After the first few days of frightful illness she began to feel better, and was able to be moved from her cabin to the ladies' lounge. Wrapped in one or other of Diana's ravishing boudoir garments of silk and fur, she was supported there every morning, ensconced on the most luxurious sofa, and surrounded by attentions from the other semi-invalids. Nothing was too good for the peer's delightful daughter, and everyone behaved as if she were an angel dropped from heaven. In fact, with the lovely spirituelle air her illness had given, and the sea bloom just beginning to tint her cheeks again and dew her eyes, she looked rather like one.
The ship's doctor, who was young and susceptible, broke it gently to such of the male passengers who were able to bear the strain that a dazzling joy awaited their eyes when "Lady Diana" should be well enough to appear in public. The story of her charming looks and ways circulated softly round the boat, even as a pleasant wine circulates in the veins.
April knew nothing of these things. She only felt very happy in the kindness of everybody, in the gradual steadying of the ship, now emerging from the troubled Bay into smoother, warmer waters, and in the prospect of soon being allowed to go on deck. Sometimes she wondered why the real Diana gave no sign, but came to the conclusion that she, too, had been ill.
It was a natural enough thing to ask the doctor, when they were alone one day, if Miss Poole was among his patients. He seemed sufficiently astonished by the query.
"Miss Poole!" he echoed. "Oh, no; she's not ill—far from it. Do you know her?"
"Certainly I know her," smiled April, astonished in her turn. "I was wondering why she had not been to see me."
The doctor murmured something cryptic about her having "no doubt been too busy," and seemed to have nothing further to say. The face of the lounge stewardess wore a peculiar expression. A quiet, rather austere-looking woman, she always behaved like a mummy in the doctor's presence, standing behind him with folded hands and mute lips. But when he had gone she came to life.
"Do you mean the young lady whose baggage got mixed with yours at the beginning of the voyage, my lady?" she asked. April remembered the necessity to walk delicately.
"Yes . . . a pretty, fair girl," she said cautiously. "Very gay and bright."
"Very," agreed the stewardess laconically. Then the source of her eloquence dried up even as the doctor's had done. April began to think it was time to go on deck and see what was doing.
The next day was not only gloriously fine, but the ship came to harbour by that island which is as a bouquet of fruit and flowers pinned to a jagged breast. There seems always something sinister lurking behind the wreathed and radiant beauty of Madeira; but to those who come in ships from out the bitter fogs of England she is a siren with a blue and golden smile, and her gift-laden hands are soothing and serene.
April, lying in her deck-chair, thought she had come to fairyland. Escorted upstairs by the doctor and a retinue of stewardesses, she was installed in a sheltered corner that commanded the whole brilliant scene. The purser found her the most comfortable of chairs, the first officer brought her a bamboo table from his cabin for her books, the Captain stayed awhile from his duties to congratulate her on her recovery, and several men loitered near at hand casting reverently admiring glances. But she had eyes for nothing save the vivid scene before her. The smiling island, with its head in the mists and its feet in a sapphire sea still as a painted lake; boats full of flowers, corals, ivories, silken embroideries and unknown fruits; the burnished bodies of diving boys; the odour of spices and sandalwood; the clatter of strange tongues; the dark faces and bright clothes of the invading crowds of natives.
It was a spectacle to enchant the senses. She could not think why so many passengers were scurrying to and fro anxious to be taken ashore. It seemed as foolish as to try to get into a picture instead of sitting before it.
Everyone was wearing light clothes, for summer had come at full bound, and soon they would be in the tropics. There were beautifully cut white linen suits, smart skirts, and filmy blouses. A popular saying on the Cape mail-boats is that passengers to South Africa are all clothes and no money, while passengers returning are all money and no clothes. April did not know the epigram, nor the truth of it. But she could plainly perceive that in the scanty kit of April Poole she would have been very much out of the running among this smart and jaunty crowd.
As it was, clad in a sleek silken muslin of lovely lines, snowy shoes and stockings, and a rose-laden hat, she could hold her own with any one. A longing filled her to see Diana Vernilands. She wanted to talk to her, exchange confidences, thank her, bless her, and, above all, to find out what it was she found so attractive in her side of the game. What on earth could it be that was so much more ravishing than to be at peace with the world, respected by it, liked by it, and yet independent of it? To wear lovely clothes in which you could enjoy the knowledge of looking charming without meeting suspicion in the eyes of women and the "good-hunting" glance in the eyes of men. This last constituted, indeed, that "subtle reason" at which she had hinted to Diana. Life had harried April too much for her few years. Obliged to travel its highways alone and unprotected, some of the adventures encountered there had cut her to the quick. While women looked askance at her, men looked too hard, and too long. Doubtless she had met the wrong kind. Lonely young girls without money or connections do not always find the knightly and chivalrous gentlemen of their dreams! Naturally pure-hearted and high-minded, she had asked nothing of those she did meet save respect and good-comradeship; but either she was too pretty or peculiarly unfortunate, for she had seldom been offered either. It was something, perhaps, that she still kept dreams, and a belief that there were knightly and chivalrous men somewhere in the world, though they might not be for her.
She was still, like Omar, wondering "What the vinters buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell"—lost in cogitations about Diana, when the subject of her thoughts, accompanied by three men, came down a companion-way from an upper deck. They were evidently set for the shore, and making their way to the ship's side as if certain that the best places in the best boats were preserved for them.
Diana's appearance betrayed the lack of a maid. Her dress was crumpled, her shoes badly laced, and her hat cocked carelessly upon her head. But the subtle Italian hand of the ship's coiffeur had touched her hair, saving the situation. Also, there was a sparkle in her eye and ajoie de vivrein her laughter that made up for many deficiencies. Her companions appeared to have been picked for their good looks, sleek heads, and immaculate clothes. One, with whom she palpably stood on the happiest of terms, was, in fact, strikingly handsome. The other two, loitering in her wake, seemed content if she tossed them a word over her shoulder from time to time. They all behaved as if they had bought the ship, and found the presence of the rest of the passengers an impertinence. Such of the latter as were still on board returned the compliment according to sex and the ability that was theirs. The men plainly admired Diana's nerve, while wondering with their eyebrows what on earth she could see in those three footling fellows. The women looked pityingly at the men, and with their noses indicated that Diana was some kind of dangerous and unpleasant animal escaped from a menagerie. A lady who had seated herself by April in a chair labelled "Major Sarle," curled her lip at the passing group in a manner painfully familiar to her neighbour. Presently, when they were left alone, the rest of the world having disappeared down the ship's side, she addressed April, but with a very different expression on her face.
"You are Lady Diana Vernilands, I think?" she said, smiling in a friendly manner. "I am Mrs. Stanislaw. So glad to see you up."
April was instantly on the alert. Not only did she know the name of Mrs. Lionel Stanislaw, but had very good cause to remember it as that of the lady with whom she was to have shared a cabin. The smiling face had once been a pretty one, but the tide of youth was fast receding, leaving uncovered a bleak and barren shore, whose chief salients were a disdainful nose and a mouth which looked as if it might be able to say bitter things. The eyes, however, were still handsome, if supercilious, and her manners velvety. No doubt there were claws beneath the velvet, but they were not for April . . . only for the girl who was using April's name! They had not talked for five minutes before she realized that in this woman Diana had an enemy. Not that Mrs. Stanislaw's words were censorious. She was too clever for that. Her remarks were merely deprecative and full of pity.
"A most amazing creature," she said gently, "but rather disturbing to live with. I confess I wish I had been cribbed and cabined with someone who had more conventional manners and kept earlier hours."
Here was something for April to ponder.
"She is very young," she faltered at length, and was unwise enough to add, "and pretty."
These being two heinous offences in the eyes of Mrs. Stanislaw, she proceeded at once to hang, draw, and quarter the criminal. But her voice was tenderer than before.
"Yes, isn't it a pity? . . . and so foolishly indiscreet. Do you know, they tell me that she is spoken of by all the men on the ship as the April Fool, a parody on her name, which is April Poole."
Pleasant hearing for her listener, who flushed scarlet.
"Can you imagine any one who has a living to earn being so unwise? I find it difficult to believe she is going to the Cape to teach someone's children. I only hope that the story of her indiscretions will not precede her, poor girl."
April was dumb. Mrs. Stanislaw came to the conclusion that she was dull and rather lacking in feminine sweetness, and after a while went away to bargain with a native for some embroideries. She would have been delighted to know what a poisoned barb she had implanted and left quivering in the side of the so-called Lady Diana.
Beneath the folded V of filmy lace on April's bosom her heart was beating passionately, and the rose-wreathed hat fortunately drooped enough to hide the tears of mortification that filled her eyes.Hername to be parodied and bandied about the ship on men's lips! A poor thing, but her own! One that for all her ups and downs she had striven and contrived to keep untarnished. How dared Diana Vernilands do this thing to her? What foolishness had she herself been guilty of to put it in another's power to thus injure her?
Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she did not notice at what particular moment another occupant had usurped the chair of Major Sarle. It was a man this time. April hastily seized a book and began to read. He must have stolen up with the silence of a tiger, and he reminded her of tigers somehow, though she could not quite tell why, except that he was curiously powerful and graceful looking. His hair, which grew in a thick short mat, was strongly sprinkled with silver, but his skin, though brick-red, was unlined. She judged him to be a sailor-man, for he had the clear and innocent eye of one who has looked long on great spaces. These were her conclusions, made while diligently reading her book. He, too, was busy reading in the same fashion, but, manlike, was slower in his deductions. By the time she had finished with his hair he had not got much further than her charming ankles. Certainly, he had ascertained that she was a pretty woman before he took possession of his chair, but that was merely instinct, the fulfilling of a human law. Detail, like destruction, was to come after. He lingered over the first detail. They were such very pretty ankles. It did not seem right that they should be resting on the hard deck instead of on a canvas foot-rest. He remembered that his own chair had a foot-rest, but it was in his cabin. Should he go and fetch it? Dared he offer it to her? He was on hail-fellow-well-met terms with lions and tigers, as April had curiously divined, but having enjoyed fewer encounters with women, was slightly shy of them. However, being naturally courageous, he might presently have been observed emerging from a deck cabin with a canvas foot-rest in his hand, and it was only the natural sequence of events that while attempting to hitch it on his chair his guileless gaze should discover that April's feet were without support. He looked so shy and kind for such a sun-bitten, weather-hardened creature, that she had no heart to refuse the friendly offer, even had she felt the inclination. Besides, the advances made to her in the rôle of Lady Diana were very different to those she had so often been obliged to repulse as April Poole.
She felt, too, that here was a man not trying to make friends with any ulterior motive, but just because on this pleasant, delightful morning it was pleasant and delightful to talk to someone and share the pleasure.
Vereker Sarle had made the voyage to South Africa so many times that he had lost count of them, and knew Madeira so well that it bored him to go ashore there any more.
"We have the best of it from here, in spite of a little coal dust," he told her, for with a great deal of rattling, banging, and singing on the lower decks the ship was taking on her voyage ration of coal. "Still, you should go ashore and see it some time. It is worth a visit for the sake of the gardens, the breakfast of fresh fish at the hotel on the hilltop, and the bumping rush down again in the man-drawn sleighs."
He took it for granted that she was a woman travelling for pleasure and likely to be back this way soon. While she gave a little inward sigh, wondering whether she would ever have the money to return to England, or if it would be her fate to live in exile for ever.
Sarle presented her with one of his simple maxims of life.
"All good citizens of the world should do everything once and once only," he averred, with his frank and disarming smile. "If we stuck to that rule life would never go stale on us."
"I'm afraid it would hardly apply to everyday life and all the weary things we have to do over and over again."
"I was thinking of the big things," he said slowly. "Like potting your first elephant or falling in love. I don't know what equivalents women have for these things."
April could not forbear a little ripple of laughter.
"I believe they fall in love, too, sometimes," she said. But Sarle, with his sea-blue gaze on her, answered gravely:
"I know very little about them."
It was hard to decide whether he was an expert flirt with new methods, or really and truly a man with a heart as guileless as his eyes. But, at any rate, he was amusing, and April forgot her tears and anger completely in the pleasant hour they spent together until the passengers, recalled by the ship's siren, began to return from ashore.
Diana and her bodyguard were the last to arrive, the men laden with fruit, flowers, and numerous parcels, and the girl more openly careless of the rest of the world than before. They took possession of a group of chairs that did not belong to them, and scattered their possessions upon the deck. Pomegranates, nectarines, and bananas began to roll in every direction, to the inconvenience of the passers-by, but what did that matter? Diana lit a cigarette, declaring that it was too hot for words, and that shemusthave a John Collins. They all ordered John Collinses. The handsome man fanned Diana with a large palm leaf, and she looked at him with languorous eyes.
April grew hot inside her skin. Conversation interrupted by the noise around them, both she and Sarle had immersed themselves once more in their books. But April, at least, was profoundly conscious of everything said and done by the neighbouring group, and she longed to take Diana Vernilands by the shoulders and give her a sound shaking. As for the three men who were encouraging and abetting the little minx, it would have been a pleasure to push them separately and singly overboard. She did not know how she could have managed to sit so still, except that Sarle was there reading by her side, silent and calm, apparently noticing nothing extraordinary in the behaviour of their neighbours.
A steward brought the John Collinses—four tall glasses of pale liquid and ice, some stuff red as blood floating on the top. No sooner had Diana tasted hers than she set up a loud wail that there was not enough Angostura in it. One of the men hurried away to have this grave defect remedied, and the moment he was out of sight Diana took up his as yet untouched glass, and with two long straws between her lips, skilfully sucked all the red stuff from the top of the drink and replaced the glass. Above the delighted laughter of her companions, April heard a woman's scornful remark further down the deck:
"It is only the April Fool!"
That was the little more that proved too much. The real April closed her book sharply and left her chair. Walking to the deck-rail, she stood leaning over, thinking hard, trying to decide how best to get hold of Diana Vernilands and tell her firmly that this folly must stop at once.
She felt very miserable. Madeira, fading in the wake of the ship, with already the blue haze of distance blurring its outlines, seemed to her like the dream she had lived in these last few days . . . the golden dream in which everyone liked and trusted her, and her beauty was a pleasure instead of a burden. Tomorrow she must return to her destiny of shabby clothes and second places, with the added bitterness of knowing her name made the byword of the ship! That was something she could never live down, if the voyage lasted a year. There would merely be two April fools instead of one, and she the wretched masquerader in borrowed plumes not the least of them! Slowly she turned away from the rail and went to her cabin. A line sent by a steward brought Diana there at the double-quick. She burst into the cabin, the open note in her hand.
"What do you mean? Is this the way you keep faith? . . . Trying to slither out of our bargain before it is a week old!"
"It is you who have broken faith," retorted April indignantly. "Surely it was in the bargain that you should behave with common decency and not make my name notorious!"
"Rot!" was the airy answer. "A few old pussy cats with their fur brushed the wrong way, that's all. Who's going to mind what they say?"
"Do you realize that you are known from one end of the ship to the other as the April Fool?"
Diana burst out laughing.
"I know who started that . . . the poisonous asp I share my cabin with. Just because I have seen her putting on her transformation, and know how many kinds of paints she uses to build up her face! If it had beenyouit would have been just the same. You'd have been the April Fool instead, that's all. You ought to be jolly grateful, instead of bullying me."
She sat down on the lounge, smiling and sparkling, and took out a cigarette. April, in whom laughter was always near the surface, could have smiled herself had she not been nearer weeping. After all, Diana's pranks and antics were in no way vicious, but seemed merely the result of the lifelong drastic restraint hitherto exercised over her. Her vitality was breaking out like a fire that has been too long covered up. But there was no knowing where she would stop, and what would not be consumed in the merry blaze.
"Well, I'mnotgrateful," she said firmly, "and if you want to be talked about in future, it will have to be under your own name."
"Oh, April!" Diana's jauntiness left her instantly. "I beg of you,don'tbe unkind. I am having such a topping time. I've never been so happy in my life. If you only knew how dull I've been with old Aunt Grizel always hounding me to death. Don't go and spoil my first good time."
"It is you who are spoiling it. You forget that I have to earn my living and am dependent on the world's good opinion. Where shall I be at the end of the voyage with the frivolous reputation you are building up for me?"
"I won't do it any more. I'll be so good. You'll see how I'll change from now on."
"The mischief is already done, unfortunately."
"All the same, we can't possibly change now," pleaded Diana. "What good will it do us? . . . and you will get the worst of it, my dear. The world is a bundle of snobs, and the people on the ship thoroughly represent it. They will soon forgive me, but your crime will be unpardonable. They will be simply furious with you for taking them in."
This was the tongue of truth, as April knew well. She looked at the other girl ruefully.
"How can I trust you any longer? I saw you with those men on deck . . . playing the fool . . . making yourself cheap. Oh, Diana, how can you? . . . under my name or any other, you are still a lady with certain rules to observe."
Diana flushed.
"You don't understand . . . I can't explain to you what it means to me to break loose from convention for a little while . . . it's something in my blood that has to come out. But, indeed, April, I swear to you if you will only go on I will behave. I really will. I can't help what is past, but there shall be nothing fresh for them to carp at in the future, anyhow. Do be a sport and consent, won't you?"
In the end, by pleading, beguiling, and piling promise on promise, she got her way, and thereafter the game went on—with a difference. They still called her the April Fool, because names like that stick; but as far as could be seen, she committed no fresh escapades to deserve the title. Yet the real April Poole sometimes wondered if the last phase of this folly was not worse than the first. She could not in justice deny that Diana was much quieter and more orderly, but it seemed a pity that her quietness should take the form of sitting for long hours at a time in rapt silence with a certain extremely handsome man. This was Captain the Hon. Geoffrey Bellew, on his way to South Africa as attaché to a Governor somewhere in the interior. He it was with whom Diana had been on such happy terms the day of landing at Madeira. The two other men had been cast forth like Gadarene swine. Bellew and Diana were sufficient unto themselves. Eternally together, sometimes they walked the deck, or threw quoits, or played two-handed card games; but ever they avoided large companionable games, and always they sought the dusky corner in which to sit undisturbed, gazing into each other's eyes. Strictly speaking, there was nothing to cavil at in this. Numbers of other couples were doing the same. These little games of two and two go forward all the time on voyages to the Cape (especially nearing the Equator), and are the joy of the genial-hearted. Even those who have no little games of their own are wont to look on sympathetically, or, better still, to turn away the understanding eye. The long, lazy, somnolent days and the magic nights, star-spangled above and lit with phosphorescent seas below, lend themselves to the dangerous kind of flirtation that says little and looks much, and if there is any place in the world where Cupid is rampant and "Psyche may meet unblamed her Eros," it is on the deck of a liner in the tropics.
But either Diana was one of those unfortunate girls who cannot glance over the garden wall without being accused of stealing peaches, or else she had too thoroughly got people's backs up during the first week at sea, for everyone looked cold-eyed at her romance and called it unromantic names. There were continual little undercurrents of gossip going on about her beneath the otherwise pleasant surface of everyday life. April did not talk gossip nor listen to it, but she was vaguely aware of it. Except for this, she would have been the happiest girl in the world, and, indeed, she did not allow it to bother her too much, having made up her mind to cast care to the winds and enjoy herself while the sun shone. Destruction might come after—at Cape Town, perhaps, but if it did,tant pis!
Something of Diana's recklessness entered into her, only that it did not take the form of outraging the convenances, but just of enjoying life to the full with the permission and approval of the world. She loved the summer seas, and each blue and golden hour seemed all too short for the pleasure to be stuffed into it.
Everyone was delightful to her. Gone were the days when all women's hands were against her and her hand against all men. When she had time to think about it, she fully recognized that most of the admiration and kindness tendered to her by the other passengers was entirely worthless, and merely the result of snobbery.
But she had neither time nor inclination to go too deeply into the matter with herself. Her heart very ardently desired to believe that some at least of the people who made such a fuss over her liked her for herself alone, regardless of the rank and wealth she was supposed to possess. Sarle, for instance—Vereker Sarle, the shy man of wild places as she soon learned him to be, "the man who owned the largest and most up-to-date ranch—Northern Rhodesia," people informed her . . . surely to him she was a charming girl, as well, or before, she was Lady Diana Vernilands. She wanted to believe it, and she did believe it. Not a very difficult task to believe anything on sapphire seas decorated by golden dawns and rose-red sunsets. Cynical truths have no room to blossom in such surroundings. It was sheer joy to be alive, and she threw herself into the merry routine of the days with all the zest of youth. Her beautiful, athletic figure had been trained in many gymnasiums, but never before had she known the delight of exercise in the wild, fresh air of the open sea, where her muscles felt like rippling music, and her blood seemed full of red roses. Her eyes had changed from their smoky sadness to the dewy radiance of hyacinths plucked at dawn, and her skin wore the satiny sheen, rose-tinted, of perfect well-being. She wished the voyage would last for ever.
Nothing succeeds like success. Because she was brilliant and happy, and apparently had everything she wanted, Luck smiled, and all good things came her way. She was acclaimed a champion at deck games, and unremittingly sought as a partner. In the evenings she never lacked companions to help her dance the soles off her shoes. She played auction like a fiend and always held the cards; won all the prizes in the sports for running, jumping, threading the needle, and holding eggs in spoons; bowled everyone at cricket. It seemed she could do nothing wrong or badly. Finally, at the fancy dress ball, when everyone turned out in wonderful garments planned and prepared long months before, she easily captured the votes of the crowd as the wearer of the most original and charming costume created on the spur of the moment.
There had been only one fancy dress in Diana's wardrobe, that of a Persian lady; and for once she showed herself greedy in the matter of clothes, and calmly commandeered it without consulting April. Yet the latter's fanciful imitation of a well-known poster, composed of inexpensive calicoes (bought from that emporium of all wants and wonders—the barber's shop), had triumphed over the gorgeous veils and jewels and silken trousers of the Persian houri and swept the unanimous vote of the ship into April's lap. Enough in all this to turn any girl's head, and though natural dignity and a certain attractive quality of humility that was hers kept April's heart sweet, she was sometimes in danger of becoming slightlytête montée. But she always pinched herself in time, with the reminder that it was all only a dream from which she must awaken very soon. For the nineteen halcyon days of the voyage were speeding by and coming to an end. Hot, hard blue skies gleamed overhead, and at night came the moon of Africa, pearl-white instead of amber-coloured, as it looks in Europe. Strange stars appeared, too, bigger, more lustrous, than the stars of cooler climes, and seeming to brood very low over the world. The "Milky Way" was a path of powdered silver. The "Coal Sack" showed itself full of brilliant jewels. And the Southern Cross! When April first saw it mystically scrolled across the heavens, like a device upon the shield azure of some celestial Galahad, its magic fell across her soul, and would not be lifted.
This is one of the first spells Africa puts upon those whom she means to make her own. Ever after, with the poignant memory of that Cross of straggling stars there is a thought of Africa, and the two cannot be torn apart. For April there was always to be a memory of Vereker Sarle, too, associated with it, for he it was who first picked out the Cross for her in the luminant heavens, and he it was who said to her on the night before they reached Cape Town:
"There seems to be some kind of blessing in that old Cross held out over us as we come trailing back."
After that first day at Madeira she had not seen a great deal of Vereker Sarle. He had dropped back quietly from the crowd that ringed her in, and become a looker-on, sometimes barely that, for he was a great poker-player, and spent much time in the smoke-room with one or two hard-looking citizens who were plainly not drawing-room ornaments. April had missed him, with a little pain in her heart, for instinct told her that he was one of the men who count in the world. Also, she had divined that his heart was as clear as his eyes. Though his face was so scarred and rugged as to inspire in the wit of the ship the jest that it had been chewed at by one of the lions he had hunted, there was yet something in it that suggested the gentleness of a child, and that knight-like chivalry that she had sought but never found in any man. So it hurt her a little when she thought of it in the night hours, that he should keep aloof from her, yet in a way she was glad, for she could not so ardently have enjoyed playing her rôle if Sarle had looked on too much with his innocent, yet keen gaze. It was by accident that he found her alone that night, between dinner and dancing, and they stayed looking at the stars and talking of the land they were to reach sometime within the next two days. He was not a great talker, and most of the information April gathered was in the form of half-scornful, half-wistful remarks. He spoke of Africa as a man might speak of some worthless woman, whom he yet loved above all peerless women. Of the lure and bane of her. How she was the home of lies and flies, the grave of reputation, the refuge of the remittance man and the bad egg; the land of the unexpected pest, but never the unexpected blessing; of sunstroke and fever; scandals and broken careers; snobbery, bobbery, and highway robbery. How, yet, when one had been away from her for a little while, sometimes for a few months only, one forgot all these things and remembered only with hunger and aching the pink-tipped hills of her, the crystal air, royal sunsets and tender dawns; the unforgettable friends she had given, the exquisite reveries her wild spaces had inspired; the valiant men who lie buried in her breast, the sweeping rivers and leagues and leagues of whispering grasses. How, suddenly, the nostalgia for the burn and the bite of her bitter lips seizes upon the men who have known her too long and too well, dragging them from ease and comfort and the soft cushions of life, back across the seas to her gaunt and arid breast.
"And there seems to be some kind of blessing in that old Cross held over us as we come trailing back!"
His smile was scoffing and a little weary, but behind it April heard longing in his voice, and saw the searching of his eyes towards where land would soon appear. And what he was feeling strangely communicated itself to her. The subtle hand of Africa was laid upon her heart, and she trembled. In that moment she sickened suddenly of her false position. Why was she not coming to this watchful land frankly and with clean hands, instead of in the coils of a foolish pretence? She looked at the fine, open face of the man at her side and was ashamed. An impulse seized her to tell him the truth, but the thought of Diana drew her up sharply. Had she the right to disclose the secret before first consulting the other girl, or at least telling her what she meant to do? There had of late been something about Diana that called for this consideration. She had grown so quiet and pale. Her gay laughter was seldom heard, and though she still sat about with Bellew a great deal, no one ever heard them talking much. They seemed to revel in silence. It was not difficult to divine what spell was upon them, and April was more glad than she could tell.
For if it came to pass that Diana should get something out of this masquerade, something beyond mere frivolous enjoyment, then the means would have justified the end, and neither would have cause for reproach. How fitting, too, for Diana and Bellew, both of the same world and social position, to find each other in such a disinterested way. Really, it looked as if everything were for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It was only when Sarle's clear gaze was upon her that April's soul stirred with a sense of guilt and a longing to discontinue the deceit, harmless as it was. His simple, candid personality made it impossible to remain with him and not be sincere. A very panic of haste seized her to find Diana and arrange some plan of action. Abruptly she left him, and though dancing had begun and she saw her partner bearing down on her, she fled in the direction of the music saloon, where Diana and Bellew might most frequently be found. But they were nowhere in sight, and their dusky and palm-sheltered corner was in possession of Mrs. Stanislaw, who instantly pounced on April with a request for her autograph. Everyone was walking about with birthday and autograph books that night. Others were carrying about large photographs of the ship and begging people to sign their names upon it, as a souvenir of the voyage. These things are done upon every trip to the Cape.
While April stood turning the pages of the autograph album and wondering what name to put down, she got one of the worst jolts of her life.
"I have found out two very interesting things," said Mrs. Stanislaw, in her soft and serpentine manner. "The woman whose children Miss Poole is going to governess at the Cape is Cora Janis, one of my most intimate friends. And . . ." she paused dramatically. April's fingers still fluttered the pages, but her heart took a bound and then stood still.
"How very interesting," she stammered, "and what else?"
"Captain Bellew is a married man!"
April closed the book and handed it back without writing anything.
"If that is true, I really do not see what it has to do with you—or me," she said coldly.
"Oh, I know it is true," said Mrs. Stanislaw, airily ignoring the rest of April's remark. "I had it from a lady who is travelling second-class because she has a bevy of children. She knows Mrs. Bellew quite well, and, curiously enough, is a friend also of Cora Janis, who wrote to her some time ago asking her to look out for Miss Poole on the voyage. Naturally, Cora thought her governess would also be travelling second." Mrs. Stanislaw smiled drily. "She little knows our April Fool."
The girl's fascinated eyes watched the line of her smile. It was like a thin curved knife, all the crueller for being artificially reddened.
"Why should you have such a down on her?"
The older woman's hard, handsome eyes took expression of surprise.
"A down on her? You are mistaken. I am only sorry that a girl should so cheapen herself and her sex generally."
April could have shaken her, but it seemed wiser to try propitiation instead. Her own career, as well as Diana's reputation, was at stake.
"After all, she has harmed no one but herself, Mrs. Stanislaw. As for Captain Bellew, I daresay he told her long ago about his being married. . . ."
"If you think so you think worse of her than I do," said Mrs. Stanislaw acidly, "and I could hardly suppose that!"
"I do not think badly of her at all," retorted April indignantly. "She is only a girl, and if she has been misled—well, it seems to me that the situation calls for a little human charity rather than condemnation."
"Of course," said the soft-voiced one. "I quite agree. Far be it from me to condemn. One has, however, certain duties to one's friends."
April saw clearly what she meant, and that it was as useless to try to divert her from her intention as to argue with an octopus. The very fact that she knew Mrs. Janis would probably put an extinguisher on April's career as a governess. Her impersonation of Lady Diana was bound to come out, and if Mrs. Janis was cut on the same pattern as her friend, she would be truly outraged by such an impertinence in a mere governess. There was little to do but keep a tight lip and hope for the best. For the moment, indeed, her troubles were swamped by a flood of pity for Diana. She felt sure that Diana was in love with Bellew, and feared that he had not told her the truth. On the other hand, he might honourably have done so, and Diana being the reckless scatterbrain she was, still chose to dally on the primrose path of danger. It was hard to know what to do.
On the main deck dancing was in full swing, and the first sight that met her eyes was Diana and Bellew scampering in a tango. Diana wore a satin gown of curious blue that gleamed and shone like the blue light of sulphurous flames, and as she danced she trilled a little French song that was often on her lips:
"Tout le mondAu salonOn y tan-gue, on y tan-gue,Tout le mondAu salonOn y tan-gue, tout en rang."
It was a parody on an old South of France chanson, and everyone was singing it in Paris that year. Someone far down the deck, who had evidently read the original in Alphonse Daudet'sLettres de Mon Moulin, took up the refrain:
"Sur le pontD'AvignonOn y dan-se, on y dan-se,Sur le pontD'AvignonOn y dan-se, tout en rond."
Small use trying to stop her and speak serious things to her in that mad frolic. April herself was whirled into the pool of music and movement, and did not emerge until the band, at a late hour, struck up the National Anthem. By special dispensation of the Captain, dancing had been prolonged because it was the last ball of the voyage. The next two nights were to be respectively devoted to a bridge-drive and a grand farewell concert. However, only a score or so of the most ardent dancers were left on deck when the final note of music sounded and the lights went out with a click. Figures became wraith-like in the moonlight, and April gave a sigh as her partner's arm fell from her waist and they drew up by the ship's rail, where Vereker Sarle stood watching them and smoking.
"And that's the end of the story," said she, laughing a little ruefully. Her partner went away to get her a cold drink, and she half expected Sarle to reproach her because it had been his dance and she had purposely avoided dancing with him. But he only said: "Africa is the beginning of many stories."
She shivered a little, though the night was warm.
"I am beginning to be afraid of her—this Africa of yours!"
"No need for you to be afraid anywhere," he smiled. "There will always be those who will stand between you and fear."
"How little you know!" she said abruptly. "I haven't a friend in the world."
There was a short silence, and they looked straight at each other, the slim, tall girl in her diaphanous tulles, the powerful, innocent-eyed man.
"You must be joking," he began. Then he saw the trouble in her eyes and her quivering mouth.
"But even in jest, never say that, while I am in the world," he added gently. She was so grateful for the chivalrous words that she dared not speak for fear the tears should rush out of her eyes. Impulsively she put out her hand, and his brown, firm one closed on it, and held it very close. Then he carried it to his lips. She heard him say one word, very softly: "Diana."
At that she tore her hand from his and sped away swiftly into the darkness. Once in her cabin she locked the door, turned out the lights, and flung herself on to the bed. For a long time she lay there, a rumpled heap of tulle and misery, weeping because life was a cruel brute who kept her gifts for the rich and wellborn or the old and indifferent, mockingly withholding from those who were young and eager and could better appreciate them.
"What is the use of youth and good looks when one is poor and lonely?" she sobbed. "They only mock one! It is like having a Paris hat put on your head while your feet are bare and bleeding and your stomach is empty."
She wished she had never begun this miserable game of Diana Vernilands, never tasted the power of rank and place, the joy of jewels and pretty clothes. She wished she had never left England, never seen Vereker Sarle, and, above all, she wished she were dead.
It was about two in the morning before she had finished wishing and sobbing. Youth began to assert itself then, and she thought of what a sight would be in the morning, with tangled hair and swollen eyes. Languidly at last she rose. The tulle dress was ruined, but little she recked. Rather she felt a fierce satisfaction in the thought that it was done for, and Diana could never wear it.
That wretched Diana! . . .
But when her flushed face was bathed and her hair brushed out she thought more kindly of Diana, remembering that she, too, was in trouble. Well, tomorrow there would have to be a great clean-up of all these miserable pretences and deceits; tonight, at least, she would try and sleep. Her hand was on the switch to turn out the lights when there came a knocking at the door. It was such a strange, peremptory knocking—such a careless outraging of the small hours, that for a moment she stood rooted with astonishment and apprehension, staring at herself in the mirror that composed the back of the door.
"Who is it?" she stammered at last.
"The Captain," said a stern voice, and in the glass she saw her cheeks and lips become pale. What on earth could be wrong? Was the ship on fire, or wrecked? Had their last hour come?
"I am sorry to bother you, but will you please open the door for a moment?"
By a great effort she composed herself and did as she was bid. A little group of people with strained faces and staring eyes presented themselves behind the Captain; she recognized several men, the stewardesses, and Mrs. Stanislaw; while in the shadows beyond them was whispering and much shuffling. The whole ship seemed to be afoot. Captain Carey gave one swift look round the cabin, then his eyes rested on her startled face, and he patted her arm gently and reassuringly.
"Don't be alarmed, my dear Lady Diana," he said, in his tender, Irish voice, from which all sternness had vanished. "It is only that we are looking for Miss Poole, and we thought that possibly she might be in here with you."
"Miss Poole!"
The girl's face stiffened and blanched. She put out a hand to support herself against the dressing-table. The Captain signed to a stewardess, and the little crowd moved away. There was loud knocking on another door.
"Why are they searching? . . ."
The stewardess patted her arm, even as the Captain had done, but being a simple woman, she spoke simply, and without waste of words.
"There is a fear that she is not on the ship."
"Not on the ship!" whispered April. "But where else could she be?What other place? . . ."
Then she understood. There was no other place. . . . Her knees trembled, and the stewardess supported her to the sofa. She sat down with chattering teeth, smitten by a great and bitter cold. Diana—the sea . . . warm, merry, gay Diana in the cold sea!
"I don't believe it. It can't be true!"
"Mrs. Stanislaw had reason to think that she intended to commit suicide tonight . . . and when she did not come to bed by two o'clock, she thought it her duty to inform the Captain, who is, of course, bound to search the ship."
"It can't be true. . . . I don't believe it," repeated April mechanically; but all the time her heart was in terror, remembering Diana's pale looks and the news she had heard tonight of Bellew's marriage. Had he told Diana, then . . . and was this the result? All at once it became impossible to sit still any longer. She must know the truth. She jumped up, searched feverishly for a cloak to put on, and pulling the stewardess with her, hurried on deck. But after a few steps they came to a standstill, for the crowd following the Captain had suddenly and curiously broken up and separated before the door of one of the deck cabins. Men and women who a moment before had been clustering and whispering agitatedly together were now hurrying past, each apparently intent on reaching their own cabins in the quickest time possible. For one horrible moment April thought it was some tragic discovery that was scattering them, but a moment later she realized that tragedy had gone from the air. The deck was flooded with electric light, and people's faces could plainly be seen. Many expressions were written there, but none of pity or sorrow. The men, for the most part, looked embarrassed; the women's expressions varied from frozen hauteur to scornful rage. They behaved like people who had been bitterly wronged by some lying tale. The one predominating emotion shared by all seemed to be an intense desire to escape from the scene. In less than two minutes not a soul was left on the deck save the dazed and astounded April. She remained, wondering what on earth it was all about; why without visible reason the search had come to such a sudden end, and what could be the meaning of the phrase Mrs. Stanislaw had flung at her as she passed.
"The April fool has surpassed herself!"
A sickening apprehension crept over the girl. That Diana was not overboard seemed certain; but what new folly had she committed? As if in answer to the gloomy query, the lights were once more switched out, and a strange vapoury greyness took possession of the ship. It was that still small hour when the yellowing East adds pallor to the night without dispersing its darkness.
Then two things happened. The door of that cabin before which the crowd had so mysteriously disintegrated opened very softly, and through the aperture stole forth a woman's figure. . . . For a swift moment the light from within rested on yellow hair and gleaming blue satin; then the door closed and the figure became part of the stealing dimness which was neither night nor morning. But April, who stood in her path, had seen and recognized.
"Diana!" she cried.
The other girl stood stock still. Her face showed ghostly in the greyness. She peered at April, clutching at her arm and whispering:
"For God's sake take me to your cabin!"
They crept down the deck like a pair of thieves, hardly breathing till they were behind the locked door. Without looking at her, April saw that there was trouble to meet. She remembered the faces of the other women, and the instinct to protect a fellow-creature against the mob rose in her.
"Tell me what it is. I'll help you fight it out."
But Diana had flung herself down with a defiant air on the sofa.
"Don't you know? Weren't you one of the hounds on my track?" she demanded, in a high-pitched whisper. April looked at her steadily.
"The whole thing is an absolute mystery to me. I know nothing except that first you were missing, and then apparently they found you——"
"Yes; in Geoffrey Bellew's cabin!"
The April fool had, indeed, surpassed herself! April blenched, but she took the blow standing. After all, she had been as great a fool as the girl sitting there, for she, too, had handed over her good name into the careless hands of another; had sold her reputation for a song—a song that had lasted seventeen days, but seemed now in the act of becoming a dirge.
"Do you mind telling me what happened, so that I know exactly where we stand and what there is to be done."
Diana laughed.
"There is nothing to be done."
April forgave her the laugh, because it was not composed of merriment nor any elements of joyousness.
"I went to Geoffrey's cabin because we had things to talk over, and it seemed the only place where we could get away from prying eyes. Somehow I stayed on and on, not realizing it was so late . . . and then, and then . . ." She began to stammer; defiance left her . . . "then, that awful knocking . . . those faces staring in! . . . all those brutes of women!" She covered her eyes with her hands and broke down utterly. "My God! I am done for!"
April thought so, too. It seemed to her they were both done for, but there was not much help in saying so. Diana's confession horrified her, and she saw that her own future at the Cape was knocked as flat as a house of cards that is demolished by the wayward hand of a child. Yet at that moment her principal feeling was one of compassion for the girl on the sofa, who alternately laughed and covered her eyes, and now with a pitiful attempt at bravado was attempting to light a cigarette, with hands that shook like aspen leaves.
"I suppose it was that cat Stanislaw who started the search for me?"
"It appears that she got into a panic when you did not return to your cabin, and went and told the Captain she feared you were overboard."
"The she-fiend! Much she cared if I was at the bottom of the sea! She had pried out where I was, and that was her subtle way of advertising it to the whole ship."
"I believe you are right," said April slowly, "though it is hard to understand how any one could do a thing so studiedly cruel."
"Cruel! She is a fiend, I tell you," cried Diana. "One of those women who have nothing left in their natures but hatred for those who are still young and pretty. I realized long ago that she would ruin my reputation if she could, but I did not give her credit for so much cleverness."
"Well, at any rate, she is not so clever as she thinks," said April drily. "For she hasn't ruined your reputation, after all; only mine."
Diana started; terror came into her eyes.
"My God, April! You don't mean to give me away?"
April knew very well what she meant to do. She had tasted of "the triumph and the roses and the wine," and the bill had been presented. Even though it left her bankrupt and disgraced, she was going to honour that bill; but she could not resist finding out what point of view was held by Diana as to similar obligations.
"You think, then, it ismyname that should be left with the smirch on it?" she asked dispassionately.
Diana grew crimson and then very pale.
"The scandal . . ." she stammered; "my people . . . you don't know what it would mean to have such a story attached to me."
"It would be better to have it attached to me, of course," April agreed, with an irony that was entirely wasted on Diana.
"You see that, don't you?" she said eagerly. "After all, nobody knows your name, and it will soon be forgotten. But mine——"
April could only smile. She saw that pity was entirely wasted here. Diana was so eminently able to look after herself when it came to the matter of self-preservation.
"And it will only be for another couple of days. After that we shall never see Mrs. Stanislaw or any of this rotten crew of women again."
"You are an optimist," was April's only comment. "After all, it is I who will have to bear the brunt of their insolence tomorrow, whatever name I go under," complained Diana.
"I'm afraid I cannot give you my face as well as my name to help you bear it," said April drily. Unexpectedly the retort pierced, for Diana suddenly burst into tears.
"I know you think me a beast. But I reallyamthinking more of my father than of myself. He is terribly proud. It would break his heart to hear this story of me being found in a man's cabin. Oh! How could I have done such an awful thing! You think I don't care, but I can tell you I could simply die of shame."
April was softened once more.
"Don't cry, Diana, and don't worry any further. Of course, your name shall never come out. That is quite settled. Come, now, and let me help you into bed. You had far better stay here than face that tigress Stanislaw in her den."
Nevertheless, when she had safely tucked the still weeping and collapsed Diana into her berth, she thought it advisable to make an excursion herself to the den of the tigress, ostensibly to fetch Diana's night-things; in reality to let her know where Diana was spending the night, and that the girl had one woman friend at least to stand by her. Even as she expected, Mrs. Stanislaw was awake and lying in wait, ready to spring. It must have been a disagreeable surprise to see April instead of the victim. The former's manner was all suavity.
"I am sorry to disturb you, but I have come for Miss Poole's things. She is not at all well, and I have persuaded her to spend the night with me." Tranquilly she began to collect night-wear, slippers, hair and tooth brushes. The tigress, being thoroughly taken back, could do nothing for the moment but breathe heavily and glare. April, with the wisdom of the serpent, made haste to escape before the feline creature regained the use of claw and fang.
But there were worse things to face in the morning. Even though Diana postponed the evil hour by pretending she was ill and having her breakfast in bed, she could not stay in the cabin for ever. Once the first days of seasickness are over there is a rule against people stopping in their berths all day except under doctor's orders, and the stewardesses are very rigid in enforcing this. Besides, the Captain and first officer inspect cabins between ten and eleven A.M., and Diana had no particular yearning to see them again just then.
April went down to breakfast as usual, outwardly composed, but with an eye secretly alert to spy out the land. It did not take her long to discover that all the women were in arms, with their stabbing knives ready for action. Mrs. Stanislaw had evidently not been idle, and the name of "Lady Diana" was already bracketed with that of the April Fool. To send her entirely to Coventry was rather too drastic treatment for an earl's daughter, but many a cold glance came her way.
"Birds of a feather nest together," was one of the tart observations that fell upon her ears as she passed a group of women who only yesterday were fawning upon her. Plainly it was considered a fresh outrage upon womanhood that she should have given the protection of her name and cabin to the heroine of last night's scandal.
She did not mind very much. With a clear conscience on this count at least, she was able to meet their displeasure imperturbably. But she could not help feeling sorry for the real Diana.
That unfortunate creature, on venturing forth to her own cabin, was met by the sight of Mrs. Stanislaw dragging all her possessions into the corridor. It appeared that even for the few remaining days at sea the tigress could not lie down with the black sheep! A sweet and sympathetic soul, who also lived down the same alley and had the same horror of contaminating influence, had therefore offered to take her in. The picturesque incident was being witnessed and silently approved by women in the neighbouring cabins, who, curiously enough, all happened to be busy packing with their doors open, so as not to miss anything.
It must be remembered that most of these people had been persistently flouted, even insulted, by Diana during the voyage. Some of them, matrons with daughters of their own, were really shocked by the "bad example" her behaviour had established. So it was perhaps not to be wondered at that a sort of combined sniff of holiness and self-righteousness went up to Heaven when the culprit came barging down the passage, nose in air, and a defiant flush upon her cheek. Stumbling over the trunks and piles of clothes which littered the place, she managed to gain her room, and close the door behind her with a resounding bang to show how little she cared about any of them. But it was immediately reopened by Mrs. Stanislaw, come to fetch more of her things, and not averse to talking as long as possible over the business. By continually going backwards and forwards for small armfuls of articles, and always leaving the door open, she managed to deprive Diana of all privacy. The latter bore with it for as long as her patience lasted, which was about five minutes. Then she flung out of the room, hoping to find refuge elsewhere. But wherever she went it was the same. In the writing-room everyone bent suddenly over their blotting-pads, and the balmy morning air took on an arctic chill. Music and conversation faded away when she sauntered into the music saloon. On deck even the sailors looked at her curiously. The story of her indiscretion had penetrated to every corner of the vessel. The miserable girl fetched a book from the library and tried to hide herself behind it, seated in her deck-chair. She soon had that side of the ship to herself.
Later, it was discovered that a lady with whom she was engaged to play off a final in deck quoits had "scratched." The same thing happened with regard to the bridge-drive. The girl who was cast as her opponent in the opening round publicly withdrew her name from the competition. There it was, up on the games notice-board—a girl's name with a black pencil mark drawn through it. All who ran might read, and a good many did run to read. Clearly the April Fool had become the object of the most unanimous taboo ever set in motion on a ship. Her name was mud. Even the men did not rally to her aid, though she had been popular enough with them before. There are few men who will not crumple up before a phalanx of women with daggers in their hands and feathers in their hair; even as the big-game hunter thinks it no shame to flee before a horde of singing ants! The only two who behaved with natural decency were Bellew and Sarle. The latter appeared utterly unconscious of anything unusual when he came and sat down by the two girls. There might have been a little more deference in his manner to Diana; that was all. As for Bellew, he had not been trained in the diplomatic service for nothing. He possessed to a marked degree the consummate sang-froid that is a natural attribute of aides-de-camp. Nothing could have been more cool than his manner when he joined the group and suggested a game of quoits. The whole world of the ship had its ears cocked to listen to these two, and was watching them acutely—with eyes that gazed at the horizon. If only Diana could have comported herself in a rational manner the situation might at least have been decently salvaged, if not carried with triumph. But she had lost her nerve. Intrepid throughout the voyage in committing every possible folly, now, when a little real courage was needed, she crumpled. The fierce white light of public disapproval withered her. It was pitiful to see the way she went to pieces—to hear her hysterical laughter and foolish remarks.
"For goodness' sake have the courage of your sins! Show some blood!" was the rebuke April longed to administer together with a sound shaking. But anger was futile, and rebuke out of the question. The only wise thing was to retreat in as good order as possible to the cabin of which Diana now enjoyed sole possession, and there reconsider the position.
"I can't bear it," she whimpered desperately. "I can't stand another two days of it. I tell you I shall go mad."
"Nonsense!" April responded, with a cheerfulness that found no echo in her heart. "You must take a pull on yourself, Diana. As you said last night, you owe these women nothing, and will probably never see them again."
But Diana's lay had changed tune.
"Oh! Won't I? . . . I feel they will haunt me all my days. What is that couplet?—
"He who hath a thousand friends hath not a friend to spare;But he who hath one enemy shall meet him everywhere."
A man said to me yesterday that what is done on the voyage to the Cape is known at Cairo within a week if it is sufficiently scandalous." She wept.
"A blue look-out for me!" thought her listener, dismally imagining the name of April Poole flashing from one end of the great continent to another. Not only at the Cape would she be debarred from earning her living! This impression was confirmed by some of the remarks women made to her later in the day. They were all quite willing to be friendly as long as she was not in the company of the black sheep.
"She might just as well take ship back to England," one said. "No one will employ her as a governess after this. The story will be all over Cape Town within an hour of our arrival."
"You can't live these things down in Africa," said another. "Of course, she might get a job up-country, where people are not particular and only want a kind of servant to look after their children."
It was no use April protesting against the cruelty of condemning a girl for ever because of one indiscretion. Her listeners only looked at her suspiciously. One old Englishwoman, who had lived many years in South Africa, put the case more cynically than kindly:
"Girls who earn their living are not allowed the luxury of indiscretion. If it had beenyou, now——"
"Do you mean that I should have been forgiven by reason of my position?"
"My dear," was the dry reply, "it is the same old snobbish world wherever you go. What constitutes a crime in one strata of society is only eccentricity in another."
April communicated the gist of this worldly wisdom to Diana, half hoping that it might give the latter courage to disclose herself and perhaps clear them both of any worse indictment than upon the count of foolishness. But it was a futile hope, and nothing came of it except more tears and another wild appeal not to be "given away." All sense of justice had left Diana, or been swamped by the newly-born fear for her family's honour.
Thus the miserable day wore to its close. A steward, no doubt heavily subsidized, spent most of the afternoon carrying notes backwards and forwards between Diana and Bellew. April stayed in her cabin as much as possible, and for the rest was careful to be always near other people, so that Sarle would find no opportunity of giving expression to the things to be seen in his eyes. It was a precarious joy to read those sweet things, but she dared not let him utter them. For when the debacle came at Cape Town, he must have nothing to regret. The moment they were quit of the ship and its scandal she would be relieved of her promise to Diana and able to tell him the truth. If he had spoken no word of love to her before then he would be free as air to go his way without speaking one, while she just slipped away and disappeared, to be seen of him no more. But if he chose not to go his ways——? If when he heard all he still wished to stay? Ah! what a sweet, perilous thought was that! She dared not dwell on it, and yet if she banished it utterly from her mind all the thrill went out of life, and every throb of the engine bringing them nearer land seemed a beat of her heart soon to be silenced for ever.
Evening came at last—an evening of dinner parties and best frocks, with an early commencement of the bridge-drive afterwards. Sarle, several days before, had arranged to have a special small table for four with a special dinner, asking April to be his hostess and choose the other two guests. She, with an instinct that they would be left out in the cold by everyone else, had chosen Diana and Bellew. Now, at the last moment, Diana shirked the ordeal, and from behind her locked door announced in muffled tones that she had a headache and was going to bed. So April sent a message to Sarle, giving him the chance of filling the gap if he so wished. When she went down she found him waiting for her with Bellew and Dick Nichols, the old poker-playing, battle-scarred warrior of the smoke-room, whose acquaintance she was delighted to make. He was a little bit shy at first at sitting down in his worn though spotless white-duck slacks opposite the beautiful girl in black and silver, with straps of amethysts across her satiny shoulders. But she had that gift which is born rather than acquired of setting people at their ease, and she wanted to get the liking of this man who was Sarle's friend. So she beguiled him by the blue of her eyes and the eager interest of her smile, and he opened up like a book of strange stories and pictures under the hand of a child. Listening to the talk, she was transported to that strange region of bush and spaces that is far from being enchanted land and yet casts an everlasting spell. She heard lions roar and the shuffling steps of oxen plodding through dust; felt the brazen glare of the sun against her eyes; saw the rain swishing down on grass that grew taller than a man's head.
She remembered a verse of Percival Gibbon's about the veld:
There's a balm for crippled spiritsIn the open viewRunning from your very footstepsOut into the blue,Like a wagon track to heavenStraight 'twixt God and you.
Both Sarle and Nichols knew that track, she was sure. They were oddly alike, these two veld men, with their gentle ways, their brown muscular hands, and their eyes full of distance. A very different type to the sleek and handsome Bellew, who sat so composed under the many blighting glances cast his way.
"They know about the guile of creatures, but he has made an art of beguiling human beings," thought April, and all the vexation of the day came surging over her, almost spoiling her dinner and the pleasure of the evening. Almost—not quite! When you are "young and very sweet, with the jasmine in your hair," and have only to raise your eyes to see desire of you sitting unashamed in the eyes of the man you love, nothing can quite spoil your gladness of living. All the same, she stuck to the card-room the whole evening, and her resolution to give Sarle no chance of saying anything he might regret. He must have realized it after a time, when she had once or twice eluded his little plots to get her on deck, but he gave no sign. He was a hunter, and could bide his time with patience and serenity.
It was not in her plan that when they parted it should be just where the shadows of a funnel fell, nor that he should leave a swift kiss, in the palm of the hand she tendered him in bidding good-night; yet both of these things came to pass.
* * * * * *
The stewardess who brought her an early cup of tea handed her a letter with the remark:
"It was under your door, m'lady. And please would you like your big trunks from the hold brought here, or will you pack in the baggage-room?"
"Oh, here, I think, stewardess. It will be much more convenient."
"Of course it will," agreed the good woman. "But, there! how the baggage men do grumble at having to lug up big trunks like yours and Mr. Bellew's!"
"I am very sorry," said April "but I'm afraid I can't help it." She had reflected swiftly that as she and Diana had so many possessions to exchange before packing, it could only be done in the privacy of he cabin. She was very tired after a "white night" all too crowded with the black butterflies of unhappy thought, and when she looked at the superscription on the envelope and saw that it was in Diana's writing she sighed. All the worries of the coming day rose up before her like a menacing wall with broken glass on the top.
"Blow Diana! I wish she were at the bottom of the sea," she said to herself, with the irritability born of a bad night.
Leaning on her elbow, she sipped at the fragrant tea and reflected sorrowfully on what a happy creature she would have been that morning if she had never met Diana Vernilands and entered into the mad plan of exchanging identities! What a clear and straight road would have lain before her! . . . with the man whose kiss still burnt the palm of her hand waiting for her at the end of it! But instead—what? She sighed again and tears came into her eyes as she lay back on the pillows and tore open the envelope. Then suddenly her body lying there so soft and delicate in the luxurious berth stiffened with horror. The tears froze in her eyes. The letter at which she was staring was composed of two loose and separate pages, on the first of which was scrawled a couple of brief sentences signed by a name:
"I cannot bear it any longer. I am going to end my troubles in the sea.
Mechanically her clutch relaxed on this terrible first page, and she turned to the second. It was headed: "absolutely private and confidential, to be destroyed immediately after reading," and the words heavily underscored; then came wild phrases meant for April's private eyes alone.