Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.The Heart Calls.“All charming people are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”On the second day after my arrival I descended upon my enemies in open field, or rather on open court. Judy, having reviewed my toilette before starting, was suddenly smitten with a violent headache, and said that Mrs Valetta would chaperon me to tennis.In ordinary circumstances I should have felt distinctly mean about appearing amongst people who had for some time been cut off from shops and civilisation by about eight thousand miles of rolling land and sea, in a pale yellow muslin gown concerning whichLucileconsidered she had received special inspiration from Heaven, and a black chip Lentheric hat which no woman could look upon unmoved. However, I was not at that time considering the feelings of other women, but the ways of certain members of the familyfelis. It had come to my ears, through the kindly offices of my sister-in-law, that Mrs Skeffington-Smythe had informed the world at large that I was suffering from aboilon my nose and fifty-six mosquito bites variously distributed over the rest of my features. Miss Cleeve had contented herself with saying that she personally did not care for the new shade in hair—it had a pink tone in it that wasbizarre. What Mrs Valetta said had not yet transpired, but looking at her as she slouched beside me in her tired coat and skirt, I felt sure that it was something equally malicious.We arrived at the court in an hour of brazen heat. Four men were playing a sett, and several others were clustered round a tea-basket and Mrs Brand, who still wore her habit. On the other side of the court was a little group of women sitting in canvas chairs with white umbrellas over their heads and needlework in their hands. I was informed that these were the Fort George women—“frumps and dowds of the most hopeless order.” However, they appeared to be very happy and content in spite of this utter depravity on their part, and they had a number of nice, keen, clean-looking men with them. These did not stay for any time, having apparently business of their own to attend to.“Husbands!” said Mrs Valetta scornfully, “and mostly shopkeepers and farmers at that.”This naturally lessened my interest in them, for I did not suppose I should meet them if they belonged to the tradespeople class, and, in fact, I rather wondered what they were doing there at all. I had not at that time learned that in a new country like Mashonaland men can, and do, turn their hands to any trade or calling that is clean, without in the least prejudicing themselves or their future. Most of those nice, keen-looking men had left good professional livings to come adventuring to a new, sweet land full of radiant possibilities, but until some of the possibilities materialised the main thing was to get a living in the best way that offered. But as I say, I did not at the time realise these things.Mrs Valetta in her rôle of chaperon languorously introduced the Salisburian side of the court to me. Between that and the Fort George side was evidently a great gulf fixed. I did not, however, think any of the men on thechicside desperately engaging. There was an ancient doctor with baggy cheeks and the leer of a malicious wild goat in his left eye; a sepulchral-looking parson; a man with a beard, whose first cousin was a duke, but who wore dirty hands and an unspeakable shirt without a coat, and several boys of sorts (all scions, it transpired, of noble houses). But I never take the slightest notice of boys or beards.The men on the court were better; a big, grave man with a frolicking laugh—Colonel Blow, the Magistrate; the Mining Commissioner, a sleek, fair man; a rather handsome, chivalrous-looking young fellow called Maurice Stair; and a man with turquoises set in his ears, and blue eyes that compelled me to look his way the moment I reached the court, and then to drop my lids with the old, strange weighted sensation on them. I did not look his way again until, all introductions over I was seated, when I put on my most cynical expression and let him see that I was not observing him, but the game.He was not as tall as any of the others if you came to measure by inches, but his figure had a strong, careless air, and the distinction of his head appeared to give him an advantage of about thirty inches over every other man in sight. His hair was certainly getting thin, and I was delighted to observe it. It was really impossible to bother for a moment about a man who had such hair. The black hank of it hanging down was not beautiful. He looked about forty, too. Still, he couldn’t have been that: no man who was old could have gone after the balls as he did. When I watched him I remembered the Bible words, “Like a swift ship upon the waters.” Of course, I knew all about sculpture, having lived with it and been brought up to it, so to speak, and I could not help knowing that only a beautifully built man could move like that. I could not help knowing it, but it did not interest me; in fact, it bored me, and I looked away from his careless glance when it came my way as carelessly as ever he looked in his life.Presently the sett finished and the players came briskly towards the Salisburian side. But they were skilfully intercepted by Miss Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who chose this moment to arrive most gloriously arrayed.“Yes, but why have you got on your best stars and stripes this afternoon?” the baggy doctor loudly demanded of them. He was evidently a person who said what he liked to every one. They turned away from him, disdaining to answer; butIknew why they were so glorious.Miss Cleeve made haste to walk off with Colonel Blow to the end of the court, where there was a rustic seat evidently belonging to John Dewar and his sons, for their names were printed everywhere in black letters over the packing-case wood of which it was composed.Mrs Skeffington-Smythe who had halted the blue-eyed man was reproaching him plaintively because he had not been to call on her since his return.“But I haven’t had a minute since I got back,” he protested.“You’ve had time to call on Mrs Valetta. Why couldn’t you have found a moment to come and see Anna and me?”Mrs Valetta turned and bit at her:“Kim and I have known each other for many years,—“Old friends are best—Old loves, old books, old songs.”She broke off the quotation at that, smiling a little acrid smile. These things did not interest me in the least. I merely felt that I detested Mrs Valetta and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, and most of all the detestable man they were squabbling so crudely about. Mrs Valetta had returned to her business of introducing to me a largequeueof freshly arrived men. She presented each with a brief biographical note, regardless of the protests of the victim.“This is our disreputable postmaster, Mr Mark Bleksley. Plays the banjo divinely, but steals our letters.”“Oh! I say—”“Mr Maurice Stair—quite eligible—five hundred a year—Assistant Native Commissioner, and not bad-looking.”“Handsome, Mrs Valetta—”“These are Hunloke and Dennison. They keep a shop and rob us shamefully. Mr Hunloke is an American lawyer by profession, but he finds that overcharging us for bully beef pays better than law, and gives him more time for picnics.”“I could take action on those statements. They are scandalous and libellous.”“As for Tommy Dennison—”“Please don’t rob me of my good name, Mrs Valetta. It’s all I have left. I’m as eligible as Stair, anyway.”“No, Tommy. You are a younger son—and you have a past. Every one says you have.”“Yes, but it’s past.”“This is our only real Earl—Lord Gerald Deshon—Irish, penniless, and raving mad. You are a great friend of Miss Saurin’s brother, aren’t you, Gerry?”“Yes, but I object to that biography. If you will listen to me, Miss Saurin—”I did listen, but they all talked together, surrounding me and making a great deal of noise and saying the silliest, wildest things about themselves and each other; and a few yards away was that hateful voice, low and level, with the disturbing crake in it that suggested power and the habit of issuing orders. Whatsoever his orders were to Mrs Skeffington-Smythe she was evidently disinclined to carry them out.“Nonsense!” she was protesting. “Let us go and talk to Anna. Don’t you think it is time you made up your quarrel with her? What did you fall out about, by the way?”“You are mistaken. I’m sure Miss Cleeve has no quarrel with me.”Mrs Skeffington-Smythe laughed gaily.“You’re a fraud, Kim. Every woman has a quarrel with you.”I hadn’t the faintest desire to hear these enigmatical sayings, but they all talked at the top of their voices, brandishing each others’ affairs. It appeared to be true that no one’s secrets were their own in this hateful country.Mrs Valetta had broken up the crowd round me, ordering them to go and pick up sticks to boil the kettle for tea. They straggled away, complaining and abusing each other, to a patch of bush about five hundred yards from the court. The Earl was sent to Mrs Brand’s hut to fetch the milk which had been forgotten. I now saw myself menaced by the approach of the beard, and the thought of flight occurred to me, but at that moment the argument between the man and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe ceased.“Oh, very well, since you are so very insistent,” she said crossly, and turning to me added sweetly, “Dear Miss Saurin, how is your poor nose? This is Major Kinsella. He is dying to inquire after it.”If this was meant to cover us both with confusion it did not have the desired effect. At her words the smile suddenly left his face, and he bowed courteously; the steel-blue eyes looked into mine with a grave serenity. I could not but know that he was incapable of such gratuitous rudeness. Wherefore, instead of snubbing him, as I had intended to do, I bowed back to him and bestowed upon him the bright, cold smile of a frosty morning: I had the satisfaction of knowing that he recognised the quality of it, if Mrs Skeffington-Smythe did not. She changed her tactics.“Major Kinsella, if you do not find me a seat I shall faint, I am so hot and tired. Do let us go over and sit in the shade with Annabel. It is much cooler there.”Major Kinsella was something of a tactician himself it appeared.“I hope you can have Miss Saurin’s seat in a moment. I am just going to ask her to play with me against Blow and Miss Cleeve.”“I play terribly,” I said coldly. But he blithely announced that they all did, and no one cared a button; the main thing was to annoy your opponents as much as possible. As that rather appealed to my frame of mind at the moment, I eventually allowed myself to be beguiled to the court, where another sett had just broken up, Major Kinsella shouting unceremoniously to the others as we walked:“Blow, come on. You and Miss Cleeve against Miss Saurin and me.”The game was not uninteresting. My partner, whom Colonel Blow addressed as Tony, did all the work and only left me the slow balls, which I gracefully missed. The rest of the time we talked: at least he did. Secretly I preserved a bleak manner. He could not fail to plainly understand. But as I did not wish the whole world to know that I even cared to be cold to him, I filled in any prominent gaps in the conversation with a soft little laugh that he knew perfectly well was not meant for him, but that seemed to vex Miss Cleeve very much. For some reason not very apparent she lost her temper early in the sett, and said quite crossly that if we did not pay more attention to the game it was not worth while going on. That wastrès drôle, considering that we were winning all the time! I thought so, and Major Kinsella said it, laughing gaily. Her only answer was to slam the balls intomeas hard as she could, and as I was out of practice and she a remarkably good player we should have come off badly in the end if it had not been for my partner’s speed and skill. I did not like him in the least, but I had to admit he could play tennis like a fiend.Later, we approached the tea-table, which was a large packing-case presided over by Mrs Brand, and covered with a beautifully embroidered tea-cloth belonging to the postmaster, who kept bragging about it, and saying that it was the nicest cloth in South Africa, and how he had haggled for it at Madeira until the coolie was black in the face, and got it for half price.Several of the men who had returned from the wood hunt with a few sticks in each hand lay upon the ground in an exhausted condition. The rest of us sat in a wide circle round the packing-case, and the men who had no seats took up a Yogi attitude upon the ground. The tea had a smoky flavour, but somehow it was the nicest tea I had ever tasted, and the smell of the dying fire of wood branches was fragrant in the air, seeming to remind me of some old sweet dream, until, glancing up, I saw Major Kinsella breathing it in too, like some lovely perfume, while he looked at me with a curious smile in his eyes. I knew then that we were both remembering the same thing; not a dream at all, but a real memory strangely poignant.The sun had fallen to the horizon line and lay there like a great golden ball, sending long rays of fire into our very faces.In those last searching beams, playing upon us so mercilessly it was revealed to me for the first time that though all were cheerful and merry every face about me wore some trace of stress or storm. For the first time I observed that men whose laughter was blithe enough had haggard eyes; that jests came gaily from lips that fell into desperate lines a moment later. On faces that were like tanned masks there were marks that dissipation might have made, or careless sins, or I know not what mischance of Fate. The women under their heavy veils and pretty hats had, to my suddenly sharpened vision, a pathetic disillusioned look, and some were careworn, and in the eyes of some there was the fateful expression of the losing gambler. Anthony Kinsella’s dark countenance, too, was scored with deep lines between the eyes and about the mouth—hieroglyphics I had no gift to read, and his eyes were as inscrutable as the points of blue in his ears.For the first time I forgot all the things that annoyed me in these people, and began to like them with pity in my heart.Were these the claw-marks that the witch Africa put upon those who dwelt in her bosom? Were these the scars of her fierce embrace? Surely not. Surely a witch’s cypher would be finer, more subtle, something secret yet plain as the sunlight to those who could read. What was it? Where was it? I sought it in the faces round me, and after a time I believed I found it, in thenil desperandumair that each flaunted like a flag. It was Hope. God knows what they hoped for—each for something different perhaps—but that was what woke the jest upon their haggard lips and brightened their disillusioned eyes; that was the secret gift the witch put into their hearts, the masonic sign she wrote across their brows. Hope!“Hope—the heroic form of despair!”My heart strangely thrilled with the thought that if I had read aright the witch’s symbol then I, too, was of the initiated. I was one of them—if only for a time!While I thought and felt these things, I was vaguely aware that they watched me in a curious, searching way, as if I had for each of them some hidden message I had not yet delivered. Perhaps it was that coming from “home” and being quite new to the country I had a different look to the rest of them, I cannot tell; but there it was—they jested and laughed and gossiped with each other, but always their eyes came back to me with that wistful, searching glance. And my clothes seemed to have an extraordinary charm for them. One would have supposed I had dropped from some wonderful land from which they were life exiles, and that the glamour of that fair, lost country hung about me still. I saw men’s eyes examining my shoes and the tucks in my gown; even the one great La France rose in my hat had some magic; and the women looked so wistful that I felt tears rising, and was miserably ashamed of myself for having put on my prettiest gown to annoy them. It seemed to me then that even if theyhadbeen cats, I had been the worst cat of all. Lord Gerald Deshon said to me boyishly:“May I sit next to you, Miss Saurin? you smell so nice.” And when the old doctor picked up my glove which had fallen, he gave it a little stroke with his hand before handing it back, as though it were something alive.The sun sank out of sight at last, disappearing in a billowy sea of wild-rose clouds. Golden day departed, and silver eventide was born.Gold for silver! I cannot tell why those three little words stole through my mind and settled in my heart, as we walked home under a great canopy of purple haze full of coolness and the scent of evening fires: but it seemed to me suddenly that they were the most beautiful words ever written and the meaning of them more beautiful still.The entire party conducted Mrs Valetta and me to our doors. The women seemed loth to lose sight of us, and the men talked feverishly of commandeering all the horses in the town for a moonlight picnic. Unexpectedly to me, somehow, Major Kinsella killed this delightful plan by saying quietly: “No, the horses are not available.” The crake in his voice had become suddenly most pronounced; perhaps that was why the men, who had been so keen for the picnic, accepted this dictum without a word, but I thought the fact rather curious. Mrs Brand and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe were the only people who did not abandon the idea immediately.The latter petulantly demanded reasons and told him that he did not own all the horses in the town, any more than he owned all the hearts. Mrs Brand said sturdily:“I don’t know what you are up to, my dear Kim, but don’t you lay your hands on either ofmyhorses.”He smiled but made no promises, and instead of giving reasons to Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to discuss the possession of hearts with her. I said good-bye hastily and went indoors.Judy rid of her headache had cheered up and put on a pretty gown, but her hair was done anyhow and her manner unchangingly languid.After dinner we spent the evening playing cards at Mrs Brand’s. She had a really comfortable two-roomed brick house lent her by the postmaster, on the condition that he could drop in whenever he liked. However, some gay spirits had rigged up in the hall a toy Maxim belonging to a mining engineer, and this was trained on to the front door and loaded with “mealies” for the benefit of the postmaster, in case he should “drop in” at the wrong time. Really these were the silliest people!Somehow the evening did not prove so interesting as the afternoon. Almost all the same people were there but to me there seemed a lack of fire about the proceedings, even when Mrs Brand had a supper of curried eggs sent in from Swears’s to rouse us, and a delightful dessert consisting of the contents of grenadillas mixed with port wine, was served in champagne glasses.The man called Stair attached himself to me in a quiet, unassuming way that I could not object to. He talked little but seemed to be content to sit near me and look at me with his rather romantic dark eyes. Neither Major Kinsella nor Colonel Blow appeared.Incidentally, and without asking questions, I learned a great many things about the former. Off and on, he was the main topic of conversation during the evening. His name cropped up faithfully every five minutes. When Lord Gerry said that he had certain information that “Kim” was going to be in command of the Mounted Police that would be formed as soon as the trouble with Lobengula was over, Mrs Skeffington-Smythe said acidly:“He behaves as if he were in command of the country now.”“It wouldn’t be such a dusty thing for the country if he were,” a boy cockily announced; but this was rank treason to the gods in charge, and he was hooted down and told to go to bed.“I wish I had his future,” said some one else.“Even if you had to take his past with it?” a woman asked (Mrs Valetta).“Certainly: that wouldn’t hurt me.”“It might hurt a few women though,” sneered Mrs Skeffington-Smythe.“How unfair women are!” said Lord Gerry. “If a man said a thing like that he would have to back it up or take the consequences.”“Oh! I am quite ready to do both,” she answered perkily, and glanced at her great friend Miss Cleeve, who merely stared at her cards.“You can’t blame a man because women are fools,” said the Mining Commissioner, a slight man full of heavy philosophy. Judy, with a prim air, abruptly changed the subject, but in five minutes they were back to it again, like cats to cream.It transpired that “Kim” was short for Kimberley, where he had dealt with diamond mines, and made and lost a fortune.“But wasn’t that a very long time ago?” I was surprised into asking. For I had passed through Kimberley and found that its day of glory had departed.“Long? why, yes, it certainly wa-s,” drawled Mr Hunloke, the lawyer, wagging his head. “But Kim is no newly-hatched birdling.”“Haven’t you observed that there’s no wool on his head where the wool ought to grow?” said one of the cheeky boys of whom I thought there were far too many about.“No, I have not,” I answered disdainfully.“Well, it’s getting mighty sparse,” he proclaimed, with increased cheekiness.“Oh! that’s holy living,” said the doctor, and leered his goat-like leer.I thought what horrid people they all were. It appeared that Anthony Kinsella was not an army man as English people understand the term. His rank had been gained in various bodies of African Mounted Police which he had belonged to in the intervals of making and losing money in the gold and diamond capitals. He had a great head for finance they said, but in the midst of successful undertakings and deals he would break away and disappear, and the next heard of him would be that he was living with his boys in a lonely part of the veldt, or had rejoined for a time some old corps of his. He had come adventuring to South Africa when he was quite a boy, knew every inch of the country, and was looked upon as almost a colonial.“Almost, but not quite,” said Gerald Deshon, “he is one of us. Also, he is a born leader, and no colonial was ever that, though I daresay some will come along by-and-bye as the years roll on.”“But why does he wear turquoise ear-rings?” I asked involuntarily, thinking no one but Lord Gerry was listening.I was mistaken.“Some woman stuck them in his ears, I suppose,” said Mrs Valetta fiercely; and she and Miss Cleeve glared at me across their cards. I stared at them in surprise for a moment, then laughed, though I was not greatly amused.“I never thought of that.”“You would have if you had known Kim long,” said Mrs Brand dryly.“I’ve heard that there have been more men hurt than you can count on your fingers and toes through a too pressing curiosity about those ear-rings,” some one remarked.“Yes, a fellow on the Rand once nearly died of that complaint,” added Tommy Dennison. “It is a subject that Kim will stand no ragging about.”“She must have been a very pretty woman,” grinned the doctor.I suddenly felt very tired and low-spirited and longed to go away from them. I was sick of their wretched card-party. I wondered what all the “frumps and dowds” were doing and their nice business-like men, and was inspired to make a remark.“Do the Fort George men spend their evenings talking scandal also?”There was absolute silence and then all the men began to grin.“You can searchme!” averred Mr Hunloke, but his partner answered blithely:“Oh!they’regetting ready to tackle Loben.”“There’s a lot of dirty work attached to an expedition and some one’s got to do it,” Gerry Deshon said. “Blow and Kinsella are up to their eyes, and a lot of the other fellows here are experienced men in wars with niggers. None of us would be of much use at present.”“It takes all sorts of men to make a war. Perhaps if we are no goodnowwe may be when the fighting comes along.”I was rather attracted by this quiet, modest little statement made by Maurice Stair.Every one walked home with every one else as usual, and discussed what they should do the next day to kill time. In the absence of any authority some bold spirits reverted to the moonlight-picnic plan for the next evening, but a man said decidedly:“No good! Kim has got down some inside information from headquarters, and won’t let the horses a mile away from the town.”An important resolution that we should all meet at the tennis-court the following afternoon was passed, and my sister-in-law was invited to invite every one to supper and cards in the evening.“Oh, very well,” said she, swathed in languor as usual. “But I’ve no genius for entertainment. You’ll have to fish for your supper.”“All right, we will,” they blithely cried, and announced to me, “You can bank on us, Miss Saurin. We’ll be there.”I did not doubt the fact, but it failed to interest me. I, too, was wrapped in weariness. Life in Africa seemed to me to be inconceivably petty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs Valetta turned and bit at her:

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh! I say—”

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

“Handsome, Mrs Valetta—”

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

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

“As for Tommy Dennison—”

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

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

“Yes, but it’s past.”

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe laughed gaily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Major Kinsella was something of a tactician himself it appeared.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hope—the heroic form of despair!”

“Hope—the heroic form of despair!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Certainly: that wouldn’t hurt me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was mistaken.

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

“I never thought of that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh!they’regetting ready to tackle Loben.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Six.Love Calls.“Ah, Love! there is no better thing than this,To have known love, how bitter a thing it is.”On the Fort George side of the court next day I noticed a woman I had not seen before. She was handsome and rather extraordinary looking, and had a number of men talking to her; but the did not join the Fort George ladies, and for their part they took no notice of her at all. I wondered why, for they had struck me as being pleasant, friendly souls, kindly disposed to all the world.She had rather a sallow skin, that made her brilliant hair and bright red mouth all the more amazing; and there was an odd, defiant air about her, yet something curiously wistful in the glances she sent across the court at me from her murky brown eyes. She laughed a great deal with the men talking to her, but I thought her laugh a little too merry. In a tailor-made fashion she was exceedingly well dressed—quite the best turned out woman I had seen so far, though Anna Cleeve certainly knew how to put on her clothes if she only had any to put on. I wondered why this pretty woman was unhappy, for even in my limited experience I had discovered that it is generally the woman who has missed happiness, who tries to fill in the little round hole in her heart with clothes—the smartest and prettiest she can find. Happy women usually have too much in their lives to bother about making a fine art of dressing. Of course, with girls it is different; they naturally love pretty clothes and they have a right to them.I wished she would come round to our side of the court and let me see her properly, but she did not. Later I observed that the rest of the women only looked at her when she was not looking; at other times they looked through her and past her and over her. At last I became aware that she was taboo. Even the men who stood about her were not the nicest men, and I observed that no one went from our side to speak to her, except Major Kinsella, who, as soon as he arrived, shook hands and stood talking for some little time, at which her pleasure was obvious; afterwards the looks she cast at the other women were more defiant than ever. Consumed with curiosity I addressed a query to Judy sitting next to me.“That person?” said she, looking another way. “She calls herself Rookwood, I believe.”“What has she done?” I asked. It was so very evident that the poor wretch had done something.“Oh, don’t askme,” said Judy in a far-away voice. But Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who sat on my other side, was not so reserved.“Do you see that big fair man with her? That is Captain Rookwood. Handsome, isn’t he?She lives with him.”“Do you mean she is married to him?”“Married to him—not at all. She is married to a man called Geach, in Cape Town, but she ran away from him with George Rookwood, and they have been living together for six months now. Her husband by way of revenge refuses to divorce her. Isn’t it insolent of her to come here amongstus?”“Of course she always has a dozen men round her,” Judy supplemented in a low voice; “they do so love adéclasséewoman, don’t they?”Afterwards I learnt that the man Geach was an enormous brute of a half-Dutch colonial, who drank, and had been in the habit of beating his wife constantly, and had once dragged her all through the streets of Claremont by her amazing hair. Another time he had dipped her in the sea before a crowd of people, and had afterwards been horsewhipped by the crowd.Of course, both as a Catholic and as afemme du mondeI wasagacéeat these things. I knew that none of Mrs Geach’s sufferings singly or together constituted any excuse for her running away with another man who happened to love her and would be good to her. It was to be supposed that she knew this, too, and that if she did such a terrible thing she would not only be committing a mortal sin, but must thereafter be struck off the rolls and disqualified for any kind of social life. However, she had chosen to do it; so now she had a merry laugh and a defiant mouth, and gave more attention to her clothes than most women.In spite of her sins I could not help being thankful that there is no law, religious or worldly, that forbids one to feel sorry for wistful-eyed sinners. Also, I began to dislike Mrs Skeffington-Smythe very much indeed. It struck me that she arrogated altogether too much holiness to herself, and that a little charity and loving-kindness would not be out of place in her moral make-up. I was mentally arranging something polite with a bite in it to say to her, when Major Kinsella came and sat down beside me in the chair Judy had just left, and after that I was too busy arranging polite bites forhisbenefit to remember Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and her malice.It had been raining all the morning, drenching, thudding rain that flooded the land with small lakes and rushing rivulets; the first taste of the “wet season,” every one said, though it was not really due until November. I had looked forward disconsolately to a dreary afternoon indoors. But by two o’clock every trace of wetness had disappeared with the extraordinary haste that distinguishes the drying up of the rain in the High Veldt. Only the freshly washed land gave up a ravishing odour tinder the hot sunshine, and the sky above was a turquoise plain, across which some giant hand had moved, sweeping all the billowy clouds into one great mass in the west. There they lay piled one above the other in snowy splendour. A blaze of hot light poured down on to the court, making the women droop and blench in their chairs. But my veins sang with delight. Never had I known such delicious heat, and I loved it, and felt like a marigold flaring and revelling in the golden shine. It seemed to me that I had never really been alive before I felt the heat of the African sun. I said so to Anthony Kinsella, and his blue eyes flashed at me.“You will never be able to live away from it now.”I laughed, but I suddenly felt the clutching thrill again.“Oh, one could not live here always,” I said abruptly. “Away from music, and books, and great speakers, and sculpture, and pictures—”“The veldt is full of pictures—look at that one.” He glanced at the turquoise plain and the billowy clouds. “And can you tell me you have never heard its music—on the banks of a river under the stars?”I could tell him nothing. I could only look away from his eyes.“Great speakers!” he mused. “You must hear Cecil Rhodes some day telling the boys to extend the Empire.”I did not speak.“Books and sculpture—they are good, but ‘has life nothing better to give than these’?”“I don’t think so,” I said firmly, but found myself adding a moment later, “I am not sure.”He answered, “Africa will make you sure. She has a way of making it worth one’s while to stay with her. And if she loves you she will just put you in bonds and keep you, whether you will or no.”“She can never do that to me,” I said, almost vehemently. “I am tooexigeante, and I do not like bonds. Let us pray that she will not love me.” I essayed to laugh lightly, but my heart was beating in my throat, and an unaccountable agitation shook me. It seemed ridiculous to be so moved about nothing, sitting out there in the steaming sunshine with all life smiling. We were both staring before us away across the court and its players to the amethystine hills on the edge of the world. He did not look at me, nor I at him, but in a low voice that none but I could hear he said a strange thing:“For your sake I could go back to prayers—but do not ask me to pray that.”Mrs Valetta came in to look at the mirror as I was hunting for something for dinner.“You needn’t change,” she said. “Just turn in the collar of your dress and sling a fichu round your neck. I’ll lend you one if you haven’t got one.” She had something in her hand that looked like the tail of an old ball-gown.“Oh, no, thank you,” I said fervently. “I have too much respect for a good gown to treat it in that fashion.”I made haste to spread upon the bed a little black lace frock that I had brought for ordinary home use to wear in the evenings. Judy strolled in and gazed dejectedly at it.“Every one will think it fearfully sidey of you to wear that,” she said at last, quite animatedly for her.“Oh, but I am sidey,” I announced, laughing. For some reason I did not understand I felt as though I had a happy red robin in the place where my heart used to be. But Judy and Mrs Valetta met my gaiety with scowls. I tried to propitiate them, for I felt kindly disposed to all the world.“It is not really an evening gown, only a little demi-toilette—long sleeves and a V; and I have nothing else. Still, I won’t wear it if you have anyrealobjection, Judy.”But already her interest in the matter was dead. As for Mrs Valetta, she had left the room utterly sick of life. I hardly recognised her for the same woman half an hour later, when I went in to dinner and found her seated there,—in a chrysanthemum-chiffon gown covered with Indian embroideries. Her corsage was composed of about three sequins, a piece of chiffon the size of a handkerchief, and a large diamond brooch.Annabel Cleeve and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, who were dining with us, were alsoen grande tenue. My poor little black lace frock would have looked quite dowdy amongst them if it had not happened to be of such a distinguished cut. Even Judy had slung an evening gown of sorts upon her languid bones.Unfortunately, the meal was not in keeping with our brilliant toilettes. The soup had a terrible flavour of tin, and was followed by floppy-looking shoulder of mutton which had the appearance of having been but recently slain. I remembered that I had seen Mafoota, the cook, leading a forlorn, predestined-looking goat by its horn that morning, and I could not but connect the two facts. The eyes of the potatoes, huge and black, glared at us dully from their dish, and a boiled ladybird reclined upon the infinitesimal helping of cabbage that was apportioned to me. No fish, no entrées, no wines; mountains of pumpkin. Every one except Anna Cleeve and I took a whiskey and soda, and that may have been some help. For dessert some woolly pudding, made of pale blue rice, with American canned peaches. I had eaten some lovely peaches at the Cape, but it takes American enterprise to penetrate into the wilds of Africa. Judy spake the thing that was when she said she had no genius for entertaining. I made no bones about bantering her on the subject.“It is easy to see there is no man about the house, Judy. Such a dazzling banquet could only be served at a hen-party.”“Nonsense,” said she, smiling idly. “I have trained Dick to live the simple life too. He doesn’t care a scrap what he gets now. What is the use of worrying about the menu? There is nothing to be got here in any case except tinned things and goat.”“Yes, but they needn’t taste of the tin. And goat should be disguised. As it is I recognise this one. Hardly a decent interval has elapsed since I met it walking with Mafoota.”They all laughed. There was something to be said for life in Mashonaland. It certainly induced a sort of gay tolerance for general discomfort. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe began to brag about a lovely goat curry she had had for lunch the day before, that no one had been able to tell from curried prawns.“I daresay,” said Judy; “but you and Anna have Mrs Brand’s Adriana to cook for you. I have no one but the boys, and you know what they are. I’ve told them dozens of times about taking the eyes out of the potatoes, but there you are—just look at them.”“They’re looking at us,” I objected.“Why not have them roasted whole in their jackets?” suggested Mrs Valetta. “They’re much nicer that way, and it would obviate the peeling difficulty.”“I never thought of it,” said Judy, looking surprised. “As for supper to-night, I haven’t the faintest notion of what people are going to eat. Let us hope they won’t be hungry.”I reflected that if they had all dined as badly as we had they would be ravenous, and for the honour of the house I said so with such delicacy as I could command. But delicacy was wasted on my sister-in-law.“It is no use their bringing sybaritic appetites here,” she said. “Cheese sandwiches and a whiskey and soda is the best I can do, and it ought to be good enough for any one—unless you will undertake the menu and serve something better, Deirdre.”“Will you let me?”“Certainly, I give youcarte blanche. Do anything you like, dear, and begin on the coffee. Did any one ever taste such stuff as these boys make?”So I went out into the kitchen, which was really a back verandah closed in with native matting, and was full of smoke and jabbering boys. The utensils were all very inferior. The spout of the kettle was off, and the water had to be boiled in a large iron pot, while the boys crowded round me, staring solemnly and falling over each other and getting in the way. But the quality of the coffee was good, and when at last the water boiled I achieved. It took a long time, though, and while I was busy I could hear the knocks at the front door and the laughter of new arrivals. When I took in my coffee-pot the room was full of the smoke of cigarettes, and everybody wanted to taste my brew. Afterwards they raved about it, and complained bitterly that there was not enough to go round. So I went back to make more, but this time I brewed it in a big enamel jug. Just as I was dropping in a tiny pinch of salt to flavour it and make all the grounds settle at the bottom, a shadow fell across my hands, and looking up I found Anthony Kinsella leaning in the doorway and observing me with the deepest interest.“I think that is what you have done to me,” he observed solemnly.“What?” said I in astonishment.“Put a pinch of salt on me.”Our eyes met, and we both burst into laughter.“I don’t think you are very tame,” I said.“Tame! This is the firstsoiréeI’ve been to in this country. They’re quite out of my line.”“I know what brought you to-night,” I said.“So do I,” he answered swiftly, with that glance of his eyes that made my lids fall.My heart experienced an extraordinary contracted feeling, as though some one had taken hold of it and was holding it tightly. Then I remembered all the enigmatical sayings I had heard about this man, and his dangerous attraction for women, and in a moment I recovered myself and answered with a mocking smile:“You have heard rumours of the great spread I am going to put before my sister-in-law’s guests to-night. It has got about what an excellent cook I am.”He opened his lips, to make some further saying, but I gave him no time.“Come and taste my Turkish coffee,” I said, and walked out with my jug, colliding with Mrs Valetta, who was evidently coming to look for us.“You are wanted to play poker, Kim,” said she curtly. “Do play with me; you are always so lucky.”“Ah, but I am going to beunluckyat cards in future,” he oddly answered as they followed me in.I got more compliments for my coffee. Every one said it was delicious. Greedy people asked for second and even third cups. Colonel Blow was heard to state that he had never tasted anything like it since he was in Paris a hundred years ago.“That is just where I learned to make it,” I said gaily. “In my racketty student days in theQuartier.”Every one looked amazed and I suppose it was rather an amazing thing to say.“In your what days?” asked Miss Cleeve faintly.And Mrs Valetta said in a curious voice: “Can you possibly mean the Latin Quarter of Paris?”“I can, indeed,” quoth I affably. “I once had a studio there for six months, and all the art students used to come in the evening and make coffee and Welsh rarebit, and every delicious imaginable thing.”“My sister-in-law’s guardian is an American artist with eccentric ideas about educating girls to see every phase of life,” said Judy in the stuffiest, snuffiest kind of voice. “Of course, Deirdre had a chaperon.”“Yes, and she was far more racketty than I,” said I with malice prepense. Elizabet von Stohl would have fallen down dead if she could have heard herself so traduced! But I was feeling very much annoyed with Judy for speaking in that way about dear Betty and her lovely liberal ideas. The men for some reason or other thought my remark very amusing, but the women all looked frightfully disdainful, except Mrs Brand, who spoke one of her brief, eloquent sentences:“It must have been rippin’.”There were peals of laughter, and I looked at her in astonishment, and found that she had quite a friendly enthusiastic air.“And so is this coffee rippin’,” said Gerry Deshon. “You’ll have to give us all lessons, Miss Saurin, or we’ll never dare ask you to supper.”“Oh, that’s nothing to what I can do,” I bragged. “You should taste my cup—and I’m a frightful dab at rum-punch.” I had all the women very cross by now, so I thought they might as well stay so. The men, on the contrary, were as gay as larks at heaven’s gate singing. “And I’m going to give aQuartier Latinsupper to-night,” I told them; “Welsh rarebit,les apôtres sur les bicyclettes, devilled eggs—”“There are no materials in the house for all these things,” protested Judy crossly.“Then we must commandeer them,” said Major Kinsella. “We’ll make up a foraging party at once. Come on and open yourwinkel, Dennison. Hunloke, buck up.”Tommy Dennison was the cheeky Oxford undergraduate whose father owned about forty thousand acres somewhere in Scotland and one of the smartest yachts to be seen at Cowes; but Tommy was a younger son and a black sheep, so he kept a shop in Fort George with Hunloke, the long-nosed barrister. They were always proclaiming bitterly that no one ever paid their bills and that they should shortly go bust.A small but select party of buccaneers was formed, including Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, Mrs Brand, and myself. The others had their cards already dealt and their half-crowns staked on the table, so they had to continue the game whether they liked it or not. Anna Cleeve and Mrs Valetta did not appear pleased, and Judy gave me a chaperony sort of look of which I took not the slightest notice. She then remarked with great point and significance that the night air was very dangerous. But the others cried her down saying that it was balmy and healthy, and the only air, in fact, that was any good at all. Mrs Brand said she would chaperon me, but as soon as we got out of doors she went off with Gerry Deshon. Some of the others ran ahead with Mr Hunloke to get the keys of the shop, and I found myself walking alone with Anthony Kinsella.It was a lovely night, full of a sort of veiled radiance, shed from a deep purple sky embroidered with silver stars. Strange insects in the grass were calling to each other shrilly, and heavy on the air hung the divine odour of wild clematis of which almost every little house had a drapery over walls or verandah.Anthony Kinsella plucked a spray from a wall as we passed, and put it in my hand without speaking, but our hands touched and I saw his intent eyes for a moment. I fastened the flower into the front of my black gown, and the scent of it will stay with me all my life. I suddenly felt so happy I could have sung aloud. Africa seemed all at once to have turned into a land of fair dreams, in which I was a happy wanderer, travelling towards my heart’s desire. I did not analyse my feelings nor ask myself any questions. I only knew that my eyes were unsealed to the beauty and mystery of life.In a few moments we had reached the shop—a galvanised-iron building with “Hunloke and Dennison” painted in huge black letters across its roof. The others had already arrived with the keys, and we were admitted into a perfect paradise of tinned goods. Candles were hastily burst from their packets and stuck in lighted rows along the counter, and the general public was invited by the owners of the shop to “pay their money and take their choice.” This, however, was a mere form of speech. Apparently no one paid for anything in happy-go-lucky Mashonaland.Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was helped up on the counter and walked along it, inspecting the things on the top shelves and handing them down. The rest of us made dives at anything we liked the look of, and thewinkelof Messrs Hunloke and Dennison resounded with shouts of glee and triumph.“Olives!”“This lovely pink curly bacon—just the thing to make bicycles for my apostles to ride on.Banzai!”“Hooray! here are some anchovies!”“Say! Six cans of oysters!” cried Mr Hunloke himself. “I didn’t know we had these left, Tommy. I’ll shew you fellows how to make clam chowder. I’vegotto show you.”“Who says tinned pineapples?”“Fids I gloat!Sardines à l’tomate. All we want now is the toast—that’seasy!”“You’ve still a case of Pommery-and-Greno left, Tommy, my man. Trot it out!”“Yes, and what about that Bass’s ale you and Hunloke keep all to your own cheek?”“Oh, Miss Saurin, I’ve found some crystallised fruit! And hurrah! here’s a big bottle of eau-de-cologne!”Every one howled with delight at this artless testimony from Mrs Skeffington-Smythe that in her at least the legitimate business of foraging for commissariat had become merged in the wild spirit of the filibuster. Some one began to softly sing,—“Loot! Loot! Loot!”At last, after selecting about two waggon-loads of articles, including champagne and claret for “cup,” a large bottle of eau-de-cologne, a box of toilette soap, and several strings of blue beads, we stood and gazed with the eyes of conquerors upon the wondrous heaps. The question then arose as to who was to carry these things to the theatre of war. There was great argument about this. A peculiarity about African men is that they have a great objection to carrying anything. They would far rather argue about it for two hours and then spend another two looking for a boy. Eventually three wild men engaged to find boys for the task.“Yes! even if we have to pull them out of kingdom come,” they averred. The rest of us started for home. How it came about that Anthony Kinsella and I were once more alone together I cannot tell. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe disappeared into the moonlight with Mr Hunloke and some others. Mrs Brand was ahead again with Gerry Deshon, though I could not but observe that the direction of her march was not in the direction of home. Her voice came floating back to me:“Don’t go in without me, will you? Remember that you are chaperoning me.”“Will you mind if I call at the post-office?” asked my companion suddenly, out of the silence that encompassed us. “I expect an important wire from headquarters.”Of course I did not mind. I minded nothing but that this enchanted hour must soon be over. Slowly we sauntered onwards through the silver night, and came at last, however much we loitered, to the post-office. It was closed, but a light shone in a window, and Major Kinsella rapped and hailed the mad postmaster by name:“Bleksley, hullo!” Instantly the window was opened, and the divine performer upon banjos put out his blond rumpled head: “Wire come, Bleksley?”“Not yet, but the mails from Victoria are just in by runner. If you could wait a few minutes until I unseal them and sort out the private letters—”Major Kinsella hesitated, looking at me.“Of course—certainly wait,” I said hastily. “I don’t mind.”“Thank you,” he said. “If it were my own business it could rip—but it’s the country’s.”“I shan’t be more than five or six minutes,” said the postmaster. “Would you like to go up into the watch-tower to wait?”He handed out a key through the window. The watch-tower adjoined the post-office, and had been built for the double purpose of overlooking the prison-yard and for the wide outlook it afforded of the surrounding native kraals. The view from there was notoriously charming, and I had heard all about it from several people and been told that I should see it by moonlight. This seemed to be a good opportunity.“Will you come?” said Anthony Kinsella abruptly. “The view is supposed to be very fine.”Mr Bleksley had already closed the window and returned to his work.“On such a night as this it should be perfect,” I said. So we climbed the dark, steep stair together.The instant we put our feet on the first step he took my hand which hung at my side, interlacing his fingers through mine. Hands can tell each other so much. I suddenly knew things I had never dreamed of before with the feel of Anthony Kinsella’s warm, strong hand clasping mine, and from the close contact of his palm against mine some wonderful, strange message flew up my arm to my heart and brain, flooding me with a thrilling ecstasy I could hardly bear. When we reached the tower’s top I think we both knew all there was to say though no word had been spoken. We leaned against the low enclosing walls and looked down upon a land awash with silver moonlight and far-off ebony hills draped with scarves of mist.“Deirdre!”He spoke my name with all the crake gone from his voice, and again it was as if I heard the music of an old song I had known all my life. I could not answer him. Faintness stole over me and a strange trembling sweetness held me in thrall. My heart glowed like a red-hot coal with a cool wind blowing on it.“Deirdre!—what a name for a man’s wife. Deirdre, I love you! I want your heart and body and soul. Look at me, darling.”I turned to him, and our eyes met in a long glance. Then mine fell as always before his, as if weighted with little heavy stones.“Give me your soul, Deirdre,” he said, and with my eyes still closed, unhesitatingly, unswervingly, I put out my two hands and laid them in his with all my heart and soul in them; and he kissed them, and my hair, and my lips. He took me in his arms and kissed my eyes.“I have loved you from the moment I first saw you,” he said. “Haven’t you felt my kisses on your eyelids whenever I looked at you, Deirdre?”So I knew at last what it was in his burning glance that had always closed my eyes.“You are like an exquisite flower,” he muttered, “too beautiful to be worn in my soiled heart. But Iwillwear you,” he fiercely added.“‘Who loves flowers loves sorrow.’” The old French proverb came uncalled to my lips.“You and I cannot love without sorrow,” he said, branding the words on my lips with his.Ah! God knows I was all woman then, throbbing, aching woman in the arms of the man I loved.“Let me see your eyes,” he said, and his voice thrilled like a violin bow across the strings of my heart. “I shall go mad if you do not open your eyes.”And I opened them to the beauty of his face.Ah, yes, he was beautiful! He had the beauty of the gods. If I were half so beautiful at that moment it was no wonder that his lips were pale though they burnt like flame, that his hands shook and his voice stammered.“Speak to me!” he cried. “Say that you love me!”“I think I have always loved you, Anthony—ever since that night I first saw you, when you beguiled me with your sweet words to come to this strange land. Yes, I know now it was for you I came across the sea—for you—to you.”“Heart of my heart! For you I will go back to my boyhood’s dreams—to the old sweet creeds! I will wipe my life clean of sins, and make it worth your beauty and purity—”Ah! It is a most wonderful and exquisite thing to be alone in the empty, silent, moonlit world with the man you love and who loves you. But our gracious dream was soon interrupted. The postmaster called out at the foot of the stairs, and we distinguished the approaching voices of Mrs Brand and some others.“Come, love,” said Anthony to me simply and softly, and drew me down the stairway. In the kindly darkness he kissed me again in a strong, sweet, wonderful way, and for one more radiant moment I felt the almost anguished joy—half terror and half exquisite peace—that comes to a girl who, loving for the first time, finds herself in the arms of the one right man in all the world for her.“Say you love me,” he passionately whispered, and I as passionately whispered back:“I love you—I love you. There is no one in the world like you.”“I believe there is a search-party out for us,” said Gerry Deshon as soon as we came from the post-office. “We’ve spied about five couples all diligently looking the other way.”“Any excuse to get out into the moonlight,” laughed Anthony. He had his careless-eyed, impassive mask on once more.“And it is plain that some one has already begun to prepare the banquet,” cried Mr Hunloke. “I smell a most outrageous smell of Welsh rarebit desecrating the night air.”I remember very little in detail of the rest of that enchanted night. I know that every one was very gay and merry, and none more so than I, with a heart singing like a bird in my breast. After scrambling in the kitchen for hours, laughing, blacking our hands and smearing our features, getting smoke in our eyes and ashes down our throats from three large fires out of doors, a banquet was served in the preparing of which at least fifty people had a hand and the like of which was never seen before or since in Mashonaland. The odour thereof permeated to every hut and home and lured men from their beds. People I had never seen before arrived upon the scene and joined in the proceedings—even the frumps and dowds and the business-like men. We were all—“Glad together in gladsome moodAnd joyful in joyous lustre.”Anthony brewed a bowl of punch flavoured with blue beads that ravished the hearts of all men who tasted it; and Gerry Deshon brewed an opposition bowl which he called “potheen” and engaged attention to by monotonously beating a kaffir tom-tom over it, the sound of which brought the remaining stragglers into camp.By twelve o’clock, when the moon was low in the heavens but the campfires blazed high, almost every one in the town was seated round the white cloths spread upon the stubbly grass. I recognised the postmaster’s beautifully embroidered tea-cloth among the rest. No one gave a thought to grass-ticks or mosquitoes. How should they when the feast was eaten to the strains of the postmaster’s banjo and his charming tenor voice serenading us with some of the wild, sweet melodies of Ireland to which Moore has put words. But of course, with the innate melancholy of the Celt, he could not refrain from tempering our merriment with woe, and at our blithest he suddenly subdued us with the sad fierce Song of Fionnuala:“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water.Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,While murmuring mournfully Lir’s lonely daughterTells to the night stars the tale of her woes.“When shall the swan her death-song singingSleep with wings in darkness furled?When will Heaven its sweet bell ringingCall my spirit from this stormy world?”Did the Irish gift of foresight descend for a moment upon that one of Ireland’s sons, I wonder? For it was strange, looking back long after, to reflect that never before had little Fort George indulged in such a gay and merry revel, nor ever did again. That was her swan-song. Afterwards she slept, with wings in darkness furled.During the evening Anthony and I were side by side once more, and under cover of all the jesting and laughter around us we added another brief little chapter to the history of our love. The firelight was glinting on the points of blue in his ears, and impulsively I put up a finger and touched one of them.“Why do you wear them?”He looked steadily into the fire and did not answer at once.“If you object to them I will not wear them any longer,” he said at last. But there was a note in his voice that chilled my heart.“Why did you ever wear them?” I asked, and almost choked on the words remembering what Mrs Valetta had said, “Is it true that some woman put them there?”He turned and faced me quickly, looking into mine with those eyes of his which I knew could not lie.“Not a woman, Deirdre, a girl—a little girl of ten. My sister put them in for a whim a few days before she died—and they’ve been there ever since. You are the only woman in the world I would take them out for.”I remembered how they said he had almost killed a man for jeering at them, how much chaff he had stood from his friends on the subject. I knew that his sister had been dear to him.“No, no,” I cried swiftly. “You must never take them out. Wear them always. I love them. To me they seem part of you.”His passionate glance made me almost afraid as he whispered back under cover of the chatter and laughter around us:“You shall kiss them in for me, my heart, and they shall never leave me again until I die.” When I looked away from him it was to see Maurice Stair’s pale, handsome face opposite, staring before him with moody eyes.My last recollection before we went indoors, after good-nights all round and many handshakings, was the sight of Tommy Dennison seated at the summit of the glorified tea-house (which was Anthony Kinsella’s hut) performing on the flute in a most subtle manner while the mad Irishman, once more happy, sang:“Oh, did you ne’er hear of the Blarney?That’s found near the banks of Killarney.”Alone in my room at last, I threw myself down on my knees and thanked God in broken words for my happiness. Joy enfolded my spirit like a misty veil of happiness through which the future was touched with the light of the eternal hills. With the rosary between my fingers and the lovely Latin words of the Angelical Salutation on my lips, I thought of my mother too and longed passionately for her to know of the wonderful thing that had come to me, so that even in my prayers my thoughts flew out from me across the rolling spaces of stars to the still place of peace where my faith told me her soul rested, waiting; and when at last I rose from my knees it was with a strange feeling that sheknew, that her mother-spirit was with me, enfolding me, rejoicing with me that all was well, that not tragedy but wonderful, undreamed-of happiness had come to her Deirdre for whom she had feared so much.Afterwards I thought to fall swiftly into the waves of silence and oblivion with my dream in my heart. But late as it was, Judy, who had just come in, lingered before the mirror brushing her hair, and shewouldtalk. She had gone into Mrs Valetta’s hut and stayed for quite an hour, and now in her pink dressing-gown, her fair hair down her back, she was full of little endless languid words that had no meaning for me wrapped in my new found happiness. I closed my eyes and strove to sleep in spite of her, but she presently said something that dragged me back from sleep and in one moment blurred out the radiance of my dream.“And I want to warn you of one thing, Deirdre. Don’t be beguiled into a flirtation with Anthony Kinsella. He’s the most dangerous man in the country.”After an ice-cold moment I answered her in a voice that sounded to me like some one else’s.“What do you mean, Judy? Why do you say that to me?”She was plaiting her hair then, and had a hairpin between her lips so that her voice was a little indistinct, but her words fell like gunshots into my ears.“Well, you seemed to like him, rather. You were a good deal together this evening, weren’t you? Of course I know that you are well able to take care of yourself, but a flirtation with Tony Kinsella should not be embarked upon even by the most experienced hand. For one thing, he is married.”My heart stopped beating in my breast, and a pain that I thought would have choked me shot up from it to my throat. For a little time I was in such purely physical pain that I believed I was dying. My eyes blurred over, and dimly as through a great darkness I saw Judy’s face reflected in the glass, the gleam of her rings as her fingers moved in and out of her fair pale hair, while her voice went monotonously, relentlessly on.“I always knew there wassomething, but until Mrs Valetta told me to-night I did not know what it was. She has known him for years in Kimberley and at the Cape. It appears that when he was twenty-five (a good many years ago I should say) he married a very lovely girl belonging to an old Cape family—she and Mrs Valetta were at school together. He was wildly in love with his wife, but she like most Cape girls was a desperate flirt, and no sooner were they married than she began indulging in perhaps harmless flirtations, but extremely indiscreet ones, considering whom she had married. They began to be unhappy, and then suddenly came an awful climax when he almost killed some soldier man in Cape Town (the man’s recovery was a miracle) and then separated from his wife, but first of all he sent her to England, and insisted on her staying there. He gave her a large income but he has never lived with her since, and she has never been out here, though every one knows she is still alive. The worst feature of the business is the way he has always carried on intrigues with women ever since, nearly always married women. His method is peculiar. He commences a friendship with a woman, becomes her devoted slave, and gets her well talked about, and when she is wildly in love with him and ready to throw her bonnet over the windmill he calmly backs out, tells the woman it was her friendship he wanted, not her love, and walks off. Did you ever hear of anything so horrible? Evidently the idea is to get revenge on all women for his own wife’s infidelities, but it seems incredibly brutal, doesn’t it?”“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said, suffocating with pain and anger and distress. “He is incapable of such—” I sank among my pillows again but I could not shut out Judy’s cruel words.“I know—I felt like that too—he is so charming, and has such nice eyes. It is hard to believe he could be such a brute—but you would have had to believe Nonie Valetta to-night. It is clear that she is one of his victims. Of course her husband is a dreadful cad and they say kicks her, and that no doubt makes her the bitter and wretched woman she is, but every one knows she is desperate about Kinsella. She as good as admitted it to-night though she knows how I detest that kind of thing and that she would get no sympathy—but she told me, looking as white as a ghost, that I ought to warn you as she had warned Anna Cleeve some months ago, that he is married. It was really too bad of him to start a flirtation with Anna Cleeve. They were always riding together and so on and every one thought it would come to an engagement, and then suddenly the whole thing came to a full stop, and now they never speak to each other. The only people who knew the real reason were he and Anna Cleeve, but now it appears that Mrs Valetta told Anna that he was a married man and that she should tax him with it, and Anna did. She asked him point blank and instead of answering he laughed in her face and said, ‘It is women like you and Mrs Valetta who kick a man’s soul into hell.’ Then he walked off and has never spoken to her since. One would think that her brother would have risen in arms against such treatment, but no! The curious thing is that men are always ready to believe in Tony Kinsella. Anna Cleeve is practically engaged to Herbert Stanfield now, a Salisbury man, but she is frightfully unhappy, and every one says it was nothing but pique made her do it. Mr Stanfield is very nice but Tony Kinsella would spoil any woman’s taste for a merely nice man—he is so alive and vivid and extraordinarily bigger than most men about—don’t you think so? Anyway, I thought I’d just warn you, dear. As I told Mrs Valetta, I was sure there was not the slightest necessity—that you’ve had heaps of good offers and threw over one of the best matches in England because you were so hard to please (too hard, I think, but that’s neither here nor there). Anyway, I let her know that it was very unlikely you would consider any man out here good enough for you. All the same, I know how fascinating Anthony Kinsella is and it is just as well that you should know these things—so there you are. And now good-night. I’m so dead tired, aren’t you? What a crazy night!”A crazy night indeed! I don’t know how I lived through what was left of it. My body lay still and anguished, but my mind wandered in a wilderness of wretchedness and misery where it sometimes seemed no gleam of hope or happiness could ever penetrate again. I had said that I believed no word of it all, but left alone with Judy’s haunting tale ringing in my head, how was it possible to dismiss the whole thing as a tissue of lies from beginning to end? Facts, such as his marriage, must be true. No woman would invent a thing that could be so easily disproved. He must have been married at some time (oh, God! that thought was hard to bear even if she had died since). If she hadn’t died—ah! that was too terrible to think of. Then what of Anna Cleeve? and Mrs Valetta? Blind as I wished to be I knew there was some truth in both these tales. Deaf as I had tried to be, had I not heard everywhere round me hints of his intimacies with women? Had he not said to me with exceeding bitterness: “You will hear my name blown back upon the breeze of fame—of a kind”? And then: “You cannot love me without sorrow, Deirdre.”Oh! was it all true? Could it be true? Darkness engulfed me. I know not how I passed the terrible year-long hours. But at last my little silver travelling-clock struck five and I found myself staring at the first red stripes of dawn upon the walls.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you mean she is married to him?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I did not speak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re looking at us,” I objected.

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

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

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

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

“Will you let me?”

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

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

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

“What?” said I in astonishment.

“Put a pinch of salt on me.”

Our eyes met, and we both burst into laughter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It must have been rippin’.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Olives!”

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

“Hooray! here are some anchovies!”

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

“Who says tinned pineapples?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Loot! Loot! Loot!”

“Loot! Loot! Loot!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Major Kinsella hesitated, looking at me.

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

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

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

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

“Will you come?” said Anthony Kinsella abruptly. “The view is supposed to be very fine.”

Mr Bleksley had already closed the window and returned to his work.

“On such a night as this it should be perfect,” I said. So we climbed the dark, steep stair together.

The instant we put our feet on the first step he took my hand which hung at my side, interlacing his fingers through mine. Hands can tell each other so much. I suddenly knew things I had never dreamed of before with the feel of Anthony Kinsella’s warm, strong hand clasping mine, and from the close contact of his palm against mine some wonderful, strange message flew up my arm to my heart and brain, flooding me with a thrilling ecstasy I could hardly bear. When we reached the tower’s top I think we both knew all there was to say though no word had been spoken. We leaned against the low enclosing walls and looked down upon a land awash with silver moonlight and far-off ebony hills draped with scarves of mist.

“Deirdre!”

He spoke my name with all the crake gone from his voice, and again it was as if I heard the music of an old song I had known all my life. I could not answer him. Faintness stole over me and a strange trembling sweetness held me in thrall. My heart glowed like a red-hot coal with a cool wind blowing on it.

“Deirdre!—what a name for a man’s wife. Deirdre, I love you! I want your heart and body and soul. Look at me, darling.”

I turned to him, and our eyes met in a long glance. Then mine fell as always before his, as if weighted with little heavy stones.

“Give me your soul, Deirdre,” he said, and with my eyes still closed, unhesitatingly, unswervingly, I put out my two hands and laid them in his with all my heart and soul in them; and he kissed them, and my hair, and my lips. He took me in his arms and kissed my eyes.

“I have loved you from the moment I first saw you,” he said. “Haven’t you felt my kisses on your eyelids whenever I looked at you, Deirdre?”

So I knew at last what it was in his burning glance that had always closed my eyes.

“You are like an exquisite flower,” he muttered, “too beautiful to be worn in my soiled heart. But Iwillwear you,” he fiercely added.

“‘Who loves flowers loves sorrow.’” The old French proverb came uncalled to my lips.

“You and I cannot love without sorrow,” he said, branding the words on my lips with his.

Ah! God knows I was all woman then, throbbing, aching woman in the arms of the man I loved.

“Let me see your eyes,” he said, and his voice thrilled like a violin bow across the strings of my heart. “I shall go mad if you do not open your eyes.”

And I opened them to the beauty of his face.

Ah, yes, he was beautiful! He had the beauty of the gods. If I were half so beautiful at that moment it was no wonder that his lips were pale though they burnt like flame, that his hands shook and his voice stammered.

“Speak to me!” he cried. “Say that you love me!”

“I think I have always loved you, Anthony—ever since that night I first saw you, when you beguiled me with your sweet words to come to this strange land. Yes, I know now it was for you I came across the sea—for you—to you.”

“Heart of my heart! For you I will go back to my boyhood’s dreams—to the old sweet creeds! I will wipe my life clean of sins, and make it worth your beauty and purity—”

Ah! It is a most wonderful and exquisite thing to be alone in the empty, silent, moonlit world with the man you love and who loves you. But our gracious dream was soon interrupted. The postmaster called out at the foot of the stairs, and we distinguished the approaching voices of Mrs Brand and some others.

“Come, love,” said Anthony to me simply and softly, and drew me down the stairway. In the kindly darkness he kissed me again in a strong, sweet, wonderful way, and for one more radiant moment I felt the almost anguished joy—half terror and half exquisite peace—that comes to a girl who, loving for the first time, finds herself in the arms of the one right man in all the world for her.

“Say you love me,” he passionately whispered, and I as passionately whispered back:

“I love you—I love you. There is no one in the world like you.”

“I believe there is a search-party out for us,” said Gerry Deshon as soon as we came from the post-office. “We’ve spied about five couples all diligently looking the other way.”

“Any excuse to get out into the moonlight,” laughed Anthony. He had his careless-eyed, impassive mask on once more.

“And it is plain that some one has already begun to prepare the banquet,” cried Mr Hunloke. “I smell a most outrageous smell of Welsh rarebit desecrating the night air.”

I remember very little in detail of the rest of that enchanted night. I know that every one was very gay and merry, and none more so than I, with a heart singing like a bird in my breast. After scrambling in the kitchen for hours, laughing, blacking our hands and smearing our features, getting smoke in our eyes and ashes down our throats from three large fires out of doors, a banquet was served in the preparing of which at least fifty people had a hand and the like of which was never seen before or since in Mashonaland. The odour thereof permeated to every hut and home and lured men from their beds. People I had never seen before arrived upon the scene and joined in the proceedings—even the frumps and dowds and the business-like men. We were all—

“Glad together in gladsome moodAnd joyful in joyous lustre.”

“Glad together in gladsome moodAnd joyful in joyous lustre.”

Anthony brewed a bowl of punch flavoured with blue beads that ravished the hearts of all men who tasted it; and Gerry Deshon brewed an opposition bowl which he called “potheen” and engaged attention to by monotonously beating a kaffir tom-tom over it, the sound of which brought the remaining stragglers into camp.

By twelve o’clock, when the moon was low in the heavens but the campfires blazed high, almost every one in the town was seated round the white cloths spread upon the stubbly grass. I recognised the postmaster’s beautifully embroidered tea-cloth among the rest. No one gave a thought to grass-ticks or mosquitoes. How should they when the feast was eaten to the strains of the postmaster’s banjo and his charming tenor voice serenading us with some of the wild, sweet melodies of Ireland to which Moore has put words. But of course, with the innate melancholy of the Celt, he could not refrain from tempering our merriment with woe, and at our blithest he suddenly subdued us with the sad fierce Song of Fionnuala:

“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water.Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,While murmuring mournfully Lir’s lonely daughterTells to the night stars the tale of her woes.“When shall the swan her death-song singingSleep with wings in darkness furled?When will Heaven its sweet bell ringingCall my spirit from this stormy world?”

“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water.Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,While murmuring mournfully Lir’s lonely daughterTells to the night stars the tale of her woes.“When shall the swan her death-song singingSleep with wings in darkness furled?When will Heaven its sweet bell ringingCall my spirit from this stormy world?”

Did the Irish gift of foresight descend for a moment upon that one of Ireland’s sons, I wonder? For it was strange, looking back long after, to reflect that never before had little Fort George indulged in such a gay and merry revel, nor ever did again. That was her swan-song. Afterwards she slept, with wings in darkness furled.

During the evening Anthony and I were side by side once more, and under cover of all the jesting and laughter around us we added another brief little chapter to the history of our love. The firelight was glinting on the points of blue in his ears, and impulsively I put up a finger and touched one of them.

“Why do you wear them?”

He looked steadily into the fire and did not answer at once.

“If you object to them I will not wear them any longer,” he said at last. But there was a note in his voice that chilled my heart.

“Why did you ever wear them?” I asked, and almost choked on the words remembering what Mrs Valetta had said, “Is it true that some woman put them there?”

He turned and faced me quickly, looking into mine with those eyes of his which I knew could not lie.

“Not a woman, Deirdre, a girl—a little girl of ten. My sister put them in for a whim a few days before she died—and they’ve been there ever since. You are the only woman in the world I would take them out for.”

I remembered how they said he had almost killed a man for jeering at them, how much chaff he had stood from his friends on the subject. I knew that his sister had been dear to him.

“No, no,” I cried swiftly. “You must never take them out. Wear them always. I love them. To me they seem part of you.”

His passionate glance made me almost afraid as he whispered back under cover of the chatter and laughter around us:

“You shall kiss them in for me, my heart, and they shall never leave me again until I die.” When I looked away from him it was to see Maurice Stair’s pale, handsome face opposite, staring before him with moody eyes.

My last recollection before we went indoors, after good-nights all round and many handshakings, was the sight of Tommy Dennison seated at the summit of the glorified tea-house (which was Anthony Kinsella’s hut) performing on the flute in a most subtle manner while the mad Irishman, once more happy, sang:

“Oh, did you ne’er hear of the Blarney?That’s found near the banks of Killarney.”

“Oh, did you ne’er hear of the Blarney?That’s found near the banks of Killarney.”

Alone in my room at last, I threw myself down on my knees and thanked God in broken words for my happiness. Joy enfolded my spirit like a misty veil of happiness through which the future was touched with the light of the eternal hills. With the rosary between my fingers and the lovely Latin words of the Angelical Salutation on my lips, I thought of my mother too and longed passionately for her to know of the wonderful thing that had come to me, so that even in my prayers my thoughts flew out from me across the rolling spaces of stars to the still place of peace where my faith told me her soul rested, waiting; and when at last I rose from my knees it was with a strange feeling that sheknew, that her mother-spirit was with me, enfolding me, rejoicing with me that all was well, that not tragedy but wonderful, undreamed-of happiness had come to her Deirdre for whom she had feared so much.

Afterwards I thought to fall swiftly into the waves of silence and oblivion with my dream in my heart. But late as it was, Judy, who had just come in, lingered before the mirror brushing her hair, and shewouldtalk. She had gone into Mrs Valetta’s hut and stayed for quite an hour, and now in her pink dressing-gown, her fair hair down her back, she was full of little endless languid words that had no meaning for me wrapped in my new found happiness. I closed my eyes and strove to sleep in spite of her, but she presently said something that dragged me back from sleep and in one moment blurred out the radiance of my dream.

“And I want to warn you of one thing, Deirdre. Don’t be beguiled into a flirtation with Anthony Kinsella. He’s the most dangerous man in the country.”

After an ice-cold moment I answered her in a voice that sounded to me like some one else’s.

“What do you mean, Judy? Why do you say that to me?”

She was plaiting her hair then, and had a hairpin between her lips so that her voice was a little indistinct, but her words fell like gunshots into my ears.

“Well, you seemed to like him, rather. You were a good deal together this evening, weren’t you? Of course I know that you are well able to take care of yourself, but a flirtation with Tony Kinsella should not be embarked upon even by the most experienced hand. For one thing, he is married.”

My heart stopped beating in my breast, and a pain that I thought would have choked me shot up from it to my throat. For a little time I was in such purely physical pain that I believed I was dying. My eyes blurred over, and dimly as through a great darkness I saw Judy’s face reflected in the glass, the gleam of her rings as her fingers moved in and out of her fair pale hair, while her voice went monotonously, relentlessly on.

“I always knew there wassomething, but until Mrs Valetta told me to-night I did not know what it was. She has known him for years in Kimberley and at the Cape. It appears that when he was twenty-five (a good many years ago I should say) he married a very lovely girl belonging to an old Cape family—she and Mrs Valetta were at school together. He was wildly in love with his wife, but she like most Cape girls was a desperate flirt, and no sooner were they married than she began indulging in perhaps harmless flirtations, but extremely indiscreet ones, considering whom she had married. They began to be unhappy, and then suddenly came an awful climax when he almost killed some soldier man in Cape Town (the man’s recovery was a miracle) and then separated from his wife, but first of all he sent her to England, and insisted on her staying there. He gave her a large income but he has never lived with her since, and she has never been out here, though every one knows she is still alive. The worst feature of the business is the way he has always carried on intrigues with women ever since, nearly always married women. His method is peculiar. He commences a friendship with a woman, becomes her devoted slave, and gets her well talked about, and when she is wildly in love with him and ready to throw her bonnet over the windmill he calmly backs out, tells the woman it was her friendship he wanted, not her love, and walks off. Did you ever hear of anything so horrible? Evidently the idea is to get revenge on all women for his own wife’s infidelities, but it seems incredibly brutal, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said, suffocating with pain and anger and distress. “He is incapable of such—” I sank among my pillows again but I could not shut out Judy’s cruel words.

“I know—I felt like that too—he is so charming, and has such nice eyes. It is hard to believe he could be such a brute—but you would have had to believe Nonie Valetta to-night. It is clear that she is one of his victims. Of course her husband is a dreadful cad and they say kicks her, and that no doubt makes her the bitter and wretched woman she is, but every one knows she is desperate about Kinsella. She as good as admitted it to-night though she knows how I detest that kind of thing and that she would get no sympathy—but she told me, looking as white as a ghost, that I ought to warn you as she had warned Anna Cleeve some months ago, that he is married. It was really too bad of him to start a flirtation with Anna Cleeve. They were always riding together and so on and every one thought it would come to an engagement, and then suddenly the whole thing came to a full stop, and now they never speak to each other. The only people who knew the real reason were he and Anna Cleeve, but now it appears that Mrs Valetta told Anna that he was a married man and that she should tax him with it, and Anna did. She asked him point blank and instead of answering he laughed in her face and said, ‘It is women like you and Mrs Valetta who kick a man’s soul into hell.’ Then he walked off and has never spoken to her since. One would think that her brother would have risen in arms against such treatment, but no! The curious thing is that men are always ready to believe in Tony Kinsella. Anna Cleeve is practically engaged to Herbert Stanfield now, a Salisbury man, but she is frightfully unhappy, and every one says it was nothing but pique made her do it. Mr Stanfield is very nice but Tony Kinsella would spoil any woman’s taste for a merely nice man—he is so alive and vivid and extraordinarily bigger than most men about—don’t you think so? Anyway, I thought I’d just warn you, dear. As I told Mrs Valetta, I was sure there was not the slightest necessity—that you’ve had heaps of good offers and threw over one of the best matches in England because you were so hard to please (too hard, I think, but that’s neither here nor there). Anyway, I let her know that it was very unlikely you would consider any man out here good enough for you. All the same, I know how fascinating Anthony Kinsella is and it is just as well that you should know these things—so there you are. And now good-night. I’m so dead tired, aren’t you? What a crazy night!”

A crazy night indeed! I don’t know how I lived through what was left of it. My body lay still and anguished, but my mind wandered in a wilderness of wretchedness and misery where it sometimes seemed no gleam of hope or happiness could ever penetrate again. I had said that I believed no word of it all, but left alone with Judy’s haunting tale ringing in my head, how was it possible to dismiss the whole thing as a tissue of lies from beginning to end? Facts, such as his marriage, must be true. No woman would invent a thing that could be so easily disproved. He must have been married at some time (oh, God! that thought was hard to bear even if she had died since). If she hadn’t died—ah! that was too terrible to think of. Then what of Anna Cleeve? and Mrs Valetta? Blind as I wished to be I knew there was some truth in both these tales. Deaf as I had tried to be, had I not heard everywhere round me hints of his intimacies with women? Had he not said to me with exceeding bitterness: “You will hear my name blown back upon the breeze of fame—of a kind”? And then: “You cannot love me without sorrow, Deirdre.”

Oh! was it all true? Could it be true? Darkness engulfed me. I know not how I passed the terrible year-long hours. But at last my little silver travelling-clock struck five and I found myself staring at the first red stripes of dawn upon the walls.

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