only be guessed by one little faint yellow light that streaked across the distance. Someone was keeping vigil.

Somewhere near this spot Kavanagh had met the end so fitting to his wild adventurous life. Who lives by the sword shall die by the sword! The lawless had fallen victim to the lawless! But he had found his own before the end came, was Carden’s thought.

What did Death matter when one had drunk to the dregs the cup Life holds to the lips of lovers? A good enough way to die too, by God! A short sharp struggle with the odds against him—then, very swiftly, the end!

Married to a Boer! Those dewy dreaming eyes that were of his land—that black hair that winged above her forehead like the wings of a raven—that ardent spirit that had leaped from her eyes to his—married to a Boer! And he, Wilberforce Carden, who had always taken what he wanted from life, wrenched it from men’s hands and women’s lips, he must be denied and go empty away!

He forgot now that when he thought her free he had successfully resisted the idea of marrying her as a solution to the problem, and forgot too that her accent jarred on him. Remembered only the gifts her eyes had for him—and thought that with her, out under the stars he could forget the world into which she would not fit. And it was no good. She was married to a Boer!

Raging he bit on the empty pipe in his mouth, and blood came into his eyes so that he could no longer see clearly, but went stumbling on his way, raging, cursing. He would have liked to have that Boer who was “not unkind” to her under his hands out there in the veld. He flung himself like a boy face down on the earth. After a little while, lying there, a quietness fell upon him. The cool brain that had out-finessed many another cool brain woke up and began to consider the situation from the point of view of the man who does not mean to lose, whatever the game may be. He lay so still that his dog who sat uneasily by him thought he must be asleep and from time to time gently licked his ear. But Dark Carden was not asleep. He was fighting a battle with his better self; with such rags and remnants of a conscience as survived in him; with a last unbroken moral code. At last he got up and retraced his steps quietly and firmly like a man with a purpose. His eyes had grown a little harder. The battle was lost.

Dawn was not more than an hour or two off when he returned to the farm. The stars were darkening, and the indescribable freshness of morning could be felt in the air. Shadows under tree and bush were stirring as if for flight. A wedge-shaped flock of wild duck passed, honking mournfully, towards the east.

The light in the farmhouse had gone out; but as he came quietly to the stoep he heard from a window that stood ajar a sound as of a woman softly and brokenly weeping. A little while he stood there, listening, then gently he pushed the window further open and stepped into the room. The soft and broken weeping ceased.

They stayed three days and nights at Grey-Kopje farm. Talfourd and Carden went out shooting daily, returning at meal times, laden with small game to restock the larder. Always after dinner the three sat on the stoep as on the first night, and Talfourd sang while the other two listened. Swartz had brought back fresh horses on the evening of the first day, but Carden found fault with them and made him return for others. On the second day, a native carrier sent out with instructions to search the road for Carden brought a letter from the men waiting in Tuli who wanted to know what delayed him and why he did not materialise? Talfourd wanted to know too, but knew better than to ask. Carden was a man who took badly to any kind of ill-timed inquiry.

On the fourth morning, Swartz had not returned, but Talfourd with the clear eye of a man who has accomplished nine hours of sound sleep with nothing on his conscience, glanced out of the window and noted Carden picking out of the cart things he would not be likely to need before reaching Tuli. “Hurray! we’re going to make a move at last!” he said to himself, and made haste to perform his toilette.

At the breakfast table, it struck him that Carden looked older than a man of thirty-four ought to look, however swift has been the pace. However, he kept his observations to himself. It transpired that Carden’s plan was that he and Talfourd should start for Webb’s immediately after breakfast, leaving the cart to be brought on later by Swartz when he turned up with horses.

“If we don’t meet him we can send on someone else for it.”

“How are we going to get there?” said Talfourd looking up in surprise.

“I suppose we can foot thirty miles without endangering our lives?” answered Carden with something so very like a sneer and so very unlike his usual impassive serenity that Talfourd was even more surprised.

“Oh, all right, my dear fellow,” he said pleasantly. “It’s your picnic. I only wanted to know.”

Mrs de Beer sat listening without comment, but she grew very pale. Afterwards Talfourd went out to get the guns ready, and Carden remained sitting at the table.

“You are going?” she said looking away from him with eyes that were no longer dewy but dry and brilliant like the sky above the Karoo in days of drought.

“Yes,” he answered in a business-like voice. “I must go.” He got up and looked out of the window for a moment, then walked back to the table.