The Kafir seated himself again in his old place and let his hand fall

upon the mass of clay which he had been fashioning for Paul's

instruction. He was the least perturbed of the three of them. He sank

his finger-tops in the soft plasticity of the stuff, and smiled across

it at the others, at the boy, embarrassed and not sure of Margaret yet,

and at her, still mastered by her curiosity. It was almost as if he

were used to being regarded with astonishment, and his self-possession

had a touch of that deliberate lime-lit quality which distinguishes the

private lives of preachers and actors and hunchbacks.

For the rest, he seemed to be about Margaret's age, clean run and of the

middle stature. Watching him, Margaret was at a loss to discover what

it was about him that seemed so oddly commonplace and familiar till she

noted his clothes. They were "tweeds." Though he had apparently slept

on the bare ground in them and made them a buffer between his skin and

many emergencies of travel, they were still tweeds, such as any

sprightly youth of Bayswater might affect for a week-end in the country.

It needed only a complexion and an attitude to render him inconspicuous

on a golf-course, but in that place, under the majestic sun, with the

heat-dazzle of the Karoo at his back, his very clothes made him the more

incomprehensible.

Margaret realized that he was waiting for her to speak.

"You model, then?" she asked, striving to speak in an altogether

matter-of-fact tone, as though to come across gifted, English-speaking

negroes, giving art lessons in odd corners, were nothing unusual.

"Just a little," he answered. "Enough to help Paul to make a beginning.

Eh, Paul?"

Paul nodded, turning to Margaret. "He knows lots," he said. "_He 's_

been in London, too. It was there he learned to--to model."

Paul had a way of uttering the word "London" which conveyed to

Margaret's ready sympathies some little part of what it meant to him,

the bright unattainable home of wonderful activities, the land of

heart's desire.

"In London?" She turned to the Kafir, "London seems a long way from

here, doesn't it?"

"Yes; a long way." He was not smiling now. "It is seven months since I

left London," he said; "and already it seems dim and unreal. It's as if

I 'd dreamed about it and only remembered parts of my dream."

Paul was listening with that profound attention he seemed to give to all

things.

"I don't feel it 's as far as all that," said Margaret. "But then, I was

there two months ago. Probably that makes a difference."

She was only now beginning to realize the strangeness of the encounter,

and as she talked her faculties, taken by ambush and startled from their

functions, regained their alertness. She watched him composedly as he

replied.

"Yes," he said. "And there are other differences, too. Since I left

London I have not slept under a roof."

While he spoke he did not cease to finger the clay; as he turned it here

and there, Margaret was able to see it was the head of a negro that he

was shaping and the work was already well forward. It was, indeed, the

same head whose unexpected scowl had astonished Paul; and as he moved it

about, the still gloomy face of clay seemed to glance backward and

forward as though it heard him and doubted.

"But why not?" demanded Margaret.

He seemed to hesitate before answering, and meanwhile his hands were

busy and deft.

"Why not?" she repeated. "Seven months! I don't understand. Why have

n't you slept under a roof all that time?"

"Well!" He smiled as he spoke at last. "You see--I don't speak Kafir.

That's where the trouble is. When first I came up here, I went across to

the southern districts, where Kafirs are pretty numerous. My idea was

to live among them, in order to--well, to carry out an idea of mine."

He paused. "They didn't know what to make of you?" suggested Margaret.

"No--unless it was a corpse," he answered. "I don't really blame them;

they must have been horribly suspicious of me. At the first kraal I

came to--the first village, that is--I tried to make myself known to a

splendid old chap, sitting over a little fire, who seemed to be in

charge. That was awfully queer. Every man, woman and child in the

place stood round and stared and made noises of distrust--that's what

they sounded like; and the old chap just squatted in the middle and

blinked up at me without a word. I 'd heard that most of the Kafirs

about here could understand a little English, so I just talked away and

tried to look innocent and useful and I hoped I was making the right

impression. The chap listened profoundly till I had quite done, looking

as though he were taking in every word of it. Then he lifted both arms,

with exactly the movement of a cock when it 's going to crow, and two

young fellows behind him leaned down and took hold of them and helped

him very slowly to his feet. I made sure I 'd done the trick and that

he was getting up to shake hands or something. But instead of that he

groped about with his right hand in a blind, helpless kind of way, till

one of his private secretaries put a knobherry, a bludgeon with a knob

on the end, into it. And then, the poor old thing who had to be helped

to his feet took one quick step in my direction and landed me a bang on

the head with the club. I just remember that all the others burst into

screams of laughter; I must have heard them as I went down."

"What a horrible thing!" exclaimed Margaret.

He smiled again, his teeth flashing brilliantly in his black face.

"It was awkward at the time," he admitted. "I came to later on the veld

where they dragged me, with a lump on my head the size of my fist. And

sore--by Jove! I was sore. Still, it's just possible I might have gone

back for another try, if the first thing I saw hadn't been a tall black

gentleman sitting at the entrance to the kraal with an assegai--a spear,

that is--ready for me. I concluded it was n't good enough!"

"No!" Margaret agreed with him. "I should think not. But why should

they receive you like that?"

"Perhaps," he suggested, "they learned it from the white men!"

("He means to look ironical," Margaret thought. "It isn't a leer; it 's

irony handicapped by a negro face. Poor thing!")

"Then you had a bad time somewhere else?" she asked aloud. "Would you

mind telling how? If you would, please don't tell me. But I 'd like to

hear."

"Then you shall. Of course you shall." The look that tried to be

ironical vanished. "If you could only know how grateful I am for--for

this--for just your politeness. For you being what you are--"

"Please," interrupted Margaret. "Please don't. I want to hear. Just

tell me."

There was something pathetic in his prompt obedience. He shifted ground

at once like a child that is snubbed.

"It was in Capetown," he said; "when I landed from the boat. There was

trouble on the boat, too; it was full of South Africans, and I had to

have my meals alone and only use the deck at certain hours. I could n't

even put my name down for a sovereign in the subscription they raised

for the ship's band; the others wouldn't have it. I only got rid of

that sovereign on the last evening, when the leader of the band came to

me as I walked up and down on the boat deck. He passed me once or twice

before he stopped to speak to me--making sure that nobody was looking.

'Hurry up!' he said, in a whisper. 'Where 's the quid you was going to

subscribe?' 'Say Sir!' I said--for the fun of the thing. He couldn't

manage it for fully a minute; his share of it wasn't more than

half-a-crown. I went on walking and left him where I stood, but as I

came back again he was ready for me. 'No offense, sir,' he said, quite

clearly. I gave him the money and passed on. But he was still there

when I turned again, and ever so anxious to put himself right with his

conscience. 'D'you know what I 'd do with you niggers if I had my way?'

he began, still in a large hoarse whisper, like air escaping from a

pipe. 'I 'd 'ave you back into slavery, I would. I 'd sell the lot of

you.' I laughed. 'You couldn't buy many of us with that sovereign!' I

told him. Really, I rather liked that man."

"There are men like that," said Margaret thoughtfully. "And women, too."

"Yes, aren't there?" he agreed quickly. "But I 'd rather--it 's a pity

you should know it. However, you wanted to hear about Capetown."

The afternoon was waning; the Kafir, with his hat at the back of his

head and the rim of its brim framing his patient face, was set against a

skyful of melting color. Even in face of those two attentive hearers, he

sat as though in an immense and significant isolation, imposing himself

upon them by virtue of his strong aloofness. Margaret was conscious of a

great gulf set between them, an unbridgable hiatus of spirit and

purpose. The man saw the life of the world not from above or below but

as through a barred window, from a room in which he was prisoned and

solitary.

He was entirely matter-of-fact as he told of his troubles and

difficulties when he landed in Capetown; he spoke of them as things

accepted, calling for no comment. On the steamer from England he had

been told of the then recent experiences of a concert party of American

negroes who visited Africa and had been obliged to sleep in the streets,

but the tale had the sound of a smoking-room ingenuity and had not

daunted him. But it was true for all that and he ran full-tilt into the

application of it, when nightfall of the day of his arrival found him

still seeking vainly for a lodging. He had money in plenty, but neither

money nor fair words availed to bribe an innkeeper into granting him a

bed.

"But I saw a lot of Capetown," he said. "I walked that afternoon and

evening full twenty miles--once all the way out to Sea Point and back

again. And I was perhaps a little discouraged: there were so many

difficulties I hadn't expected. I knew quite well before I left England

that I should have difficulties with the whites, but I hadn't allowed

for practically the same difficulties with the blacks. There was a

place behind the railway station, a tumble-down house in which about a

dozen Kafirs were living, and I tried that. They fetched a policeman

who ordered me away, and I had to go. You see, they could n't make head

or tail of me; I was much too unusual for them to keep company with. So

about midnight I found myself walking down towards the jetty at the foot

of Adderly Street. You don't know Capetown, I suppose? The jetty

sticks out into the bay; it 's no great use except for a few boats to

land and at night it serves the purpose of the Thames Embankment for men

who have nowhere else to go. I was very tired by then. As I passed the

Van Riebeck statue, a woman spoke to me."

He hesitated, examining Margaret's listening face, doubtfully.

"I understand," she said. "Go on. A white woman, was it?"

"Yes, a white woman," he replied with the first touch of bitterness she

had seen in him. "A poor devil who had fallen so far that she had lost

even the scruples of her trade. I heard her coughing in the shadow when

she was some distance from me, and saw her come out into the lamplight

still breathless, with the shadows making a ruin of her poor painted

face. But she had herself in hand; she was game. At the moment I was

near enough, she smiled--I suppose the last thing they forget is how to

smile. 'Koos!' she called to me, softly. 'Koos!' 'Koos' is the Taal

for cousin, you know; it 's a sort of familiar address. I couldn't pass

her without a word, so I stopped. 'You ought to see to that cough,' I

told her. She was horribly surprised, of course, and I rather think she

started to bolt, but her cough stopped her. It was a bad case, that--a

very bad case, and of course she wasn't sufficiently clad or nourished.

I advised her to get home to bed, and she leaned against the wall wiping

her eyes with the corner of her handkerchief wrapped round her finger so

as not to smudge the paint, and stared at me with a sort of surrender.

I got her to believe at last that I was what I said--a doctor--"

"_Are_ you a doctor?" interrupted Margaret.

"Yes," he answered. "I hold the London M.B.; oh, I knew what I was

talking about. When she understood it, she changed at once. She was

pretty near the end of her tether, and now she had a chance, her first

chance, to claim some one's pity. The lives they lead, those poor

smirched things! She had a landlady; can you imagine that landlady?

And unless she brought money with her, she could not even go back to her

lodgings. She told me all about it, coughing in between, under the

windows of a huge shopful of delicate women's wear, with a big arc-light

spluttering above the empty street and Van Riebeck looking over our

heads to Table Mountain. Wasn't it strange--us two homeless people,

cast out by our own folk and rejected by the other color?"

"Yes," answered the girl; "very strange and sad."

"It was like a dream," said the Kafir. "It was weird. But I like the

idea that she accosted a possible customer and found a deliverer. I

gave her the money she needed, of course, and listened to her lungs and

wrote her a prescription on the back of a card she produced. No real

use, you know--just something to go on with. She was past any real

help. No use going into details, but it was a bad case!"

He shook his head thoughtfully, in a mood of gloom.

"And then?" asked Margaret.

"Oh, then she went away," he said, "and I watched her go. She crossed

the road, holding up her skirt clear of the mud; she was a neat,

appealing little figure in spite of everything. She passed with her

head drooped to the corner opposite and there she turned and waved her

hand to me, I waved back and she went into the shadows. She 's in the

Valley of the Shadows now, though; she hadn't far to go.

"But you can't conceive how still and wonderful it was on the jetty,

with the water all round and the moon making a broad track of beams

across it, and over the bay the bulk of inland hills massive and

inscrutable. It was like looking at Africa from a great distance; and

yet, you know, I was born here!"

His hands had fallen idle on the clay, but as he ceased to speak he

began to work again, with eyes cast down to his task. The light was

already failing, and as the three of them waited in the silence that

followed on his words, there reached them the dull pulse of the

gourd-drum at the farm, stealing upon their consciousness gradually.

Paul frowned as he recognized it, coming out of the trance of his

faculties unwillingly. He had sat motionless with parted lips through

the Kafir's story, so still in his absorption that the others had

forgotten his presence.

"That 's for me," he said, slowly, but took his time about getting up.

He was looking at the Kafir with the solemn, sincere eyes of a child.

"I would like," he said, "to make a clay of that woman."

"Eh!" The Kafir suppressed his smile. "Time enough, Paul. Plenty of

time and plenty of clay for you to do that--and plenty of women, too."

Paul was on his feet by now, looking down at the other two.

"But," he hesitated, "I _must_ make it," he said. "I must."

The Kafir nodded. "All right," he said. "You make it, Paul, and show

it to me. As you see her, you know; that 's how you must do it."

"Yes," said Paul seriously. "Brave and smiling and dying. I know!"

The gourd-drum throbbed insistently. He moved towards it reluctantly.

"Good night," he said.

"Goodnight, Paul!"

A moment later he was vague in the growing dusk, and they heard his long

whistle of answer to the drum.

Margaret, with her chin propped on her hand, sat on the slope of the

wall. The Kafir began to put away the clay on which he had been

working. Paul's store was an abandoned ant-bear's hole across which

there trailed the broad dry leaves of a tenacious gourd. He put the

unfinished head carefully in this receptacle, and then drew from it

another object, which he held out to the girl.

"A bit of Paul's work," he explained.

She took it in her hand, but for the time being her interest in the

immaturities of art gave place to the strange realities in whose

presence she felt herself to be. She glanced at it perfunctorily, a

little sketch of a woman carrying a basket, well observed and

sympathetic.

"Yes," she answered. "He has a real gift. But just now I can't think

about that. I 'm thinking about you."

"I 've saddened you," he said. "I didn't want to do that. I should

have held my tongue. But if you could know what it means to talk to you

at all, you 'd forgive me. I 'm not regretting, you know; I 'm going

through it of my own free will; but it 's a lonely business. I 'm

always glad of a tramp making his way along the railway line, and Paul

was a godsend. But you! Oh, you 'll never understand how splendid it is

to tell you anything and have you listen to it."

He spoke almost humbly, but with a warmth of sincerity that moved her.

"You 'll have to tell me more," she said. "You 'll be coming here

again?"

"Indeed I will," he replied quickly. "I 'll be here often, if only in

the hope that you 'll come down to the dam sometimes. But--there 's one

thing."

"Yes?" asked Margaret.

"You know, it won't do for you to be seen with me," he said gently. "It

won't do at all."

Margaret laughed. "I think I can bear up against the ill-report of the

neighborhood," she said. "My kingdom is not of this particular world.

We won't bother about that, please."

The Kafir shook his head. "There 's no help for it," he answered. "I

must bother about it. It bothers me so much that unless you will let me

know best in this (for I really do know) I 'll never come this way

again. Do you think I could bear it, if people talked about you for

suffering the company of a nigger? You don't know this country. It 's

a dangerous place for people who go against its prejudices. So if I am

to see you, for God's sake be careful. I 'll look forward to it

like--like a sick man looking forward to health; but not if you are to

pay for it. Not at that price."

"Oh, well!" Margaret found the topic unpleasant. "I don't see any risk.

But you 're rather putting me into the position of the bandmaster on the

ship, are n't you? I 'm to have the sovereign; that is, I 'm to hear

what I want to hear; but only when nobody 's looking. However, it shall

be as you say."

"Thank you." He managed to sound genuinely grateful. "You 're awfully

kind to me. You shall hear everything you want to hear. Paul can

always lay hands on me for you."

Margaret rose to her feet. The evening struck chill upon her and she

coughed. In the growing dark, the Kafir knit his brows at the sound of

it.

"I must be going now," she said. "Paul didn't introduce me after all,

did he? But I don't think it's necessary."

She stood a little above him on the slope of the wall, a tall, slight

figure seen against its dark bulk.

"I know your name," he answered.

"And I know yours," she put in quickly. "Tell me if I 'm not right.

You 're Kamis. I 've heard about you this afternoon."

He stared at her for a space of seconds. "Yes," he said slowly. "I 'm

Kamis. But--who told you?"

She laughed quietly. "You see," she said, "I 've got something to tell,

too. Oh, I know lots about you; you 'll have to come and hear that, at

any rate."

She put out her hand to him.

"Good night, Mr. Kamis," she said.

The Kafir bared his head before he took her hand. He seemed to have some

difficulty in speaking.

"Good night," he said. "Good night! I'll never forget your goodness."

He let her go and she turned back to the path that should take her past

the farmhouse and the kraals to the Sanatorium and dinner. At the turn

of the wall, its lights met her with their dazed, unwinking stare,

shining from the dining-room which had no part in the spacious night of

the Karoo and those whose place is in the darkness. She had gone a

hundred yards before she looked back.

Behind her the western sky treasured still the last luminous dregs of

day, that leaked from it like water one holds in cupped hands. In the

middle of it, high upon the dam wall, a single human figure, swart and

motionless, stood to watch her out of sight.

*CHAPTER VII*

"Looks pooty bad for the huntin'," remarked Mr. Samson suddenly,

glancing up from the crinkly sheets of the letter he was reading. "Here

's a feller writin' to me that the ground 's like iron already. You

hunt, Miss Harding?"

"Oh, dear, yes," replied Margaret cheerfully. "Lions and elephants

and--er--eagles. Such sport, you know!"

"Hah!" Mr. Samson shook his head at her indulgently. "Your grandmother

wouldn't have said that, young lady. But you youngsters, you don't know

what 's good for you--by gad! Eagles, eh?"

Once in a week, breakfast at the Sanatorium gained a vivid and even a

breathless quality from the fact that one found the weekly letters piled

between one's knife and fork, as though Mrs. Jakes knew--no doubt she

did--that her guests would make the chief part of their meal on the

contents of the envelopes. The Kafir runner who brought them from the

station arrived in the early dawn and nobody saw him but Mrs. Jakes; she

was the human link between the abstractions of the post-office and those

who had the right to open the letters and be changed for the day by

their contents. It was not invariably that the mail included letters

for her, and these too would be put in order on the breakfast table,

under the tap of the urn, and not opened till the others were down.

Then Mrs. Jakes also, like a well-connected Jack Horner, could pull from

the eloquence of her correspondents an occasional plum of information to

pass round the table.

"Only think!" she would offer. "The Duchess of York has got another

baby. Let me see now! How many does that make?"

It was always Mr. Samson who was down first on mail-mornings, and his

was always the largest budget. His seat was at the end of the table

nearest the window, and he would read sitting a little sideways in his

chair, with the letter held well up to the light and his right eyebrow

clenched on a monocle. Fat letters of many sheets, long letters on thin

foreign paper, newspapers, circulars--they made up enough to keep him

reading the whole morning, and thoughtful most of the afternoon. From

this feast he would scatter crumbs of fashionable or sporting

intelligence, and always he would have something to say about the state

of the weather in England when the post left, three weeks before.

"Just think!" he continued. "Frost already--and fogs! Frost, Miss

Harding; instead of this sultry old dust-heap. How does that strike

you? Eh?"

"It leaves me cold," returned Margaret agreeably.

"Cold!" he retorted, snorting. "Well, I 'd give something to shiver

again, something handsome. What 's that you 're saying, Ford?"

Ford had passed a post-card to Mrs. Jakes to read and now received it

back from her.

"It 's Van Zyl," he replied. "He writes that he 'll be coming past this

afternoon, about tea time, and he 'll look in. I was telling Mrs.

Jakes."

"Good!" said Mr. Samson.

"It's a man I know," Ford explained to Margaret. "He looks me up

occasionally. He 's in the Cape Mounted Police and a Dutchman. You 'll

be in for tea?"

"When somebody 's coming? Of course I will," said Margaret. "A

policeman, is he?"

"Yes," answered Ford. "He 's a sub-inspector, an officer; but he was a

trooper three years ago, and he 's quite a chap to know. You see what

you think of him."

"I 'll look at him carefully," said Margaret. "But tell me some more,

please! Is he a mute, inglorious Sherlock Holmes, or what?"

Ford laughed. "No," he said. "No, it 's not that sort of thing, at

all. It 's just that he 's a noticeable person, don't you know? He 's

the kind of chap who 's simply born to put into a uniform and astride of

a horse; you 'll see what I mean when he comes."

Mrs. Jakes leaned to the right to catch Margaret's eye round the urn.

"My dear," she said seriously. "Mr. Van Zyl is the image of a perfect

gentleman."

"All right!" said Margaret. "Between you, you 've filled me with the

darkest forebodings. But so long as it's a biped, and without feathers,

I 'll do my best."

Her own letters were three in number. One was from an uncle who was

also her solicitor and trustee, the source of checks and worldly

counsel. His letter opened playfully; the legal uncle, writing in the

inner chamber of his offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields, hoped that she did

not find the local fashions in dress irksome, and made reference to

three mosquitos and a smile. The break of a paragraph brought him to

business matters and the epistle concluded with an allusion to the

effect of a Liberal Government on markets. It was, thought Margaret, a

compact revelation of the whole mind of the legal uncle, and wondered

why she should get vaguely impatient with his implied suggestion that

she was in an uncivilized country. The next was from the strong-minded

aunt who had imposed austerity upon her choice of clothes for her

travels--a Chinese cracker of a letter, detonating along three sheets in

crisp misstatements that had the outward form of epigrams. The aunt

related, tersely, her endeavor to cultivate a physique with Indian clubs

and the consequent accident to her maid. "But arms like pipe-stems can

be trusted to break like pipe-stems," she concluded hardily. "I 've

given her cash and a character, and the new one is fat. No pipe-stems

about her, though she bruises with the least touch!"

These two she read at the breakfast table, drinking from her coffee-cup

between the bottom of one sheet and the top of the next, savoring them

for a vintage gone flat and perished. It came to her that their writers

lived as in dim glass cases, seeing the world beyond their own small

scope as a distance of shadows, indeterminate and void, while

trivialities and toys that were close to them bulked like impending

doom. She laid down the legal uncle in the middle of a sentence to hear

of Van Zyl and did not look back to pick up the context when she resumed

her reading. The legal uncle, in her theory, had no context; he ranked

as a printer's error. It was the third letter which she carried forth

when she left the table, to read again on the stoep.

The jargon of the art schools saves its practitioners much trouble in

accounting for those matters and things which come under their

observation, since a phrase is frequently indistinguishable from a fact

and very filling at the price. But Margaret was not ready with a name

for that quality in the third letter which caused her to read it through

again and linger out its substance. It was from a girl who had been her

school-fellow and later her friend, and later still a gracious and

rarely-seen acquaintance, smiling a welcome at chance meetings and ever

remoter and more abstracted from those affairs which occupied Margaret's

days. The name of a Kensington square stood at the head of her letter

as her address; Margaret knew it familiarly, from the grime on the iron

railings which held its melancholy garden a prisoner, to the deep areas

of its houses that gave one in passing glimpses of spacious kitchens

under the roots of the dwellings. Three floors up from the pavement,

Amy Hollyer, in her brown-papered room, with the Rossetti prints on the

wall and the Heleu etching above the mantel, had set her mild and

earnest mind on paper for Margaret's reading, news, comment, small jest

and smaller dogma, a gentle trickle of gossip about things and people

who were already vague in the past. It was little, it was trivial, but

through it there ran, like the red thread in a ripping-cord, a vein of

zest, of sheer gusto in the movement and thrill of things. It suggested

an ant lost in a two-inch high forest of lawn-grass, but it rendered,

too, some of the ant's passionate sense of adventure.

"She 's alive," thought Margaret, laying the letter at last in her lap.

"Dear old Amy, what a wonderful world she lives in! But then, she 'd

furnish any world with complications."

Twenty feet way, Ford had his little easel between his outstretched legs

and was frowning absorbedly from it to the Karoo and back again. Twenty

feet away on her other side, Mr. Samson was crackling a three-weeks-old

copy of _The Morning Post_ into readable dimensions. Before her, across

the railing of the stoep, the Karoo lifted its blind face to the

gathering might of the sun.

"Even this," continued Margaret. "She 'd find this inexhaustible. She

was born with an appetite for life. I seem to have lost mine."

From the great front door emerged to the daylight the solid rotundity of

Fat Mary, billowing forth on flat bare feet and carrying in her hand a

bunch of the long crimson plumes of the aloe, that spiky free-lance of

the veld which flaunts its red cockade above the abomination of

desolation. Fat Mary spied Margaret and came padding towards her, her

smile lighting up her vast black face with the effect of "some great

illumination surprising a festal night."

"For Missis," she remarked, offering the crimson bunch.

Margaret sat up in her chair with an exclamation. "Flowers!" she said.

"Are they flowers? They 're more like great thick feathers. Where did

you get them, Mary?"

Fat Mary giggled awkwardly. "A Kafir bring 'um," she explained. "He

say--for Missis Harding, an' give me a ticky (a threepenny piece).

Fool--that Kafir!"

Margaret stared, holding the fat, fleshy crimson things in her hands.

"Oh!" she said, understanding. "Where is he, Mary? The Kafir, I mean?"

Fat Mary shook her head placidly. "Gone," she said; and waved a great

hand to the utter distance of the heat haze. "That Kafir gone, Missis.

He come before breakfus'; Missis in bed. Say for Missis Harding an'

give me ticky. Fool! Talk English--an' boots!"

She shrugged mightily to express the distrust and contempt she could not

put into words.

"Boots!" she repeated darkly.

"Well," said Margaret, "they 're very pretty, anyhow."

Fat Mary wrinkled her nose. "Stink," she observed. "Missis smell 'em.

Stink like a hell! Missis throw 'um away."

Margaret looked at the stout woman and smiled. Fat Mary's hostility to

the Kafir and the aloe plumes and the ticky was plainly the fruit of

jealousy.

"I won't throw them away yet," she said. "I want to look at them first.

But did you know the Kafir, Mary?"

"Me!" Fat Mary drew herself up. "No, Missis--not know that _skellum_.

Never see him before. What for that Kafir come here, an' bring

stink-flowers to my Missis? An' boots? Fool, that Kafir! _Fool_!"

"All right, Mary," said Margaret, conciliatingly. "Very likely he won't

come again. So never mind this time."

Fat Mary smiled ruefully. Most of her emotions found expressions in

smiles.

"That Kafir come again," she said thoughtfully, "I punch 'im!"

And comforted by this resolve, she retired along the stone stoep and

betook herself once more to her functions indoors.

At his post further along the stoep, Ford was looking up with a smile,

for the sounds of Fat Mary's grievance had reached him. Margaret did

not notice his attention; she was turning over the great bouquet of cold

flaunting flowers which had come to her out of the wilderness, as though

to remind her that at the heart of it there was a voice crying.

Ford's friend was punctual to his promise to arrive for tea. Upon the

stroke of half-past four he reined in his big horse at the foot of the

steps and swung stiffly from the saddle. He came, indeed, with

circumstances of pomp, armed men riding before him and captives padding

in the dust between them. Old Mr. Samson sighted him while he was yet

afar off and cried the news and the others came to look.

"Who 's he got with him?" demanded Mr. Samson, fumbling his papers into

the pockets of his writing case. "Looks like a bally army. Can you see

what it is, Ford?"

Ford was staring with narrowed eyes through the sunshine.

"Yes," he said slowly. "He 's got prisoners. But what 's he bringing

them here for?"

"Prisoners? Oh, do let me look!"

Margaret came to his side and followed his pointing finger with her

eyes. A blot of haze was moving very slowly towards them over the

surface of the ground, and through it as she watched there broke here

and there the shapes of men and horses traveling in that cloud of dust.

"Why, they 're miles away," she exclaimed. "They'll be hours yet."

"Say half-an-hour," suggested Ford, his face still puckered with the

effort to see. "They 're moving briskly, you know. He 's shoving them

along."

"But why prisoners?" enquired Margaret. "What prisoners could he get on

the Karoo? There 's nobody to arrest."

"Van Zyl seems to have found somebody, anyhow," answered Ford. "I had a

glimpse of people on foot. But I can't imagine why he brings 'em here."

"Ask him," suggested Mr. Samson. "What 's your hurry? Wait till he

comes and then ask him."

First Mrs. Jakes and then the doctor joined the spectators on the stoep

as the party drew out of the distance and defined itself as a string of

Kafirs on foot, herded upon their way by five Cape Mounted Police with a

tall young officer riding in the rear. It was a monstrous phenomenon to

emerge thus from the vagueness and mystery of the haze, and Margaret

uttered a sharp exclamation of distress as it came close and showed

itself in all its miserable detail. There were perhaps twenty Kafirs,

men and women both, dusty, lean creatures with the eyes, at once

timorous and untameable, of wild animals. They shuffled along

dejectedly, their feet lifting the dust in spurts and wreaths, their

backs bent to the labor of the journey. Three or four of the men were

handcuffed together, and these made the van of the unhappy body, but

save for these fetters, there was nothing to distinguish one from

another. Their separate individualities seemed merged in a single

slavishness, and as they turned their heads to look at the white people

elevated on the stoep, they showed only a row of white hopeless eyes.

Beside them as they plodded, the tall beautiful horses had a look of

nonchalance and superiority, and the mounted men, bored and thirsty,

looked over their heads as perfunctorily as drovers keeping watch on

docile cattle.

"How horrible!" said Margaret, in a low voice, for the officer, followed

by an orderly, was at the foot of the steps.

The prisoners and their guards did not halt; they continued their way

past the house and on towards the opposite horizon. Their backs, as

they departed, showed gray with clinging dust.

Sub-Inspector Van Zyl, booted and spurred, trim in his dust-smirched

blue uniform, with his holster at his hip and the sling across his tight

chest, lifted his hand in the abrupt motions of a salute as he received

Mrs. Jakes' greeting.

"Kind of you," he said, with a sort of curt cordiality and the least

touch in life of the thick Dutch accent. "Most kind! Tea 's the very

thing I 'd like. Thank you."

At sight of Margaret, grave and young, as different from Mrs. Jakes as

if she had been of another sex, a slight spark lit in his eye for a

moment and there was an even stronger abruptness of formality in his

salute. His curiously direct gaze rested upon her several times during

the administration of tea in the drawing-room, where he sat upright in

his chair, with knees apart, as though he were still astride of a horse.

He was a man made as by design for the wearing of official cloth. His

blunt, neatly-modeled Dutch face, blond as straw where it was not tanned

to the hue of the earth of the Karoo, had the stolid, responsible cast

that is the ensign of military authority. His uniform stood on him like

a skin; and his mere unconsciousness of the spurs on his boots and the

revolver on his hip strengthened his effect of a man habituated to the

panoply and accoutrement of war. Even his manners, precise and ordered

like a military exercise, never slackened into humanity; the Dutch

Sub-Inspector of Cape Mounted Police might have been a Prussian

Lieutenant with the eyes of the world on him.

"Timed myself to get here for tea," he explained to Ford. "Just managed

it, though. Hot work traveling, to-day."

Hotter, thought Margaret, for those of his traveling companions who had

no horses under them, and who would not arrive anywhere in time for tea.

"You seem to have made a bag," replied Ford. "What 's been the trouble?"

"Fighting and looting," answered Sub-Inspector Van Zyl carelessly. "A

row between two kraals, you know, and a man killed."

"Any resistance?" enquired Ford.

"A bit," said Van Zyl. "My sergeant got his head split open with an

axe. Those niggers in the south are an ugly lot and they 'll always

fight. You see, it 's only about twenty years ago they were at war with

us; it 'll need another twenty to knock the fighting tradition out of

'em."

"They looked meek enough as they passed," remarked Ford. "There didn't

seem to be a kick left among them."

Van Zyl nodded over the brim of his tea-cup. "There isn't," he said

shortly. "They 've had the kick taken out of 'em."

He drank imperturbably, and Margaret had a momentary blurred vision of

defeated, captured Kafirs in the process of having the kick extracted

from them and the serene, fair-haired sub-inspector superintending its

removal with unruffled, professional calm.

"Been here long, Miss Harding?"

Van Zyl addressed her suddenly across the room.

"Not quite long enough to understand," she replied. "Did you say those

poor creatures were fighting--among themselves?"

"Yes."

"But why?" she persisted. "What did they fight for?"

He shrugged his neat shoulders. "Why does a Kafir do anything?" he

enquired. "They told a cock-and-bull story that seems to be getting

fashionable among them of late, about a son of one of their old chiefs

appearing among them dressed like a white man. He went from kraal to

kraal, talking English and giving money, and at one kraal the headman,

an old chap who used to be a native constable of ours, actually seems to

have laid his stick across some wandering nigger who couldn't explain

what he wanted. The next kraal heard of this, and decided at once that

a chief had been insulted, and the next thing was a fight and the old

headman with an assegai through him. But if you want my opinion, Miss

Harding--it does n't make such a good story, but I 've had to do with

niggers all my life--"

"Yes?" said Margaret. "Tell me."

"Well," said Van Zyl, "my opinion is that if the old headman had n't

been the owner of twelve head of cattle, all ready to be stolen, he

might have gone on whacking stray Kafirs all his life without hurting

anybody's feelings."

"Except theirs," suggested Mr. Samson. "Hah, ha! Except the chaps that

he whacked--what?"

"Quite so!" Sub-Inspector Van Zyl smiled politely. "He was a vigorous

old gentleman, and rather given to laying about him with anything that

came handy. Probably picked up the habit in the police; the Kafir

constables are always pretty rough with people of their own color.

Anyhow, he 's done for; they drove a stabbing assegai clean through him

and pinned him to a post of his own hut. I think I 've got the nigger

that did it."

Mrs. Jakes at the tea-table shook her skirts applaudingly. At any rate,

the rustle of them as she shook came in like applause at the tail of the

sub-inspector's narrative.

"He ought to be hanged," she said.

"He will be," said the sub-inspector. "But we 're not at the bottom of

it yet. There is a fellow, so far as I can find out, coming and going

on the Karoo, dressed in clothes and talking a sort of English. He 's

the man I want."

"What for?" demanded Margaret, and knew that she had spoken too sharply.

Van Zyl seemed to remark it, too, for his eye dwelt on her inquiringly

for a couple of seconds before he replied.

"It'll probably be sedition," he replied. "The whole lot of 'em are

uneasy down in the south there and we 're strengthening our posts. No!"

he said, to Mrs. Jakes' exclamation; "there 's no danger. Not the

slightest danger. But if we could just lay hands on that wandering

nigger who talks English--"

He left the sentence unfinished, and his nod signified that dire

experiences awaited the elusive Kafir when he should come into the

strong hands of authority. The Cape Mounted Police, he replied, would

cure him of his eccentricities.

He passed on to talk with Ford and Mrs. Jakes about common

acquaintances, officers in the police and the Rifles and people who

lived in Dopfontein, sixty miles away, and belonged to a tennis club.

Then the sound of the softly-closing door advertised them of the tiptoe

departure of Dr. Jakes, and soon afterwards Van Zyl rose and announced

that he must leave to overtake his party.

"If you can come to Dopfontein, Miss Harding," he said, as he took his

leave, "hope you 'll let me know. Decent little place; we 'll try to

amuse you."

The orderly, refreshed but dusty still, came quickly to attention as the

sub-inspector appeared in the doorway, and his pert cockney face took on

the blankness proper to discipline. At a window above, Fat Mary shed

admiring glances upon him, and a certain rigor of demeanor might have

been taken to indicate that the warrior was not unconscious of them. He

looked back over his shoulder as he cantered off in the wake of the

sub-inspector.

"What 's the trouble?" asked Ford, discreetly, as the sun-warmed dust

fluffed up and enveloped the riders in a soft cloud of bronze.

Margaret turned impatiently from looking after them.

"I hate cruelty," she said, irritably.

Ford looked at her shrewdly. "Of course you do," he said. "But Van

Zyl's not cruel. What he said is true; he 's been among Kafirs all his

life."

"And learned nothing," retorted Margaret. "It 's beastly; it's just

beastly. He can't even think they ever mean well; they only fight to

steal, according to him. And then he 'takes the kick out of them!'

Some day he 'll work himself up to crucify one of them."

"Hold on," said Ford. "You mustn't get excited; you know, Jakes doesn't

allow it. And you 're really not quite just to Van Zyl."

"Isn't he proud of it?" asked Margaret scornfully.

"I wonder," said Ford. "But it 's just as likely he 's proud of

policing a smallpox district single-handed and playing priest and nurse

when he was only paid to be jailer and executioner. He got his

promotion for that."

"Mr. Van Zyl did that?" asked Margaret incredulously. "Did he arrange to

have the deaths over in time for tea?"

Ford laughed shortly. "You must ask him," he replied. "He 'll probably

say he did. He 's very fond of tea. But at any rate, he sees as much

downright hard fighting in a year as a man in the army might see in a

lifetime and--" he looked at Margaret out of the corners of his

eyes--"the Kafirs swear by him."

"The Kafirs do?" asked Margaret incredulously.

"They swear by him," Ford assured her. "You try Fat Mary some time; she

'll tell you."

"Oh, well," said Margaret; "I don't know. Things are beastly, anyhow,

and I don't know which is worse--cruelty to Kafirs or the Kafirs'

apparent enjoyment of it. That man has made me miserable."

Ford frowned. "Don't be miserable," he said, awkwardly. "I hate to

think you 're unhappy. You know," he went on, more fluently as an

argument opened out ahead of him, "you 've no business really to concern

yourself with such things. You don't belong among them. You 're a bird

of passage, just perching for a moment on your way through, and you

mustn't eat the local worms. It 's poaching."

"There 's nothing else to eat," replied Margaret lugubriously.

"You should have brought your knitting," said Ford. "You really should!

Capital thing for staying the pangs of hunger, knitting!"

"Thank you," said Margaret. "You 're very good. But I prefer worms.

Not so cloying, you know!"

She did not, however, act upon Ford's suggestion to ask Fat Mary about

the sub-inspector. Even as rats are said to afford the means of travel

to the bacillus of bubonic plague, it is probable that the worms of a

country furnish vehicles for native prejudices and habits of mind. At

any rate, when Margaret surveyed Fat Mary, ballooning about the room and

creased with gaiety, there came to her that sense of the impropriety of

discussing a white man with her handmaid which is at the root of South

African etiquette.

"Them flowers gone," announced Fat Mary tranquilly, when Margaret was in

bed and she was preparing to depart.

"Gone! Where?" asked Margaret.

"I throw 'um away," was the contented answer. "Stink--pah! So I throw

'um. Goo' night, missis."

*CHAPTER VIII*

"Don't you some times feel," asked Margaret, "as though dullness had

gone as far as it possibly can go, and something surprising simply must

happen soon?"

Ford glanced cautiously about him before he answered.

"Lots of things might happen any minute to some of us," he said. "You

haven't been ill enough to know, but we are n't all keen for surprises."

It was evening, and the big lamp that hung from the ceiling in the

middle of the drawing-room breathed a faint fragrance of paraffin upon

the inhabitants of the Sanatorium assembled beneath it. From the piano

which stood against the wall, Mrs. Jakes had removed its usual load of

photographs and ornamental pottery, and now, with her back to her fellow

creatures, was playing the intermezzo from "Cavalleria Rusticana." Her

small hands moving upon the keys showed the red knuckles and uneven

nails which had come to her since first she learned that composition

within earshot of the diapason of trains passing by Clapham Junction,

mightily challenging her laborious tinkle-tinkle, and with as little

avail as now the night of the Karoo challenged it. Like her gloves and

her company manners, it stood between her shrinking spirit and those

poignant realities which might otherwise have overthrown her. So when

she came to the end of it she turned back the pages of the score which

was propped before her, and without glancing at the notes, played it

through again.

"For instance," whispered Ford, under cover of the music; "look at

Jakes. He carries a catastrophe about with him, don't you think?"

The doctor was ranging uneasily to and fro on the hearth-rug, where the

years of his exile were recorded in patches worn bare by his feet.

There was already a change to be remarked in him since Margaret had

first made his acquaintance; some of his softness and appealing

guiltiness was gone and he was a little more desperate and unresponsive.

She had mentioned this once to Ford, who had frowned and replied, "Yes,

he 's showing the strain." She looked at him now covertly. He was

walking to and fro before the empty fireplace with quick, unequal steps

and the fingers of one hand fidgeted about his mouth. His eyes,

flickering back and forth, showed an almost frantic impatience; poor

Mrs. Jakes' melodious noises that smoothed balm upon her soul were

evidently making havoc with his nerves. He seemed to have forgotten, in

the stress of his misery, that others were present to see him and enter

his disordered demeanor upon their lists of his shortcomings. As he

faced towards her, Margaret saw the sideward sag of his mouth under his

meager, fair mustache and the panic of his white eyeball upturned. His

decent black clothes only accentuated the strangeness of him.

"He looks dreadful," she said; "dreadful. Oughtn't you to go to him--or

something?"

"No use." Ford shook his head. "_I_ know. But I wish he 'd go to his

study, all the same. If he stays here he may break down."

"Why doesn't he go?" asked Margaret.

"He can't make up his mind. He 's at that stage when to decide to do

anything is an effort. And yet the chap 's suffering for the only thing

that will give his nerves relief. Can't help pitying him, in spite of

everything, when you see him like that."

"Pitying him--yes," agreed Margaret. Mrs. Jakes with her foot on the

soft pedal, was beginning the intermezzo again for the fifth time and

slurring it dreamily to accord with her brief mood of contentment and

peace.

"You know," Margaret went on, "it 's awfully queer, really, that I

should be in the same room with a man in that condition. Three months

ago, I couldn't have borne it. Except sometimes on the streets, I don't

think I 'd ever seen a drunken man. I must have changed since then in

some way."

"Learned something, perhaps," suggested Ford. "But you were saying you

found things dull. Well, it just struck me that you 'd only got to lift

up your eyes to see the makings of a drama, and while you 're looking

on, your lungs are getting better. Aren't you a bit hard to satisfy?"

"Am I? I wonder." They were seated at opposite ends of a couch which

faced them to the room, and the books which they had

abandoned--loose-backed, much-handled novels from the doctor's inelastic

stock of literature--lay face down between them. Margaret looked across

them at Ford with a smile; he had always a reasonable answer to her

complainings.

"You don't take enough stock in human nature," he said seriously. "Too

fastidious--that's what you are, and it makes you miss a lot."

"Perhaps you 're right," she answered. "I 've been thinking something

of the kind myself. A letter I had--from a girl at home--put it in my

mind. She writes me six sheets all about the most trivial and futile

things you can imagine, but she speaks of them with bated breath, as it

were. If only she were here instead of me, she 'd be simply thrilled.

I wish you knew her."

"I wish I did," he said. "I 've always had an idea that the good

Samaritan was a prying, inquisitive kind of chap, and that 's really

what made him cross the road to the other fellow. He wanted to know

what was up, in the first place, and the rest followed."

"Whereas--" prompted Margaret. "Go on. What 's the moral?"

Ford laughed. "The moral is that there 's plenty to see if you only

look for it," he answered.

"I 've seen one thing, at any rate, without looking for it, since I 've

been here," retorted Margaret. "Something you don't know anything about,

Mr. Ford."

"What was that?" he demanded. "Nothing about Jakes, was it?"

"No; nothing about him."

She hesitated. She had it in her mind to speak to him about the Kafir,

Kamis, and share with him that mystery in return for the explanations

which he could doubtless give of its less comprehensible features. But

at that moment Mrs. Jakes ceased playing and began to put the score

away.

"I 'll tell you another time," she promised, and picked up her book

again.

The cessation of the music seemed to release Dr. Jakes from the spell

which had been holding him. He stopped walking to and fro and strove to

master himself for the necessary moment before his departure. He turned

a writhen, twitching face on his wife.

"You played it again and again," he said, with a sort of dull

resentment.

Mrs. Jakes looked up at him swiftly, with fear in her eyes.

"Don't you like it, Eustace?" she asked.

He only stared without answering, and she went on speaking hurriedly to

cover him.

"It always seems to me such a sweet piece," she said. "So haunting.

Don't you think so, Miss Harding? I 've always liked it. I remember

there was a tea-room in Oxford Street where they used to have a band in

the afternoons--just fiddles and a piano--and they used to play it

there. Many 's the time I 've dropped in for a cup of tea when I was

shopping--not for the tea but just to sit and listen. Their tea wasn't

good, for the matter of that, but lots of people went, all the same.

Tyler's, was the name, I remember now. Do you know Tyler's, Miss

Harding?"

She was making it easy for the doctor to get away, after his custom, but

either the enterprise of making a move was too difficult for him or else

an unusual perversity possessed him. At any rate, he did not go. He

stood listening with an owlish intentness to her nervous babble.

"I know Tyler's very well," answered Margaret, coming to her aid.

"Jolly useful place it is, too. But I don't remember the band."

"_I_ used to go to the Queen's Hall," put in Dr. Jakes hoarsely.

"Monday afternoons, when I could get away. And afterwards, have dinner

in Soho."

From the window, where Mr. Samson lay in an armchair in apparent torpor,

came a wheeze, and the single word, "Simpson's."

Margaret laughed. "How sumptuous," she said. "Now, Mr. Ford, you tell

us where you used to go."

"Club," answered Ford, promptly. "I had to have something for my

subscription, you know, so I went there and read the papers."

Mrs. Jakes was watching her husband anxiously, while Ford and Margaret

took up the burden of inconsequent talk and made a screen of

trivialities for her. But to-night Dr. Jakes needed expression as much

as whisky; there was the hopeless, ineffectual anger of a baited animal

in his stare as he faced them.

"Why aren't any of you looking at me?" he said suddenly.

None answered; only Mr. Samson sat up on his creaking armchair of

basketwork with an amazed, "Eh? What 's that?" Margaret stared

helplessly and Mrs. Jakes, white-faced and tense, murmured imploringly,

"Eustace."

"Dodging with your eyes and babbling about tea-shops," said the doctor

hotly. "You think, because a man 's a bit--"

"Eustace," cried Mrs. Jakes, clasping her hands. "Eustace _dear_."

It was wonderful to notice how her habit of tone held good in that peril

which whitened her face and made her tremble from head to foot as she

stood. From her voice alone, one would have implied no more than some

playful extravagance on the doctor's part; she still hoped that it could

be carried off on the plane of small affairs.

"You would go out without a proper hat on, Jakes," said Ford suddenly.

"Feel stuffy in the head, don't you?"

"What do you mean--stuffy?" demanded Jakes.

But already the vigor that had spurred him to a demonstration was

exhausted and the need for alcohol, the burning physical famine for

nerve-reinforcement, had him in its grip.

"Stuffy?" repeated Ford, watching him closely. "Oh, you know what I

mean. I 've seen chaps like it heaps of times after a day in the sun;

they get the queerest fancies. You really ought to get a proper hat,

though."

Mrs. Jakes took him by the arm persuasively. "Don't you think you 'd

better lie down for a bit, Eustace--in the study?"

"In the study?" He blinked twice or thrice painfully, and made an

endeavor to smile. "Yes, perhaps. This--er--stuffy feeling, you

know--yes."

His wife's arm steered him to the door, and once out of the room he

dropped it and fairly bolted across the echoing hall to his refuge. In

the drawing-room they heard his eager feet and the slam of the door that

shut him in to his miserable deliverance from pain, and the double snap

of the key that locked out the world and its censorious eyes.

"You--you just managed it," said Margaret to Ford. The queer

inconsequent business had left her rather breathless. "But wasn't it

horrible?"

"Some day we shan't be able to talk him down, and then it 'll be worse,"

answered Ford soberly. "That 'll be the end for Mrs. Jakes' home. But

you played up all right, you know. You did the decent thing, and in

just the right way. And I was glad, because, you know, I 've never been

quite sure how you 'd shape."

"You thought I 'd scream for help, I suppose," suggested Margaret.

"No," he replied slowly. "But I often wondered whether, when the time

came, you 'd go to your room or stay and lend a hand. Not that you

wouldn't be quite right to stand out, for it 's a foul business, all

this, and there 's nothing pretty in it. Still, taking sides is a sign

of life in one's body--and I 'm glad."

"That's all right, then," said Margaret. "And it 's enough about me for

the present, too. You said that some day it won't be possible any more

to talk him down. Did you mean--some day _soon_?"

"Goodness knows," said Ford. He leaned back and turned his head to look

over the back of the couch at Mr. Samson. "Samson," he called.

"Yes; what?"

"That was bad, eh! What's the meaning of it?"

Mr. Samson blew out his breath windily and uncrossed his thin legs.

"Don't care to go into it before Miss Harding," he said pointedly.

"Oh, bother," exclaimed Margaret. "Don't you think I want to know too?"

"Well, then," said Mr. Samson, with careful deliberation, "since you ask

me, I 'd say it was a touch of the horrors casting its shadow before.

He doesn't exactly see things, y' know, but that 's what 's coming.

Next thing he knows, he 'll see snakes or cuttle-fish or rats all round

the room and he 'll--he 'll gibber. Sorry, Miss Harding, but you wanted

to know."

"But--but--" Margaret stared aghast at the feeble, urbane old man

asprawl in the wicker chair, who spoke with genial authority on these

matters of shadowy horror. "But how can you possibly know all this?"

Mr. Samson smiled. He considered it fitting and rather endearing that a

young woman should be ignorant of such things and easily shocked when

they were revealed.

"Seen it all before, my dear young lady," he assured her. "It 's

natural you should be surprised, but it's not so uncommon as you think.

Why, I remember, once, in '87, a feller gettin' out of a cab because he

said there was a bally great python there--a feller I knew; a member of

Parliament."

Margaret looked at Ford, who nodded.

"He knows all right," he said, quietly. "But I don't think you need be

nervous. When it comes to that, we 'll have to do something."

"I 'm not nervous--not in that way, at least," said Margaret.

"Only--must it come to that? Isn't there anything that can be done?"

"If we got a doctor here, the chances are he 'd report the matter to the

authorities," said Ford. "This place is licensed or certified or

something, and that would be the end of it. And then, even if there

wasn't that, it isn't easy to put the matter to Mrs. Jakes."

"I--I suppose not," agreed Margaret thoughtfully. "Still, if you decided

it was necessary--you and Mr. Samson--I 'd be willing to help as far as

I could. I wouldn't like to see Mrs. Jakes suffer for lack of anything

I could do."

"That's good of you," answered Ford. "I mean--good of you, really. We

won't leave you out of it when the time comes, because we shall need

you."

"Always knew Miss Harding was a sportsman," came unexpectedly from Mr.

Samson in the rear. And then the handle of the door, which was loose

and arbitrary in its workings, rattled warningly and Mrs. Jakes

re-appeared.

She made a compunctious mouth, and expressed with headshakes a sense

that all was not well, though perfectly natural and proper, with the

doctor. Her eyes seemed rather to dwell on Margaret as she gave her

bulletin.

"Mr. Ford was perfectly right about the hat," she said. "Perfectly

right. He ought to have one of those white ones with a pugaree. He

never was really strong, you know, and the sun goes to his head at once.

But what can I do? He simply won't listen to me when I tell him we

ought to go Home. The number of times I 've said to him, 'Eustace, give

it up; it 's killing you, Eustace,'--you wouldn't believe. But he 's

lying down now, and I think he 'll be better presently."

Mr. Samson spoke again from the background. He didn't believe in

hitting a man when he was down, Mr. Samson didn't.

"Better have that pith helmet of mine," he suggested. "That 's the thing

for him, Mrs. Jakes. No sense in losin' time while you 're writin' to

hatters--what?"

"You 're very good, Mr. Samson," answered Mrs. Jakes, gratefully,

pausing by the piano. "I 'll mention it to the doctor in the morning; I

'm sure he 'll be most obliged. He 's--he 's greatly troubled, in case

any of you should feel--well--annoyed, you know, at anything he said."

"Poor Dr. Jakes," said Margaret. "Of course not," chorused the others.

"Don't know what he means," added Mr. Samson.

Mrs. Jakes looked from one to another, collecting their responses and

reassuring herself.

"He 'll be so glad," she said. "And now, I wonder--would you mind if I

just played the intermezzo a little again?"

The easy gradual cadences of the music resumed its government of the

room as Mrs. Jakes called up images of less poignant days to aid her in

her extremity, sitting under the lamplight very upright and little upon

the pedestal stool. For the others also, those too familiar strains

induced a mood of reflection, and Margaret fell back on a word of Ford's

that had grappled at her mind and fallen away again. His mention of the

need of a doctor and the difficulty of obtaining one who could be relied

upon to keep a shut mouth concerning Dr. Jakes' affairs returned to her,

and brought with it the figure of Kamis, mute, inglorious, with his

London diploma, wasting his skill and knowledge literally on the desert

air. While Mrs. Jakes, quite involuntarily, recalled the flavor of the

music-master of years ago, who played of nights a violin in the

orchestra of the Putney Hippodrome and carried a Bohemian glamour about

him on his daily rounds, Margaret's mind was astray in the paths of the

Karoo where wandered under the stars, unaccountable and heartrending, a

healer clothed with the flesh and skin of tragedy. She remembered him

as she had seen him, below the dam wall, with Paul hanging on his words

and the humble clay gathering shape under his hands, lifting his blunt

negro face to her and speaking in deliberate, schooled English of how it

fared in Africa with a black man who was not a savage. He had thanked

her then very movingly for merely hearing him and being touched by the

pity and strangeness of his fate, and had promised to come to her

whenever she should signify a wish to speak with him again. The wish

was not wanting, but the opportunity had failed, and since then the only

token of him had been the scarlet aloe plumes, fruit of the desert

gathered in loneliness, which he had conveyed to her by the hands of Fat

Mary. Like himself, they came to her unexpected and unexplained, and

she had had them only long enough to know they existed.

Her promise to Kamis to keep her acquaintance with him a secret had

withheld her so far from sharing the matter with Ford, though she told

herself more than once that in his particular case the promise could not

apply. With him she was sure there could be no risk; he would take his

stand on the clear facts of the situation and be free from the first

from the silly violence of thought which complicates the racial question

in South Africa. She had even pictured to herself his reception of the

news, when he received it, say, across the top of his little easel; he

would pause, the palette knife between his fingers, and frown

consideringly at the sticky mess before him on the canvas. His lean,

sober, courageous face would give no index to the direction of his mind;

he would put it to the test of his queer, sententious logic with all due

deliberation, till at last he would look up decidedly and commit himself

to the reasonable and human attitude of mind. "As I see it," he would

probably begin; or "Well, the position 's pretty clear, I think. It 's

like this." And then he would state the matter with all his harsh,

youthful wisdom, tempered a little by natural kindliness and gentleness

of heart. And all would be well, with a confidant gained into the

bargain. But, nevertheless, he had not yet been told.

Mrs. Jakes was perfunctory, that evening with her good nights; with all

her efforts to appear at ease the best she could do was to appear a

little absent-minded. She gave Margaret her breakfast smile instead of

her farewell one and stared at her curiously as she stood aside to let

the girl pass up-stairs. She had the air of passing her in review.

It seemed to Margaret that she had been asleep for many hours when she

was awakened and found the night still dark about her. Some blurred

fragments of a dream still clung to her and dulled her wits; she had

watched again the passing before the stoep of Van Zyl's captives and

seen their dragging feet lift the dust and the hopelessness of their

white eyes. But with them, the mounted men seemed to ride to the

accompaniment of hoofs clattering as they do not clatter on the dry

earth of the Karoo; they clicked insistently like a cab horse trotting

smartly on wood pavement, and then, when that had barely headed off her

thoughts and let her glimpse a far vista of long evening streets,

populous with traffic, she was awake and sitting up in her bed, and the

noise was Mrs. Jakes standing in the half-open door and tapping on the

panels to wake her. She carried a candle which showed her face in an

unsteady, upward illumination and filled it unfamiliarly with shadows.

"What is it?" called Margaret. "Come in, Mrs. Jakes. Is there anything

wrong?"

Mrs. Jakes entered and closed the door behind her. She was fully dressed

still, even to the garnet brooch she wore of evenings, which she had

once purchased from a countess at a bazaar. Stranger far, she wore an

embarrassed, confidential little smile as though some one had turned a

laugh against her. She came to Margaret's bedside and stood there with

her candle.

"My dear," she said; "I know it's very awkward, but I feel I can trust

you. We are friends, aren't we?"

"Yes," said Margaret, staring at her. "But what is it?"

"Well," said Mrs. Jakes, very deliberately, and still with the same

little smile, "it 's an awkward thing, but I want you to help me. I

don't care to ask Mr. Samson or Mr. Ford, because they might not

understand. So, as we 're friends--"

"Is anybody dead?" demanded Margaret.

Mrs. Jakes made a shocked face. "Dead. No. My dear, if that was it,

you may be sure I should n't trouble you. No, nobody 's dead; it 's

nothing of that kind at all. I only just want a little help, and I

thought--"

"You 're making me nervous," said Margaret. "I 'll help if I can, but

do say what it is."

Mrs. Jakes' smile wavered; she did not find it easy to say what it was.

She put her candle down upon a chair, to speak without the strain of

light on her face.

"It's the doctor," she said. "He's had a--a fit, my dear. He thought a

little fresh air would do him good and he went out. And the fact is, I

can't quite manage to get him in by myself."

"Eh?" Margaret stared. "Where is he?" she asked.

"He got as far as the road and then he fell," said Mrs. Jakes. "I

wouldn't dream of troubling you, my dear, but I 'm--I 'm rather tired

to-night and I really couldn't manage by myself. And then I remembered

we were friends."

"Not till then?" asked Margaret. "You don't care to wake Mr. Ford? He

wouldn't misunderstand."

"Oh, no--please," begged Mrs. Jakes, terrified. "No, _please_. I 'd

rather manage alone, somehow--I would, really."

"You can't do that," said Margaret, decidedly. She sat a space of

moments in thought. The doctor's fit did not deceive her at all; she

knew that for one of the euphemisms that made Mrs. Jakes' life livable

to her. He was drunk and incapable upon the road before the house, and

Mrs. Jakes, helpless and frightened, had waked her in the middle of the

night to help bring the drunken man in and hide him.

"I 'll help you," she said suddenly. "Don't you worry any more, Mrs.

Jakes; we 'll manage it somehow. Let me get some things on and we 'll

go out."

"It 's very kind of you, my dear," said Mrs. Jakes humbly. "You 'll put

some warm things on, won't you? The doctor would never forgive me if I

let you catch cold."

Margaret was fumbling for her stockings.

"I 'm not very strong, you know," she suggested. "I 'll do all I can,

but hadn't we better call Fat Mary? She 's strong enough for anything."

"Fat Mary! A Kafir!" Mrs. Jakes forgot her caution and for the moment

was shrill with protest. "Why--why, the doctor would never hold up his

head again. It wouldn't do at _all_; I simply couldn't _think_ of it."

"Oh, well. As you like; I did n't know. Here 's me, anyhow; and

awfully willing to be useful."

But Mrs. Jakes had been startled in earnest. While Margaret completed a

sketchy toilet she stood murmuring: "A Kafir! Why, the very idea--it

would break the doctor's heart."

With her dressing-gown held close about her, Margaret went down-stairs

by the side of Mrs. Jakes and her candle, with the abrupt shadows

prancing before them on wall and ceiling like derisive spectators of

their enterprise. But there was no sense of adventure in it; somehow

the matter had ranged itself prosaically and Mrs. Jakes, prim and

controlled, managed to throw over it the commonplace hue of an

undertaking which is adequately chaperoned. The big hall, solemn and

reserved, had no significant emptiness, and from the study there was

audible the ticking of some stolid little clock.

The front door of the house was open, and a faint wind entered by it and

made Margaret shiver; it showed them a slice of night framed between its

posts and two misty still stars like vacant eyes.

"It 's not far," said Mrs. Jakes, on the stoep, and then the faint wind

rustled for a moment in the dead vines and the candle-flame swooped and

went out.

"You haven't matches, my dear?" enquired Mrs. Jakes, patiently. "No?

But we 'll want a light. I could fetch a lantern if you wouldn't mind

waiting. I think I know where it is."

"All right," agreed Margaret. "I don't mind."

It was the first thrill of the business, to be left alone while Mrs.

Jakes tracked that lantern to its hiding-place. Margaret slowly

descended the steps from the stoep and sat down on the lowest of them to

look at the night. There was a touch of chill in it, and she gathered

herself up closely, with her hands clasped around her knees. The wide

sleeves of the dressing-gown fell back and left her arms bare to the

elbow and the recurring wind, like a cold breath, touched her on the

chest where the loose robe parted. The immensity of the night, veiling

with emptiness unimaginable bare miles, awed her like a great presence;

there was no illumination, or none but the faintest, making darkness

only apparent, from the heavenful of pale blurred stars that hung over

her. Behind her, the house with those it held was dumb; it was the Karoo

that was vocal. As she sat, a score of voices pressed upon her ears.

She heard chirpings and little furtive cries, the far hoot of some bold

bird and by and by the heartbroken wailing of a jackal. She seemed to

sit at the edge of a great arena of unguessed and unsuspected destinies,

fighting their way to their fulfilment in the hours of darkness. And

then suddenly, she was aware of a noise recurring regularly, a civilized

and familiar noise, the sound of footsteps, of somebody walking on the

earth near at hand.

She heard it before she recognized it for what it was, and she was not

alarmed. The footsteps came close before she spoke.

"Is anybody there, please?" she called.

The answer came at once. "Yes," it said.

"Who is it?" she asked again, and in answer to her question, the

night-walker loomed into her view and stood before her.

She rose to her feet with a little breathless laugh, for she recognized

him.

"Oh, it 's you," she exclaimed. "Mr. Kamis, isn't it? But what are you

doing here at this time of night?"

It was not light enough to see his face; she had recognized him by the

figure and attitude; and she was glad. She was aware then that she

rather dreaded the negro face of him.

"What are you doing, rather?" he asked. "Does anybody know you 're out

here like this? Is it part of some silly treatment, or what?"

"I 'm waiting for Mrs. Jakes," said Margaret. "She 's coming with a

lantern in a minute or two and you 'll have to go. It's all right,

though; I shan't take any harm."

"I hope not." He was plainly dissatisfied, and it was very strange to

catch the professional restraint in his voice. "Your being here--if I

may ask--hasn't got anything to do with a very drunk man lying in the

road over there?"

"You 've seen him, then?" asked Margaret. "It is just drunkenness, of

course?"

He nodded. "But why--?" he began again.

"That's Dr. Jakes," explained Margaret. "And I 'm going to help Mrs.

Jakes to fetch him in, quietly, so that nobody will know. So you see

why you must keep very quiet and slip away before she sees you--don't

you?"

There was a pause before he answered.

"But, good Lord," he burst out. "This is--this is damnable. You can't

have a hand in this kind of thing; it 's impossible. What on earth are

these people thinking of? You mustn't let them drag you into

beastliness of this kind."

"Wait," said Margaret. "Don't be so furious. Nobody is dragging me into

anything, and I don't think I 'm a very draggable person, anyhow. I 'd

only to be a little shocked once or twice and I should never have heard

of this. I 'm doing it because--well, because I want to be useful and

Mrs. Jakes came to me and asked, 'Was I her friend?' That isn't very

clear to you, perhaps, but there it is."

"Useful." He repeated the word scornfully. "Useful--yes. But do you

mean that this is the only use they can find for you?"

"I 'm an invalid," said Margaret placidly. "A crock, you know. I 've

got to take what chances I can find of doing things. But it 's no use

explaining such a thing as this. If you 're not going to understand and

be sympathetic, don't let 's talk about it at all."

He did not at once reply. She stood on the last step but one and looked

down towards him where he stood like a part of the night, and though she

could see of him only the shape, she showed to him as a tall

slenderness, with the faint luminosity of bare arms and face and neck.

He seemed to be staring at her very intently.

"Anyhow," he said suddenly--"what is wanted principally is to bring him

in. That is so, is n't it? Well, I 'll fetch him for you. Will you be

satisfied with that?"

"No, you mustn't," said Margaret. "Mrs. Jakes wouldn't allow it. Never

mind why. She simply wouldn't."

"I know why," he answered. "I 've come across all that before. But

this Kafir has seen the state of that white man. That does n't make any

difference? No?"

Margaret had shaken her head. "I 'm awfully sorry," she said. "I feel

like a brute--but if you had seen her when I suggested getting help. It

was the one thing that terrified her. You see, it 's her I want to

help, much more than Dr. Jakes, and she must have her way. So please

don't be hurt, will you?"

He laughed a little. "Oh, _that_ doesn't hurt me," he said. "If it

were you, it would be different, but Mrs. Jakes can't help it.

However--do you know where this man keeps his drugs?"

"In the study," answered Margaret. "In there, on the left. But why?"

"I 'm a doctor too; you 'd forgotten that, had n't you? If I had two or

three things I could mix something that would sober him in a couple of

minutes."

"Really?" Margaret considered it for a minute, but even that would not

do. She could not bring herself to brave Mrs. Jakes' horror and sense

of betrayal when she should see the deliverer who came out of the night.

And, after all, it was she who had claimed Margaret's help. "We're

friends, aren't we?" she had asked, and the girl had answered "Yes." It

was not the part of a friend to press upon her a gift that tasted

pungently of ruin and shame.

"No," said Margaret. "Don't offer any more help, please. It hurts to

keep on refusing it. But it isn't what Mrs. Jakes woke me up to beg of

me and it isn't what I got up from bed to grant her. Can't you see what

I mean? I 've told you all about it, and I 'm trusting you to

understand."

"I understand," he answered. "But I hate to let you go down to that

drunken beast. And suppose the pair of you can't manage him--what will

you do then? You 'll have to get help somewhere, won't you?"

"I suppose so," said Margaret.

"Well, get me," he urged, and came a pace nearer, so that only the width

of the two bottom steps separated them and she could feel his breath

upon the hands that hung clasped before her. "Let me help, if you need

it," he begged. "I 'll wait, out of sight. Mrs. Jakes shan't guess I 'm

there. But I won't be far, and if you just call quietly, I 'll hear.

It--it would be kind of you--merciful to let me bear just a hand. And

if you don't call, I 'll not show myself. There can't be any harm in

that."

"No," agreed Margaret, uncertainly. "There can't be any harm in that."

She saw that he moved abruptly, and had an impression that he made some

gesture almost of glee. But he thanked her in quiet tones for her grace

of consent.

Mrs. Jakes, returning, found Margaret as she had left her. She had in

her hand one of those stable lanterns which consist of a glass funnel

protected by a wire cage, and she spilled its light about her feet as

she went and walked in a shifting ring of light through a darkness made

more opaque by the contrast. There was visible of her chiefly her worn

elastic-sided boots as she came down the steps with the lantern swinging

in her hand; and the little feet in those uncomely coverings were

somehow appealing and pathetic.

"I found it in Fat Mary's room," she explained. "She nearly woke up when

I was taking it."

Margaret wondered whether Kamis were near enough to hear and acute

enough to picture the tiptoe search for the lantern by the bedside of

snoring Kafirs, the breathless halts when one stirred, the determination

that carried the quest through, and the prosaic matter-of-factness of it

all.

They stumbled their way arm in arm across the spit of patched grass that

stood between the house and the road, and the lantern diffused about

them a yellow haze. Then their feet recognized soft loose dust and they

were on the road and moving along it.

"It is n't far," said Mrs. Jakes, in her flat quiet voice. "Be careful,

my dear; there are sometimes snakes on the road at night."

Dr. Jakes was apparent first as an indeterminate bulk against the dust

that spread before them under the lantern. Mrs. Jakes saw him first.

"He has n't moved," she remarked. "I was rather afraid he might have.

These fits, you know--he 's had them before."

She stood at his head, with the lantern held before her, like a sentinel

at a lying-in-state, and the whole unloveliness of his slumbers was

disclosed. He sprawled upon the road in his formal black clothes, with

one arm outstretched and his face upturned to the grave innocence of the

night. It had not the cast of repose; he seemed to have carried his

torments with him to his couch of dust and to brood upon them under his

mask of sleep. What was ghastly was the eyelids which were not fully

shut down, but left bare a thin line of white eyeball under each, and

touched the broken countenance with deathliness. His coat, crumpled

about him and over him, gave an impression of a bloated and corpulent

body, and he was stained from head to foot with dust.

Mrs. Jakes surveyed him without emotion.

"He 's undone his collar, anyhow," she remarked.

"Did n't you do it?" asked Margaret, seeing the white ends that rose on

each side of his chin.

"No; I forgot," was the answer. "He can't be very bad, since he did

that."

Margaret detected the hand of Kamis in this precaution. She said

nothing, but stooped with Mrs. Jakes to try to rouse the doctor. The

sickening reek of the man's breath affronted her as she bent over him.

Mrs. Jakes shook him and called on him by name in a loud half-whisper,

lowering her face close to his ear. She was persuasive, remonstrant; she

had the manner of reasoning briskly with him and rousing him to better

ways.

"Eustace, Eustace," she called, hushing her tones as though the night

and the desert were perilous with ears. "Come, Eustace; you can get up

if you try. Make just one effort, now, and you 'll be all right."

The gurgle of his breath was the only answer.

"We 'll have to lift him," she said, staring across his body at

Margaret.

"All right," agreed the girl.

"Get hold of his right arm and I 'll take his left," directed Mrs.

Jakes. "If we get him on his feet, perhaps he 'll rouse. Are you

ready?"

Margaret closed her lips and put forth the strength that she had, and

between them they dragged him to a sitting posture, with his head

hanging back and his heels furrowed deep in the dust.

"Now, if I can just get behind him," panted Mrs. Jakes. "Don't let go.

That's it. Now! Could you just help to lift him straight up?"

Margaret went quickly to her aid. It had become horrible. The gross

carcass in their hands was inert like a flabby corpse, and its mere

weight overtaxed them. They wrestled with it sobbingly, to the noise of

their harsh breath and the shuffle of their straining feet on the grit

of the road. Suddenly Margaret ceased her laboring and the doctor

collapsed once more upon the ground.

"Why did you do that?" cried Mrs. Jakes. "He was nearly up."

"It was my chest," answered Margaret weakly. "It--it hurt."

There was a warm feeling in her throat and a taste in her mouth which

she knew of old. She found her handkerchief and dabbed with it at her

lips. The feeble light of the lantern showed her the result--the red

spots on the white cambric.

"It 's just a strain," said Mrs. Jakes, dully. "That 's all. The doctor

will see to it to-morrow. If you rest a moment, you 'll be all right."

She hesitated, but her husband and her life's credit lay upon the ground

at her feet, and she could not weigh Margaret's danger against those.

"You wouldn't leave me now, my dear?" she supplicated.

"No," said the girl, after a moment's pause. "I won't leave you."

"What 's that?" cried Mrs. Jakes and put a quick frightened hand upon

her arm. "Listen! Who is it?"

Steps, undisguised and clear, passed from the grass to the stone steps

of the house and ascended, crossed the stoep and were lost to hearing in

the doorway.

The two women waited, breathless. It sprang to Margaret's mind that the

lantern must have shown her clearly to Kamis, where he waited in the

darkness, and he must have seen the climax of her efforts and her

handkerchief at her lips, and gone forthwith to the study for the drugs

which would put an end to the matter.

"Look," whispered Mrs. Jakes. "Some one is striking matches--in the

study."

The window brightened and darkened again and then lit with a steady

glow; the invader had found a candle. Mrs. Jakes dropped Margaret's arm.

"I must see who it is," she said. "Walking into people's houses like

this."

Margaret held her back; she was starting forthwith to bring the majesty

of her presence to bear on the unknown and possibly dangerous intruder.

Mrs. Jakes had a house as well as a husband and could die at need for

either.

"No, don't go," said Margaret. "I know who it is. It's all right, if

only you won't be--well, silly about it."

"Who is it, then?" demanded Mrs. Jakes.

Margaret felt feeble and unequal to the position. Her chest was

painful, she was cold, and now there was about to be a delicate affair

with Mrs. Jakes. She could have laughed at the growing complexity of

things, but had the wit not to.

"It 's a doctor," she said; "a real London doctor. He was passing when

you left me to get the lantern, and I wouldn't let him stay because I

thought you 'd be annoyed. He 's gone into the house to--"

"Does he know?" whispered Mrs. Jakes, feverishly, thrusting close to

her. "Does he know--about this?" Her downward-pointing finger

indicated the slumbers of Dr. Jakes. "Say, can't you--does he know?"

"He 'd seen him," said Margaret. "I expect he loosened the collar--you

know. He wanted to help but I wouldn't let him."

"Is he a friend of yours?" asked Mrs. Jakes again, still in the same

agitated whisper.

"Yes," answered Margaret. "He is. It 's all right, really, if only you

'll be sensible and not make a fuss. He 'll help us and then he 'll go

away and he 'll say nothing. You did n't think I 'd do anything to hurt

you, did you? Are n't we friends?"

Mrs. Jakes stood silent; she asked no questions as to how a London

doctor, a friend of Margaret's, chanced to be walking upon the Karoo at

night.

"Well," she said at last, with a long sigh; "perhaps we might have

needed some help, in any case."

That was all she said, till the footsteps came again across the stoep

and down the steps, more deliberately this time, as though something

were being carried with precaution. Then they were noiseless for a

minute or more on the grass, and at last the figure of Kamis came into

the further edge of the lighted circle.

"I had to do it," he said, before either of them could speak, and showed

the graduated glass in his hand. "I saw you with your handkerchief."

Margaret, with an instinct of apprehension, looked at Mrs. Jakes. At

the first dim view of him, she had roused herself from her dejection,

and put on her prim, social face to meet the London doctor effectively.

Her little meaningless smile was bent for him; she would make a

blameless and uneventful drawing-room of the August night and guard it

against unseemly dramatics.

He turned from Margaret towards her and came further into the

lamp-light, and she had a clear view of the black face and sorrowful,

foolish negro features. She uttered a gasp that was like a low cry and

stood aghast, staring.

"Madam," began Kamis.

She shivered. "A Kafir," she said. "The doctor will never forgive us."

And then, wheeling upon Margaret, "And I 'll never forgive you. You

said we were friends--and this is what you do to me."

"Mrs. Jakes," implored Margaret. "You must be sensible. It 's all

right, really. This gentleman--"

"This gentleman," Mrs. Jakes uttered a passionate spurt of laughter.

"Do you mean this nigger? Gentleman, you call it? A London doctor? A

friend of yours? A friend. Ha, ha!" She spun round again towards

Kamis, waiting with the glass in his hand, the liquid in which shone

greenish to the lamp. "_Voetzaak!_" she ordered, shrilly. "_Hamba

wena--ch'che. Skellum. Injah. Voetzaak!_"

Kamis stood his ground. He cast a look at Margaret, past Mrs. Jakes,

and spoke to her.

"Will she let me give him this?" he asked. "Tell her I am a doctor and

this will bring him to very quickly. And then I 'll go away at once and

never say a word about it."

"Don't you dare touch him," menaced Mrs. Jakes. "A filthy Kafir--I

should think so, indeed."

Kamis went on in the same steady tone. "If she won't you must go in at

once and send for another doctor to-morrow. This man ought to be

reported."

"You dare," cried Mrs. Jakes. "You 'd report him--a Kafir." She edged

closer to the prostrate body of Dr. Jakes and stood beside it like a

beast-mother at bay. "I 'll have you locked up--walking into my

husband's study like that."

"Mrs. Jakes." Margaret tried once more. "Please listen. If you 'll

only let the doctor have this drink, he 'll be able to walk. If you

don't, he 'll have to stay here. I am your friend; I got up when you

came to me and I said I wouldn't leave you even when I hurt my chest.

Doesn't that prove that I am? I wouldn't do you any harm or shame you

before other people for anything. What will Dr. Jakes say if he finds

out that you let me stay here pleading when I ought to be in bed? He 's

a doctor himself and he 'll be awfully annoyed--after telling me I

should get well, too. Aren't you going to give him a chance--and me?"

Mrs. Jakes merely glared stonily.

"Come," said Margaret. "Won't you?"

Kamis uttered a smothered exclamation. "I won't wait," he said. "I 'll

count ten, slowly. Then Miss Harding must go in and I go away."

"Oh, don't begin that sort of thing," cried Margaret. "Mrs. Jakes is

going to be sensible. Aren't you?"

There was no reply, only the stony and hostile stare of the little woman

facing them and the gray image of disgrace.

"One," counted Kamis clearly. "Two. Three."

He counted with the stolid regularity of a clock; he made as though to

overturn the glass and waste its contents in the dust as soon as he

should have reached ten. "Ten," he uttered, but held it safely still.

"Well?"

Mrs. Jakes did not move for some moments. Then she sighed and, still

without speaking, moved away from the slumbering doctor. She walked a

dozen paces from the road and stood with her back to them.

With quick skilful movements, Kamis lifted the unconscious man's head to

the crook of his arm and the rim of the glass clicked on his teeth.

Margaret walked after Mrs. Jakes.

"Come," she said gently. "I don't misunderstand. You trusted me or you

would n't have waked me. Everything will be all right soon and then you

'll forgive me."

"I won't--never."

Mrs. Jakes would not face her. She stood looking into the blackness,

tense with enmity.

"Well, I hope you will," said Margaret.

They heard grunts from the doctor and then quavering speech and one rich

oath, and a noise of spitting. The Kafir approached them noiselessly

from behind and paused at Margaret's side.

"That's done the trick," he said; "and he doesn't even know who gave him

the draft. You 'll go in now?"

"Yes," said Margaret. "You _have_ been good, though."

Mrs. Jakes had returned to her husband; they were for the moment alone.

"I didn't mean to force your hand," he whispered. "But I had to. A

doctor has duties."

She gave him her hand. "There was something I wanted to tell you, but

there 's no time to explain now. Did you know you were wanted by the

police?"

"Bless you, yes." He smiled with a white flash of teeth. "Were you

going to warn me? How kind! And now, in you go, and good night."

Dr. Jakes was sitting up, spitting with vigor and astonishment. He had

taken a heroic dose of hair-raising restoratives on the head of a

poisonous amount of whisky, and his palate was a moldering ruin. But

the clearness of his faculties left nothing to be desired.

"Who 's that?" he demanded at sight of Margaret. "Miss Harding. How do

you come to be out here at this time?"

"You should time your fits more decently, doctor," answered Margaret

coolly.

Mrs. Jakes hastened to explain more acceptably. "I was frightened,

Eustace. You looked so bad--and these fits are terrible. So I asked

Miss Harding if she wouldn't come and help me."

"A patient," said the doctor. He turned over and rose stiffly to his

feet, dust-stained all over. He stood before her awkwardly.

"I am unfortunate," he said. "You are in my care and this is what

happens. It is my misfortune--and my fault. You 'll go back to bed

now, Miss Harding, please."

"Sure there 's nothing more you want?" inquired Margaret.

"At once, please," he repeated. "In the morning--but go at once now."

On the stoep she paused to listen to them following after her and heard

a portion of Mrs. Jakes' excuses to her husband.

"You looked so dreadful, Eustace, and I was frightened. And then, you

're so heavy, and I suppose I was tired, and to-night I couldn't quite

manage by myself, dear."

Margaret passed in at the door in order to cough unheard, that nothing

might be added to the tale of Mrs. Jakes' delinquencies.

*CHAPTER IX*

"And what have we here?" said the stranger loudly. "What have we here,

now?"

Paul, sitting cross-legged in his old place under the wall of the dam,

with a piece of clay between his fingers, looked round with a start.

The stranger had come up behind him, treading unheard in his burst and

broken shoes upon the soft dust, and now stood leaning upon a stick and

smiling down upon him with a kind of desperate jauntiness. His attitude

and manner, with their parody of urbane ease, had for the moment power

to hide the miserable shabbiness of his clothes, which were not so much

broken and worn as decayed; it was decay rather than hardship which

marked the whole figure of the man. Only the face, clean-shaven save

for a new crop of bristles, had some quality of mobility and temper, and

the eyes with which he looked at Paul were wary and hard.

"Oh, nothing," said Paul, uneasily, covering his clay with one hand.

"Who are you?"

The stranger eyed him for some moments longer with the shrewdness of one

accustomed to read his fortune in other men's faces, and while he did so

the smile remained fixed on his own as though he had forgotten to take

it off.

"Who am I!" he exclaimed. "My boy, it 'd take a long time to tell you.

But there 's one thing that perhaps you can see for yourself--I 'm a

gentleman."

Paul considered this information deliberately.

"Are you?" he said.

"I 'm dusty," admitted the other; "dusty both inside and out. And I 'm

travelin' on foot--without luggage. So much I admit; I 've met with

misfortunes. But there 's one thing the devil himself can't take away

from me, and that 's the grand old name of gentleman. An' now, my lad,

to business; you live at that farm there?"

"Yes," replied Paul. This tramp had points at which he differed from

other tramps, and Paul stared at him thoughtfully.

"So far, so good," said the stranger. "Question number two: does it run

to a meal for a gentleman on his travels, an' a bed of sorts? Answer me

that. I don't mean a meal with a shilling to pay at the end of it,

because--to give it you straight--I 'm out of shillings for the present.

Now, speak up."

"If you go up there, they 'll give you something to eat, and you can

sleep somewhere," said Paul, a little puzzled by the unusual rhetoric.

The stranger nodded approvingly. "It's all right, then?" he said.

"Good--go up one. But say! Ain't you going there yourself pretty

soon?"

"Presently," said Paul.

"Then, if it 's all the same to you," said the stranger, "I 'll wait and

go up with you. Nothing like being introduced by a member," he added,

as he lowered himself stiffly to a seat among the rank grass under the

wall. "Gives a feller standing, don't it?"

He took off his limp hat and let himself fall back against the slope of

the wall, grunting with appreciation of the relief after a day's tramp

in the sun. His rather full body and thin legs, ending in a pair of

ruinous shoes that let his toes be seen, lay along the grass like an

obscene corpse, and above them his feeble, sophisticated face leered at

Paul as though to invite him to become its confidant.

"You go on with what you 're doing," urged the stranger. "Don't let me

hinder you. Makin' marbles, were you--or what?"

"No," said Paul. He hesitated, for an idea had come to him while he

watched the stranger. "But--but if you 'll do something for me, I 'll

give you a shilling."

"Eh?" The other rolled a dull eye on him. "It isn't murder, is it? I

should want one-and-six for that. I never take less."

Paul flushed. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "I only want you

to keep still like that while I--while I make a model of you. You said

you had n't got any shillings just now."

"Did I say that?" inquired the stranger. "Well, well! However, chuck

us over your shilling and I 'll see what I can do for you."

He made a show of biting the coin and subjecting it to other tests of

its goodness while the boy looked on anxiously. Paul was relieved when

at last he pocketed it and lay back again.

"I 'll get rid of it somehow," he said. "It's very well made. And now,

am I to look pleasant, or what?"

"Don't look at all," directed Paul. "Just be like--like you are. You

can go to sleep if you like."

"I never sleep on an empty stomach," replied the stranger, arranging

himself in an attitude of comfort.

"Is this all right for you? Fire away, then, Mike Angelo. Can I talk

while you 're at it?"

"If you want to," answered Paul. The clay which he had been shaping was

another head, and now he kneaded it out of shape between his hands and

rounded it rudely for a sketch of the face before him. The Kafir,

Kamis, had bidden him refrain from his attempts to do mass and detail at

once, to form the features and the expression together; but Paul knew he

had little time before him and meant to make the most of it. The tramp

had his hands joined behind his head and his eyes half-closed; he

offered to the boy the spectacle of a man beaten to the very ground and

content to take his ease there.

"D'you do much of this kind of thing?" asked the tramp, when some silent

minutes had passed.

"Yes," said Paul, "a lot."

"Nothing like it, is there?" asked the other. He spoke lazily, absorbed

in his comfort. "We 've all got our game, every bally one of us. Mine

was actin'."

"Acting?" Paul paused in his busy fingering to look up. "Were you an

actor?"

The actors he knew looked out of frames in his mother's little parlor,

intense, well-fed, with an inhuman brilliance of attire.

"Even me," replied the tramp equably. He did not move from his posture

nor uncover his drowsy eyes; the swollen lids, in which the veins stood

out in purple, did not move, but his voice took a rounder and more

conscious tone as he went on: "And there was a time, my boy, when actin'

meant me and I meant actin'. In '87, I was playing in 'The Demon

Doctor,' and drawing my seven quid a week--you believe me. Talk of

art--why! I 've had letters from Irving that 'd make you open your

eyes."

"I 've heard about Irving," said Paul, glancing back and fore from his

clay to the curiously pouched mouth of his recumbent model.

"Fancy," exclaimed the tramp softly. "But it was a great game, a great

game. Sometimes, even now, I sort of miss it. And the funny thing

is--it is n't the grub and the girls and the cash in my breeches pocket

that I miss so much. It 's the bally work. It 's the work, my boy."

He seemed to wonder torpidly at himself, and for some seconds he

continued to repeat, as though in amazement: "It 's the work." He went

on: "Seems as if once an actor, always an actor, don't it? A feller 's

got talent in him and he 's got to empty it out, or ache. Some sing,

some write, some paint; you prod clay about; but I 'm an actor. Time

was, I could act a gas meter, if it was the part, and that 's my trouble

to this day."

He ceased; he had delivered himself without once looking up or

reflecting the matter of his speech by a change of expression. For all

the part his body or his features had in his words, it might have been a

dead man speaking. Paul worked on steadily, giving small thought to

anything but the shape that came into being under his hands. His

standard of experience was slight; he knew too little of men and their

vicissitudes to picture to himself the processes by which the face he

strove to reproduce sketchily could have been shaped to its cast of

sorrowful pretense; he only felt, cloudily and without knowledge, that

it signaled a strange and unlovely fate.

His knack served him well on that evening, and besides, there was not an

elusive remembrance of form to be courted, but the living original

before him. The tramp seemed to sleep; and swiftly, with merciless

assurance, the salient thing about him came into existence between

Paul's hands. Long before the light failed or the gourd-drum at the

farmhouse door commenced its rhythmic call, the thing was done--a mere

sketch, with the thumb-prints not even smoothed away, but stamped none

the less with the pitiless print of life.

"Done it?" inquired the tramp, rousing as Paul uncrossed his legs and

prepared to put the clay away. "Let 's have a look?"

"It wants to be made smooth," explained Paul, as he passed it to him.

"And it's soft, of course, so don't squeeze it."

"I won't squeeze it," the tramp assured him and took it. He gazed at it

doubtfully, letting it lie on his knee. "Oho!" he said.

"It's only a quick thing," said Paul. "There was n't time to do it

properly."

"Wasn't there?" said the tramp, without looking up. "It 's like me, is

it? Damn you, why don't you say it and have done with it?"

"Why," cried Paul bewildered, and coloring furiously. "What's the

matter? It _is_ like you. I modeled it from you just now as you were

lying there."

"An' paid me a shilling for it." The tramp thrust an impetuous hand

into his pocket; possibly he was inspired to draw forth the coin and

fling it in Paul's face. If so, he decided against it; he looked at the

coin wryly and returned it to its place.

"Well," he said finally; "you 've got me nicely. The cue is to shy you

and your bally model into the dam together--an' what about my supper?

Eh? Yes, you 've got me sweetly. Here, take the thing, or I might make

up my mind to go hungry for the pleasure of squashing it flat on your

ugly mug."

"You don't like it?" asked Paul, as he received the clay again from the

tramp's hands. He did not understand; for all he knew, there were men

who surprised their mothers by being born with that strange stamp upon

them.

The tramp gave him a slow wrathful look. "The joke 's on me," he

answered. "_I_ know. I look a drunk who 's been out all night; I 'm

not denying it. I 've got a face that 'll get me blackballed for

admission to hell. I know all that and you 've made a picture of it.

But don't rub it in."

Paul looked at the clay again, and although the man's offense was

dawning on his understanding, he smiled at the sight of a strong thing

strongly done.

"I didn't mean any joke," he protested.

"Let 's call it a joke," said the tramp. "Once when I was nearly dying

of thirst up beyond Kimberly, a feller that I asked for water gave me a

cup of paraffin. That was another joke. Tramps are fair game for you

jokers, aren't they? Well, if that meal you spoke about wasn't a joke,

too, let 's be getting up to the house."

"All right," said Paul. He hesitated a minute, for he hated to part

with the thing he had made. "Oh, it can go," he exclaimed, and threw

the clay up over the wall. It fell into the dam above their heads with

a splash.

"I didn't mean any joke, truly," he assured the tramp.

"Don't rub it in," begged the other. "We don't want to make a song

about it. And anyhow, I want to try to forget it. So come on--do."

They came together through the kraals and across the deserted yard to

the house-door, the tramp looking about him at the apparatus of well-fed

and well-roofed life with an expression of genial approval. Paul would

have taken him round to the back-door, but he halted.

"Not bad," he commented. "Not bad at all, considering. An' this is the

way in, I suppose."

"We 'd better go round," suggested Paul, but the tramp turned on the

doorstep and waved a nonchalant hand.

"Oh, this 'll do," he said, and there was nothing for Paul to do but to

follow him into the little passage.

The door of the parlor stood open, and within was Mrs. du Preez,

flicking a duster at the furniture in a desultory fashion. The tramp

paused and looked at her appraisingly.

"The lady of the house, no doubt," he surmised, with his terrible showy

smile, before she could speak. "It 's the boy, madam; he wouldn't take

no for an answer. I _had_ to come home to supper with him."

His greedy quick eyes were busy about the little room; they seemed to

read a price-ticket on each item of its poor pretentious furniture and

assess the littleness of those signed and framed photographs which

inhabited it like a company of ghosts.

"Why," he cried suddenly, and turned from his inspection of these last

to stare again at Mrs. du Preez.

His plausible fluency had availed for the moment to hide the quality of

his clothes and person, but now Mrs. du Preez had had time to perceive

the defects of both.

"What d'you mean?" she demanded. "How d 'you get in here? Who are

you?"

The tramp was still staring at her. "It 's on the tip of my tongue," he

said. "Give me a moment. Why"--with a joyous vociferation--"who 'd ha'

thought it? It 's little Sinclair, as I 'm a sinnair--little Vivie

Sinclair of the old brigade, stap my vitals if it ain't."

"What?"

The man filled the narrow door, and Paul had to stoop under his elbow to

see his mother. She was leaning with both hands on the table, searching

his face with eyes grown lively and apprehensive in a moment. The old

name of her stage days had power to make this change in her.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Think," begged the tramp. "Try! No use? Well--" he swept her a

spacious bow, battered hat to heart, foot thrown back--"look on this

picture"--he tapped his bosom--"and on that." His big creased

forefinger flung out towards the photograph which had the place of honor

on the crowded mantel-shelf and dragged her gaze with it.

"It 's not--" Mrs. du Preez glanced rapidly back and forth between the

living original and the glazed, immaculate counterfeit--"it isn't--it

can't be--_Bailey_?"

"It is; it can," replied the tramp categorically, and Boy Bailey, in the

too, too solid flesh advanced into the room.

Mrs. du Preez had a moment of motionless amaze, and then with a flushed

face came in a rush around the table to meet him. They clasped hands

and both laughed.

"Why," cried Mrs. du Preez; "if this don't--but Bailey! Where ever do

you come from, an' like this? Glad to see you? Yes, I am glad; you 're

the first of the old crowd that I 've seen since I--I married."

"Married, eh?" The tramp tempered an over-gallant and enterprising

attitude. "Then I mustn't--eh?"

His face was bent towards hers and he still held her hands.

"No; you mustn't," spoke Paul unexpectedly, from the doorway, where he

was an absorbed witness of the scene.

They both turned sharply; they had forgotten the boy.

"Don't be silly, Paul," said his mother, rather sharply. "Mr. Bailey

was only joking." But she freed her hands none the less, while Mr.

Bailey bent his wary gaze upon the boy.

The interruption served to bring the conversation down to a less

emotional plane, and Paul sat down on a chair just within the door to

watch the unawaited results of promising a meal to a chance tramp. The

effect on his mother was not the least remarkable consequence. The veld

threw up a lamentable man at your feet; in charity and some bewilderment

you took him home to feed him, and thereupon your mother, your weary,

petulant, uncertain mother, took him to her arms and became, by that

unsavory contact, pink and vivacious.

"There 's more of you," said Mrs. du Preez, making a fresh examination

of her visitor. "You 're fatter than what you were, Bailey, in those

old days."

Boy Bailey nodded carelessly. "Yes, my figure 's gone too," he agreed;

"gone with all the rest. Friends, position, reputation--all but my

spirits and my talents. I know. Ah, but those were good times, weren't

they?"

"Too good to last," sighed Mrs. du Preez.

"They didn't last for me," said Boy Bailey. "When we broke down at

Fereira--lemme see! That must be nearly twenty years ago, ain't it?--I

took my leave of Fortune. Never another glance did I get from her; not

one bally squint. I did advance agent for a fortune-teller for a bit; I

even came down to clerking in a store. I 've been most things a man can

be in this country, except rich. And why is it? What 's stood in my way

all along? What 's been my handicap that holds me back and nobbles me

every time I face the starter?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. du Preez sympathetically.

"I don't need to tell you," continued Boy Bailey, "you not being one of

the herd, that it 's temperament that has me all the time. I don't

boast of it, but you know how it is. You remember me when I had scope;

you 've seen me at the game; you can judge for yourself. A man with

temperament in this country has got as much chance as a snowflake in

hell. Perhaps, though, you 've found that out for yourself before now."

"Don't I know it," retorted Mrs. du Preez. "Bailey, if you 'll believe

me, I have n't heard that word 'temperament,' since I saw you last.

Talk of scope--why you can go to the winder there and see with your eyes

all the scope I 've had since I married. It 's been tough, Bailey; it

's been downright tough."

"Still--" began Mr. Bailey, but paused. "We must have another talk," he

substituted. "There 's a lot to hear and to tell. Do you think you

could manage to put me up for a day or two? I suppose your husband

wouldn't mind?"

"Why should he?" demanded Mrs. du Preez. "You 're the first in all these

years. Still, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you was to have a change of

clothes before he sees you, Bailey. It isn't me that minds, you know;

so far as that goes, you 'd be welcome in anything; but--"

Boy Bailey waved her excuses away. "I understand," he said. "I

understand. It's these prejudices--have your own way."

The resources of Christian du Preez's wardrobe were narrow, and

Christian's wife was further hampered in the selection of clothes for

her guest by a doubt whether, if she selected too generously, Christian

might not insist on the guest stripping as soon as he set eyes on him.

Her discretion revealed itself, when Mr. Bailey was dressed, in a

certain sketchiness of his total effect, an indeterminate quality that

was not lessened by the fact that all of the garments were too narrow

and too long; and though no alteration of his original appearance could

fail to improve it, there was no hiding his general character of slow

decay.

"It 's hardly a disguise," commented Boy Bailey, as he surveyed himself

when the change was made. "Disguise is n't the word that covers it, and

I 'm hanged if I know what word does. But these pants are chronic."

"You can roll 'em up another couple of inches," suggested Mrs. du Preez.

"It isn't that," complained Mr. Bailey. "If they want to cover my feet,

they can. But I 'd need a waist like a wasp before the three top

buttons would see reason. Damme, I feel as if I was going to break in

halves. What 's that dear boy of yours grinning at?"

"I wasn't grinning," protested Paul. "I was only going to say that

father 's coming in now."

The tramp and his mother exchanged a glance of which the meaning was

hidden from him, the look of allies preparing for a crucial moment.

Already they were leagued to defeat the husband.

Christian du Preez came with heavy footsteps along the passage from the

outer door, saw that there was a stranger in the parlor and paused.

"Christian," said Mrs. du Preez, with a false sprightliness. "Come in;

here 's a--an old friend of mine come to see us."

"An old friend?"

The Boer stared at the stranger standing with straddled legs before the

fireplace, and recognized him forthwith. Without speaking, he made a

quick comparison of the bold photograph, whose fleshy perfection had so

often invited him to take stock of his own imperfections, and then met

the living Boy Bailey's rigid smile with a smile of his own that had the

effect of tempering the other's humor.

"I see," said the Boer. "What's the name?" He came forward and read

from the photograph where the bold showy signature sprawled across a

corner. "'Yours blithely, Boy Bailey,'" he read. "And you are Boy

Bailey?"

"You 've got it," replied the photograph's original. "Older, my dear

sir, and it may be meatier; but the same man in the main, and happy to

make the acquaintance of an old friend's husband."

His impudence cost him an effort in face of the Boer's stare of

contemptuous amusement, a stare which comprehended, item by item, each

article of his grotesque attire and came to rest, without diminishing

its intensity, upon the specious, unstable countenance.

"_Allemachtag,_" was the Boer's only reply, as he completed his survey.

"I don't think you saw Bailey, that time we were married, Christian,"

said Mrs. du Preez. "But he was a dear old friend of mine."

Christian nodded. "You walked here?" he inquired of the guest. On the

Karoo, the decent man does not travel afoot, and none of the three

others who were present missed the implication of the inquiry. Mrs. du

Preez colored hotly; Boy Bailey introduced his celebrated wave of the

hand.

"I see you know what walking means," he replied. "It ain't a human

occupation--is it now? What I say is--if man had been meant for a

_voetganger_ (a walker)"--he watched the effect of the Dutch word on the

Boer--"he 'd have been made with four feet. Is n't that right? You bet

your shirt it is."

"My shirt." Christian seemed puzzled for the moment, though the phrase

was one which his wife used. She watched him uneasily. "Oh, I see.

Yes, you can keep that shirt you 've got on. I don't want it."

Boy Bailey made him a bow. "Ah, thanks. A shirt more or less don't

matter, does it?"