"Hey!" yelled Boy Bailey, and scrambled to his feet. "What d'you kick
me like that for, you black swine?"
He backed before the Kafir, with spread hands in agitated protestation.
"Kickin' a man when he 's down," he cried. "Is that a game to play?
All right, all right; I 'm goin', aren't I? You keep where you are and
let me turn round. No, you stop first. I 'm not goin' to be kicked
again like that if I can help it."
Kamis came to a halt.
"Next time I see you, I 'll murder you," he promised. "Murder you." He
paused at Mr. Bailey's endeavor to save his dignity with a sneer.
"Don't you believe that?" he asked. "Say--don't you believe I 'll do
it?"
Mr. Bailey's sneer failed as he looked into the black face that
confronted him. By degrees the sheer sinister power that inhabited it,
lighting it up and making it imminently terrible with its patent
willingness to kill, burned its way to his slow intelligence. His
pendulous underlip quivered.
"Don't you?" repeated the Kafir, with a motion of his shoulders like a
shrug. "Don't you believe I 'll slaughter you like a pig next time I
see you? Answer--don't you believe it?"
"Ye-es," stammered Boy Bailey.
The Kafir's deliberate nod was indescribably menacing.
"That's right," he said. "It's very true indeed. And you remember what
I paid you fifty pounds for, too. A word about that, Bailey, and I 'll
have you. Now go."
A hundred paces off, Boy Bailey halted, to get breath and ideas, and
stood looking back.
He waited, watching the Kafir bring Mrs. du Preez to a condition in
which she could stand again and bear the view of the backward road
coiling forth to the featureless skyline, and thence to further and
still featureless skylines, traversing intolerably far vistas that gave
no sign of a destination. With his returning wits, he found himself
wondering what arguments the man had to induce her to brave her husband.
As it happened, there was need of none. The woman was broken and beyond
thought. She was reduced to instincts. The homing sense that sets a
wounded rock-rabbit of the kranzes crawling in agony to die in its
burrow moved in her dimly; she could not even summon force to wonder at
the apparition of the English-speaking, helpful Kafir. Under the
practised deftness of his suggestion and persuasion she rose and put her
limp arm in his, and they moved away together, following their long
shadows that went before them, gliding upon the dust.
"There they go," said Mr. Bailey bitterly. "There they go. And what
about _me_?"
He saw that the Kafir propped the exhausted woman with his arm and
helped her. He was protecting and assured, a strength and a shield.
Almost unconsciously Boy Bailey followed after them. He could not have
given a reason for doing so; he only knew that he was very unwilling to
be left alone with his bruises and his sense of failure and defeat. In
less than a quarter of an hour, the veld that had been comfortingly
empty had become lonely. He went on tiptoe, with long ungainly strides
and much precaution to be unheard.
He followed perhaps for half a mile and then the Kafir looked back and
saw him. Mr. Bailey stopped within speaking distance.
"I was coming to apologize," he called. "That 's all. I lost my temper
and I want to apologize."
The Kafir let Mrs. du Preez sit down and came walking back slowly. When
half the distance to Mr. Bailey was covered he broke suddenly into a
run. For some seconds Mr. Bailey abode, his mind racing, and then he
too turned and ran as he had never run before. With fists clenched and
head back, he faced the west and fled in leaps, and as he went he
emitted small squeals and fragments of speech.
"My mistake," he would utter, through failing breath. "As long as I
live, I 'll never--I swear it--I swear it. O-o-oh. You 're
very--hard--on me."
The Kafir had ceased to run when Mr. Bailey turned to flee. He stood
and watched him go, unpursued and terrified, with the dust spirting
under his feet like the smoke of a powder-train. Then he went back and
aided Mrs. du Preez to rise and together they set out again.
The last of Boy Bailey was a black blot against the sky; he was too far
off for Kamis to see whether he still ran or stood. It merely testified
that a degenerate human frame will stand blows and much emotion and
effort under a hot sun and yet hold safe for further evil the life
within it. Man of all animals is the most tenacious of his existence;
he lives not for food but for appetite. What was assured was that the
far blot that represented Boy Bailey was still avid and still
unsatisfied. He had not even gratified his last desire to apologize.
The sun dawdled over the final splendid ceremony of his setting, drawing
out the pomp of departure while night waited in the east for his going
with pale premature stars. The small wind that clears the earth of the
sun's leavings of heat sighed about them, and produced from each side of
their path a faint rustle as though it stirred trees at a little
distance. Above them the sky began to light up with a luminous powder
of stars, that strained into radiant clearness before the west was empty
of its last pink stain. They went slowly, Mrs. du Preez leaning heavily
on Kamis' arm, and still faithfully carrying her bundle. She had not
spoken since they started. She went with her eyes on the ground, and
unequal steps, till the evening breeze touched her and she lifted her
face to its gentle refreshment.
She had to sit down every little while, but she was stronger after the
setting of the sun, and it was not till the night had surrounded them
that she spoke.
"When I saw you first," she said suddenly, "the sun was in my eyes. And
I thought you was--_black_?"
"Yes?" said Kamis. "That wasn't the sun," he said slowly. "I am
black."
"But--" she hesitated. "I don't mean just black," she said vaguely. "I
meant--a black man, a nigger."
She was peering up at him anxiously, while her weight rested in his arm.
"Well, wouldn't you have let a nigger help you?" asked Kamis quietly.
"Isn't it a nigger's business, when he sees a white woman in trouble, to
do what he can for her? One of your farm niggers, now--wouldn't you
have called to him if he 'd been there?"
"Yes," fretfully. "But I thought _you_ was a nigger."
"I 'm a doctor," said Kamis. "I was at schools and colleges in England.
The English Government gives me hundreds of pounds a year. You 're
quite safe with me."
"It was the sun in my eyes," she murmured uncertainly. "I said it was
the sun."
"No, it wasn't the sun," he said. "You saw quite well. I am a nigger."
"How can a doctor be a nigger?" she asked. "Niggers--why, I know all
about niggers. You can't fool me."
"I won't try," answered Kamis. "But--one thing; you 've got to get
home, haven't you? And you can't do it alone. You wouldn't refuse to
let a nigger help you to walk, would you?"
"No," she said wonderingly. "I _got_ to get home. I got to."
"All right," said Kamis. "Then look here. Take a good look and satisfy
yourself. There 's no sun now to get in your eyes."
He had halted and drawn his arm from hers. A match crackled and its
flame showed him to her, illuminating his negro features, and her drawn
face, frowning in an effort to comprehend. He held it till it burned to
his fingers and then dropped it, and the darkness fell between them
again like a curtain.
"Now do you see?" he asked. "A Kafir like any other, flat nose, big
lips, woolly hair, everything--just plain Kafir; but a doctor none the
less. The Kafir will help you to walk and the doctor will see to you if
you find by and by that you can't walk any further. Will that satisfy
you?"
She did not answer immediately; she stood as though she were still
trying to scan the face which the match flame had revealed. She was
searching for a formula, he told himself with a momentary bitterness,
which would save her white-skinned dignity and yet permit her to avail
herself of his services.
Then her moving hand touched him on the arm, gently and unexpectedly,
and she answered.
"You poor devil," she said. "You poor devil."
Kamis stood quite still, her timid touch upon him, the ready pity of her
voice in his ears. Mingled with his surprise he felt a sense of
abasement in the presence of this other outcast, so much weaker than he,
and he could have begged for her pardon for the wrong which his thoughts
had done her.
"Thank you," he said abruptly. "Thank you, Mrs. du Preez. It's--it's
kind of you. You shall be very safe with me."
It was a strange companionship in which they went forward through the
night, he matching his slow steps to her weariness, with her thin arm,
bony and rigid through the cloth sleeve, weighing within his. She was
too far spent for talk; they moved in a silence of effort and desperate
persistence, with only her harsh and painful breathing sounding in reply
to the noises which the darkness evoked upon the veld. Every little
while she had to sit down on the ground, and at each such occasion she
would make her small excuse.
"I 'll have to take a spell, now," she would say apologetically. "You
see, I was walking since before noon."
Then her arm would slide from his and she would sink to earth at his
feet, panting painfully, with her head bowed on her bosom and her big
hat roofing her over. Thus she would remain motionless for a space till
her breath came more easily, and then the hat would tilt up again.
"I could move on a bit, now, if you 'd give me a hand up."
Her courage was a thing he wondered at. Again and again, as the hours
spun themselves out, she rose to her feet, groped for his sustaining
arm, with her face a pallid disk against the shadow of her hat, and
faced the cruel miles. Her feet, in her smart town boots, tormented her
without ceasing; her strength was drained from her like blood from an
opened vein; and the slowness of their progress protracted the dreary
horror of the road that remained to be covered. At times she seemed to
talk to herself in whispers between sobbing breaths, and his ear caught
hints of words shaped laboriously, but nothing that had meaning. But
she uttered no complaint.
At one point where she rested rather longer than usual, he tried to find
out what she expected at the journey's end.
"Have you thought what you 'll say," he asked, "when you get home?"
She raised her head slowly.
"I don't know," she answered. "I--I got to take my gruel, I suppose.
Whatever it is, I got to take it. It 's up to me."
It was the sum of her wisdom; those free-lances of their sex add it
early into the conclusion that saves them the futile effort of evading
payment for the fruit they snatch when the world is not looking. After
the fun, the adventure, the thrill, comes the gruel, and they have to
take it. It is up to them. By the short cut of experience, they reach
thus the end and destination of a severe morality.
"He can't shut you out, at any rate," said Kamis, half-aloud.
"Can't he?" she said. "Can't he, though! Can't stand there feelin'
noble and righteous and point to the veld and shut the door with a big
slam? You don't know him."
She rose again presently, clicking her tongue between her teeth at the
anguish of her swollen and abraded feet.
"The Boers got sense," she said. "A person 's a fool to go on foot."
It was the only reference she made to her pain and weariness.
It was long past midnight when they came at last past the sheds behind
the farmhouse and saw that there was yet a light in the kitchen. The
window shone broad and yellow in the vague bulk of the house, and as
they lifted their faces towards it, a shadow moved across it, grotesque
and abrupt after the manner of shadows, which seem to have learned from
men how to mock their makers.
"That 's Christian," said Mrs. du Preez, whispering harshly.
"Are you afraid?" asked Kamis. "Will you sit here while I go and speak
to him first?"
"No," she replied. "No use. This is where I get what's comin' to me.
I wish I wasn't so done up, though. If he knew, I believe p'r'aps he 'd
let me off till the morning. But he doesn't know, and it wouldn't be
him if he did."
"Better let me speak to him first," urged Kamis. "I could tell him--"
"No," she said again. "No use dodging it. We 'll go to the back door;
I 'd rather have him shut that on me than the front."
Near the door she drew her arm away from the Kafir's and left him
standing to one side, while she approached and knocked upon it with the
back of her hand. She meant to eat the dreaded gruel alone.
Silence succeeded upon her knocking, and then deliberate footsteps
within that came towards the door. A pair of bolts were thrust back,
crashing in their sockets. Mrs. du Preez gathered her sparse energies
and stood upright as the door opened and the figure of her husband
appeared, tall and black against the light inside which leaked past him
and spilt itself about her feet. For some moments they stood facing
each other, and neither spoke.
There was drama in the atmosphere. The Kafir standing without its
scope, watched absorbedly.
"Christian," said Mrs. du Preez, at length; "it's me."
"Yes." The Boer's deep voice was grave. "Where have you been?"
She lifted her shoulders in a faint hopeless shrug.
"I ran away," she said. "Like I said I would. But I wasn't up to it."
"You ran away," he repeated slowly. "With that Bailey?"
"Yes, Christian. But--"
Christian caught sight of the dark figure of the Kafir and started
sharply.
"Is that him there?" he cried. "Is that Bailey?"
"No, no," she answered eagerly. "That 's--that 's a Kafir, Christian;
he helped me to get back. He came up when I was too tired to go any
further, and Bailey was starting to kick me to get my money away from
me--I 've got it here, Christian, all safe--an' he knocked Bailey over
and chased him off. If it hadn't ha' been for him--"
"What?" Christian interrupted strongly. "What did you say? Bailey was
going to--kick you? You was too tired to walk and he was going to kick
you?"
"Yes, Christian. And if it hadn't ha' been for this Kafir, he would ha'
done. I was sitting down, you see, and he got mad with me and wanted me
to hand him over the money. So when I screamed--what did you say,
Christian?"
"I swore," answered the Boer.
"Oh," exclaimed Mrs. du Preez, as though she apologized for
interrupting. "And then the Kafir came up. If it was n't for him,
Christian, I 'd--I 'd ha' had to die out of doors. I could never have
managed to get back by myself."
The effort merely to stand upright taxed her sorely, but she went on
doggedly to praise the Kafir and to try in her confused and inadequate
tongue to convey to the Boer that this Kafir was not as other Kafirs.
Her small voice, toneless and desperate, beat on pertinaciously.
"He 's a doctor, Christian," she concluded. "He 's been educated an'
all that, an' he speaks English like a gentleman. And he 's been a
white man to me."
"Yes," said the Boer. His mind was stuck fast upon one point of her
story. "Yes. But--you said Bailey was going to _kick_ you--out there
all alone by yourselves in the veld?"
It daunted him; his intelligence shrank from the picture of that
brutality unleashed under the staring skies.
"Yes, Christian," answered Mrs. du Preez submissively.
"Here--come in," he bade abruptly, and stood aside to make room for her
to pass. "Come in. Come in."
It was a couple of seconds before she fully comprehended. She made a
small moaning sound and began to totter. The Boer took her by the arm.
"Wait," he said curtly, over her head, to the Kafir, and led her within.
Kamis waited, leaning against the wall of the house. He had brought his
task to an end and the finish had arranged itself fortunately; it had
been worthy of his pains. The Boer had been startled from his balance;
he had seen that nothing he could do would bear an equality with Boy
Bailey's natural impulses; pardon and generosity were the only course
left open to him. The work was complete and pleasing; and now he had
leisure to feel how weary he was. He shut his eyes with an exhausted
man's content at the relaxation of effort, and opened them again to find
the Boer had returned and was standing in the doorway. He started
upright, amazed to find that sleep had trapped him while he leaned and
was aware that the Boer made a sudden and indistinct movement.
Something heavy struck the ground at his feet.
He looked down at it where it lay, white and rounded, and recognized
Mrs. du Preez's bundle, for which Boy Bailey had been ready to kick her
into dumbness. Without addressing a word to him, the Boer had tossed
him that double handful of money.
It took him a moment to realize what had taken place.
"What's this for?" he demanded then, possessed by a sudden anger that
forgot he spoke from the mouth of a negro to ears of a white man.
"It is true you speak English, then?" said the Boer. "That is
money--about a hundred pounds. It is for you. Pick it up."
"Pick it up yourself," retorted the Kafir. "I don't want your money."
"Eh?" The Boer did not understand in the least. "It is for you," he
repeated. "A hundred sovereigns, because you have been good, very good,
to the Vrouw du Preez. It is in that bundle."
The Kafir turned on his heel. "Take care of your wife," he said
shortly. "If you worry her now, she 'll be ill. Good night."
"Here," cried the Boer, as Kamis walked away. "Here, boy, wait. Come
back."
Kamis halted. "I 've plenty of money," he answered. "I 'm not Boy
Bailey, you know."
"Come here," called the Boer.
Kamis did not move, so he stepped down and went forward himself. The
Kafir's last word stuck in his thought.
"No," he agreed. "But who are you? Man, why don't you take the money?"
"If I were a Boer, I should take it," answered Kamis. "I 'd pick it up
from a dunghill, wouldn't I? But, then, you see, I 'm not a Boer. I 'm
a Kafir."
"What do you want, then?" demanded Christian.
"Oh, nothing that you can give," was the retort.
"Well--but you must have something," urged Christian. "You--you have
saved my wife."
"And you haven't even said 'thank you,'" replied the Kafir.
"I threw you the money," protested Christian. "It is a hundred pounds.
But--well--you have been good and I thank you."
The Kafir laughed. He knew the mere words created an epoch, for Boers
do not thank Kafirs. They pay them, but no more. Strange how a matter
of darkness abrogates a difference of color. It would never have
happened in the daytime.
"You 're satisfied, then?" he inquired.
"Me?" The Boer was puzzled. "You will take the money now?"
"No, thanks. I 'm too--oh, much too tired and hungry to carry it. You
see, I brought your wife a long way."
"Yes," said Christian. "She said so--a very long way. I will wake the
boys [the Kafirs of the household]. They will find you a place to sleep
and I will make them bring you some food."
"No, thanks," said the Kafir again. "I don't speak their language.
You--you haven't a man who speaks English, I suppose?"
"No," said Christian. "You want--yes, I see. But--you 'd better take
the money."
"I don't want it."
"But take it," urged the Boer. "A hundred pounds--it is much. Perhaps
it is more; I have not counted it. If it is less, I will give the rest,
to make a hundred pounds. You will take it--not?"
"No." The answer was definite. "No--I won't take it, I tell you."
"Then--" Christian half-turned towards the house, with a heaviness in
his movements which had not been noticeable before. "Come in and eat,"
he bade gloomily. "_Gott verdam_--come and eat."
The Kafir checked another laugh. "With pleasure," he said, and followed
at the Boer's back.
The Boer stooped to pick up the bundle of money where it lay on the
earth and led the way without looking round to the kitchen where he had
left his wife. The Kafir paused in the kitchen door, looking in,
acutely alive to the delicacy of a situation in which he figured, under
the Boer's eye, as part of the company which included the Boer's wife.
He waited to see how Christian would adjust matters.
The table was spread with the materials of supper. Mrs. du Preez had a
chair by it, and now leaned over it, with her head resting on her arms,
to make room for which plates and cups were disordered. Her flowery hat
was still on her head; she had not commanded the energy necessary to
withdraw the long pins that held it and take it off. In her dust-caked
best clothes, she sprawled among the food and slept, and the paraffin
lamp on the wall shed its uncharitable glare on her unconscious back.
Christian dumped the heavy little bundle on the table beside her and she
moved and muttered. He called her by name. With a sigh she dragged her
heavy head up and her black-rimmed tragic eyes opened to them in an
agony of weariness. They rested on the waiting Kafir on the doorway.
"You 've brought him in?" she said. "Christian, I hoped you would."
"He is going to eat with me," said Christian, with eyes that evaded
hers.
"Yes," she said dully.
"And you go to bed," he urged, with an effort to seem natural.
"You--you're too sleepy; you go to bed now. I 'll be up soon."
"But, Christian," she protested, while she wrestled with the need for
slumber that possessed her; "I got to speak to you. There--there 's
something I want to say to you first about--about--"
"No." His hand rested on her shoulder. "It's all right. There 's
nothing to say; I don't want to hear anything. It 's all right now; you
go on up to bed."
She rose obediently, but with an effort, and her hands moved blindly in
front of her as she made for the door, as though she feared to fall.
"Good night, Christian," she quavered. "You 're awful good. An' good
night, you"--to the Kafir. "You been a white man to me."
"Good night," replied Kamis, and made way for her carefully.
The queer little scene was sufficiently clear to him. He understood it
entirely. The Boer, face to face with an emergency for which his
experience and his training prescribed no treatment, could stoop to sit
at meat with a Kafir, but he could not suffer his wife to share that
descent. The white woman must be preserved at any cost in her
aloofness, her sanctity, none the less strong for being artificial, from
contact and communion with a black man. Better anything than that.
"Sit down," bade Christian. "Take one of those cups, and I will bring
you coffee."
"Thank you," replied the Kafir, and obeyed.
The paraffin lamp shed its unwinking light on a scene that challenged
irresponsible fancy with the reality of crazy fact. The Boer's
consciousness of the portentous character of the event governed him
strongly; there was majesty in his bearing as he brought the coffee pot
from the fire and stood at the side of the seated Kafir and poured him a
cupful. It was done with the high sense of ceremony, the magnificent
humility, of a Pope washing the immaculate feet of highly sanitary and
disinfected beggars.
"There is mutton," he said, pointing; "or I have sardines. Shall I
fetch a tin?"
"I will have mutton, thanks," replied Kamis, with an equal formality,
and drew the dish towards him.
The Boer seated himself at the opposite side of the table. The compact,
as he understood it, required that he should eat also. He cut himself
meat and bread very precisely, doubtfully aware that he was rather
hungry. This, he felt vaguely, stained a situation where all should
have been formal and symbolic. He ate slowly, with a dim, religious
appetite.
Kamis might have found the meal more amusing if he had been less weary.
An idea that he would insist upon conversation visited him, but he
dismissed it; he was really too tired to assault the heavy solemnity
which faced him across the table. It would yield to no casual advances;
he would have to exert himself, to be specious and dexterous, to waylay
the man's interest.
He pushed his unfinished food from him.
"I will go home, now," he said.
"You have had enough?" questioned the Boer.
"Thank you," said Kamis, and rose.
The Boer rose, too, very tall and aloof. His hand touched the money
which still lay on the table.
"You will take this with you?" he questioned. "No?" as the Kafir shook
his head. "You are sure? You will not have it? Nor anything else?"
"I have had all I want," replied Kamis, taking up his battered hat.
"You 've done everything, and more than I thought you would."
The Boer was insistent.
"I want you to be--satisfied," he said, still standing in the same
place. Kamis found his lofty, still face rather impressive. It had a
certain high austerity.
"You must say if you want anything more," he went on, with a grave
persistence. "All you want you shall have--till you are satisfied."
("Can't rest under an obligation to me," thought Kamis).
"I 'm quite satisfied," he replied. "You don't owe me anything, if
that's what 's worrying you. I 'm paid in full."
"In full," repeated the Boer. "You are paid in full?"
"Yes."
"Very well, then. And now you shall go."
He went before and stood at the side of the door while Kamis went forth,
ready to bolt it at his back.
"Tell me," he said, as the Kafir stepped over the threshold. "Who are
you?"
The other turned. "My name is Kamis," he replied.
"Kamis?" The Boer leaned forward, trying to peer at him. "You
said--Kamis? You are the little Kafir that the General Lascelles took
when--"
"Yes," said the Kafir.
The Boer did not answer at once. He hung in the doorway, staring.
"I saw them hang your father," he said at last, very slowly.
"Did you?" said Kamis. "Good night."
"Good night," replied the Boer when he was some paces distant and closed
the door carefully.
The noise of its bolts being shot home was the last sound the Kafir
heard from the house. The wind that comes before the dawn touched him
and he shivered. He turned up the collar of his coat and set off walking
as briskly as his fatigue would allow.
*CHAPTER XIV*
The drawing-room of the Sanatorium was available until tea-time for the
practice of correspondence. It offered for this purpose a small table
with the complexion of mahogany and a leather top, upon which reposed an
inkstand containing three pots, marked respectively in plain letters,
"black," "red," and "copying," and a number of ancient pens. When a new
arrival had overcome his wonder and consternation at the various
features of the establishment, he usually signalized his acceptance of
what lay before him by writing to Capetown for a fountain-pen. As old
inhabitants of the Cape reveal themselves to the expert eye by carrying
their tobacco loose in a side pocket of their coats, so the patient who
had conceded Dr. Jakes' claims to indulgence was to be distinguished by
the possession of a pen that made him independent of the establishment's
supply and frequently by stains of ink upon his waistcoat in the region
of the left-hand upper pocket, where custom has decided a man shall
carry his fountain-pen.
Margaret had brought her unanswered letters to this privacy and her
fountain-pen was busy in the undisturbed interval following the
celebration of lunch. Hers was the common task of the exile in South
Africa, to improvize laboriously letters to people at home who had
plenty to see and do and no need of the post to inject spice into their
varied lives. There was nothing to write about, nothing to relate; the
heat of the sun, the emptiness of the veld, the grin of Fat Mary--each
of her letters played over these worn themes. Yet unless they were
written and sent, the indifferent folk to whom they were addressed would
not write to her, and the weekly mail, with its excitements and its
reminders, would fail her. No dweller in lands where the double knock
of the postman comes many times in the day can know the thrill of the
weekly mail, discharged from the steamship in Capetown and heralded in
its progress up the line by telegrams that announce to the little dorps
along the railway the hour of its coming. They have not waited with a
patient, preoccupied throng in the lobby of the post-office where the
numbered boxes are, and heard beyond the wooden partition the slam of
the bags and the shuffle of the sorters, talking at their work about
things remote from the mail. The Kafir mail-runners, with their skinny
naked legs and their handfuls of smooth sticks know how those letters
are awaited in the hamlets and farms far remote from the line, by
sun-dried, tobacco-flavored men who are up before the dawn to receive
them, by others whose letters are addressed to names they are not called
by, and by Mrs. Jakes, full-dressed and already a little tired two hours
before breakfast. All those letters are paid for by screeds that suck
dry the brains of their writers, desperately searching over the chewed
ends of penholders for suggestions on barren ground.
There was one letter which Margaret had set herself to compose that had
a different purpose. There were not lacking signs that her position in
Dr. Jakes' household would sooner or later become impossible, and it was
desirable to clear the road for a retreat when no other road would be
open to her. It was not only that Mrs. Jakes burned to be rid of her
and had taken of late to dim hints of her desire in this respect, for
Margaret was prepared, if she were forced to it, to find Mrs. Jakes'
enmity amusing and treat it in that light. Such a course, she judged
would paralyze Mrs. Jakes; in the face of laughter, the little woman was
impotent. But there was also the prospect, daily growing nearer and
more threatening, of an exposure which would show her ruthlessly forth
as the friend and confidante of the Kafir, Kamis, the woman for whom
Ford and Mr. Samson, had, in their own phrase, "no use." The hour when
that exposure should be made loomed darkly ahead; nothing could avert
its sinister advance upon her, nor lighten it of its quality of doom.
She no longer invited her secret to make itself known. By degrees the
warnings of Kamis, the threats of Boy Bailey, the malice of Mrs. Jakes,
had struck their roots in her consciousness, and she was becoming
acclimatized to the South-African spirit which threatens with vague
penalties, not the less real for being vague, such transgressors as she
of its one iron rule of life and conduct. When it should come upon her,
she decided, she would summon her strength to accept it, and confront it
serenely, in the manner of good breeding. But when that was done, she
would have to go.
She was writing therefore to the legal uncle of Lincoln's Inn Fields,
who controlled her affairs and manifested himself with sprightly letters
and punctual cheques. He was an opinionative uncle, like most men who
jest along the established lines of humor, but amenable to a reasonable
submissiveness on the part of his ward and niece. He liked to be
inflexible--good-naturedly inflexible, like an Olympian who condescends
to earth, but he could be counted upon to repay an opportunity for a
display of his inflexibility by liberal indulgence upon other points.
Therefore Margaret, after consideration, commenced the serious part of
her epistle to the heathen with a suggestion in regard to investments
which she knew would rouse him. Then, in a following paragraph:
I am better than I was when I came out, but not better than I was a
month ago, and I don't think I am improving as rapidly as Dr. David
hoped. It may be that I am a little too far to the East of the Karoo.
Was it you or somebody else who advised me to keep to the West?
"That 'll help to fetch him," murmured Margaret, as she wrote the last
words.
Perhaps, later on, if Dr. Jakes thinks well of it, I might move to a
place I hear of over in the West. I 'm letting you know now in plenty
of time; but I don't want you to think there is anything seriously
wrong. Please don't be at all anxious.
"Now something fluffy," pondered Margaret. "If I get it right, he 'll
order me to go."
What makes me hesitate, she wrote, is the trouble it will cost me to
move from here. Would you please show this letter to Dr. David and ask
his opinion?
"That 'll do the trick," she decided unscrupulously. "Dr. David will see
there 's something in it and he 'll back me up. And then, when the row
comes, they shall each have a cut at me,--Mrs. Jakes and Fat Mary and
all--they shall each have their chance to draw blood, and then I 'll
go."
While she wrote, there had been the sound of footsteps on the stone
floor of the hall outside the room, but she had been too busy to note
them. Otherwise, she would quickly have marked an unfamiliar foot among
them. They were reduced to that at the Sanatorium; they knew every foot
that sounded on its floors and a strange one fetched them running to
look from doors. But Margaret's occupation had robbed her of that mild
exhilaration, and she looked up all unsuspiciously as Mrs. Jakes pushed
open the door of the drawing-room, entered and closed it carefully
behind her.
She came a couple of paces into the room and halted, looking at the girl
in a manner that recalled to Margaret that fantastic night when she had
come with a candle to seek aid for Dr. Jakes. Though she had not now
her little worried smile, she wore the same bewildered and embarrassed
aspect, as of a purpose crossed and complicated by considerations and
doubts.
"Are you looking for me, Mrs. Jakes?" asked Margaret, when she had
waited in vain for her to speak.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Jakes, in a hushed voice, and remained where she
stood.
Again Margaret waited in vain for her to speak.
"I 'm rather busy just now," she said. "What is it you want with me,
please?"
Mrs. Jakes looked to see that the door was closed before she answered.
"It isn't me," she said then. "We--we don't get on very well, Miss
Harding; but this isn't my doing. I 've never whispered a word to a
soul. I haven't, indeed, if I never speak another word."
Margaret stared at her, perceiving suddenly that the small bleak woman
was all a-thrill with some nervous tension. Her own nerves quivered in
response to it.
"What is it?" she demanded. "What has happened?"
"It 's the police," breathed Mrs. Jakes. She gave the word the accent
in which she felt it. "The police," she said, with a stricken sense of
all that police stand for, of which unbearable and public shame is
chief. She was trembling, and her small hands, with their rough red
knuckles like raw scars upon them, were picking feverishly at her loose
black skirt.
Margaret's heart beat the more quickly at the mere tone of her whisper,
fraught with dim fears; but the words conveyed nothing to her. If
anything, they relieved her. In the hinterland of her consciousness the
forward-cast shadow of that impending hour was perpetually dark; but the
police could have no concern in that.
"Oh, do please talk plainly," she said irritably. "What exactly do you
want to tell me? And what have I got to do with the police?"
The stimulus of her impatient tones was what was needed to restore Mrs.
Jakes to coherence. She stared at the girl with a sort of stupefaction.
"What have you got to do with it," she repeated. "Why--it 's all about
you. Somebody 's told about you and that Kafir--about you knowing him
and all about him, and now Mr. Van Zyl is in the doctor's study. He 's
come to inquire about it."
"Oh," said Margaret slowly.
It had struck then, the bitter hour of revelation; it had crept upon her
out of an ambush of circumstance when she least expected it, and the
reckoning was due. There was to be no time allowed her in which to build
up her courage; even her retreat must be over strange roads. Before the
gong went to gather the occupants of the house for tea, the stroke would
have fallen, and her place in the minds of her fellows would be with Dr.
Jakes on the hearth-rug, an outcast from their circle. Unless, indeed,
Dr. Jakes should also decline her company, as seemed likely.
It was the image in her mind of a scornful and superior Jakes that
excited the smile with which she looked up at Jakes' frightened wife.
"So long as he does n't bother me, he can inquire as much as he likes,"
she said.
Mrs. Jakes did not understand. "It 's you he 's going to inquire of,"
she said. "I suppose, of course--I suppose you 'll tell him
about--about that night?"
"I shan't tell him anything," replied Margaret. "Oh, you needn't be
afraid, Mrs. Jakes. I 'm not going to take this opportunity of
punishing you for all your unpleasantness. I shall simply refuse to
answer any questions at all."
"You can't do that." Mrs. Jakes showed her relief plainly in her face
and in the relaxation of her attitude. She had forgotten one of the
first rules of her manner of warfare, which is to doubt the enemy's
word. But in spite of a reluctant gratitude for the contemptuous mercy
accorded to her, she felt dully resentful at this high attitude of
Margaret's towards the terrors of the police.
"You can't do that," she said. "He 's got a right to know--and he 's a
sub-inspector. He 'll insist--he 'll make you tell--"
"I think not," said Margaret quietly.
"But he 's--"
Mrs. Jakes broke off sharply as a hand without turned the handle of the
door and pushed it open. Ford appeared, and paused at the sight of them
in conversation.
"Hallo," he said. "Am I interrupting?"
Mrs. Jakes hesitated, but Margaret answered with decision.
"Not at all," she said. "Come in, please."
It occurred to her that the blow would be swifter if Ford himself were
present when it fell and there were no muddle of explanations to drag it
out.
Ford entered reluctantly, scenting a quarrel between the two and
suspicious of Margaret's intentions in desiring his presence.
"There 's a horse and orderly by the steps," he said. "Is Van Zyl
somewhere about? That's why I came in, to see if he was here."
"He--he is in the study," answered Mrs. Jakes, in extreme discomfort.
She turned to Margaret. "If you will come now, I will take you to him."
Ford turned, surprised.
"What for?" asked Margaret.
"He--sent for you." Mrs. Jakes did not understand the question; she
only perceived dimly that some quality in the situation was changed and
that she no longer counted in it.
"But what the dickens did he do that for?" asked Ford.
"We 'll see," said Margaret, forestalling Mrs. Jakes' bewildered reply.
"Please tell him, Mrs. Jakes, that I am here and can spare him a few
minutes at once."
"Yes," acquiesced Mrs. Jakes, helplessly, and departed.
Ford came lounging across the room to Margaret.
"What's up?" he inquired. "You haven't been murdering somebody and not
letting me help?"
Margaret shook her head. She was standing guard over her composure and
could not afford to jest.
"Sit down over there," she bade him, motioning him towards the couch at
the other side of the wide room. "And don't go away, even if he asks you
to. Then you 'll hear all about it."
He wondered but obeyed slowly, leaning back against the end of the couch
with one long leg lying up on the cushions.
"If he talks in the tone of his message to you," he said meditatively,
"I shall be for punching his head."
Sub-Inspector Van Zyl had had the use of a clothes-brush before
expressing his desire to see Margaret; it was a tribute he paid to his
high official mission. He had cleared himself and his accoutrement of
dust and the stain of his journey; and it was with the enhanced
impressiveness of spick-and-span cleanliness that he presented himself
in the drawing-room, pausing in the doorway with his spurred heels
together to lift his hand in a precise and machine-like salute. At his
back, Mrs. Jakes' unpretentious black made a relief for his rigid
correctitude of attire and pose, and the pallid agitation of her
countenance, peering in fearful curiosity to one side of him, heightened
his military stolidity. His stone-blue eyes rested on Ford's recumbence
with a shadow of surprise.
"Afternoon, Ford," he said curtly. "You 'll excuse me, but I 've a word
or two to say to Miss Harding."
"Afternoon, Van Zyl," replied Ford, not moving. "Miss Harding asked me
to stay, so don't mind me."
Van Zyl looked at him inexpressively. "I 'm on duty," he said. "Sorry,
but I wish you 'd go. My business is with Miss Harding."
"Fire away," replied Ford. "I shan't say a word unless Miss Harding
wishes it."
Margaret moved in her chair.
"You will say what you please," she said. "Don't regard me at all, Mr.
Ford. Now--what can I do for you, Mr. Van Zyl?"
Van Zyl finished his scrutiny of Ford and turned to her.
"I sent to ask you to see me in the other room, Miss Harding, because I
thought you would prefer me to speak to you in private," he said, with
his wooden preciseness of manner. "That was why. Sorry if it offended
you. However--"
He stood aside and held the door while Mrs. Jakes entered, and closed it
behind her. Stalking imperturbably, he placed a chair for her and drew
one out for himself, depositing his badged "smasher" hat on the ground
beside it. Seated, he drew from his smoothly immaculate tunic a large
note-book and snapped its elastic band open and laid it on his knee.
Ford, from his place on the couch, watched these preparations with
gentle interest.
Van Zyl looked up at Margaret with a pencil in his fingers. His pale,
uncommunicative eyes fastened on her with an unemotional assurance in
their gaze.
"First," he said; "where were you, Miss Harding, on the afternoon of the
--th?"
He mentioned a date to which Margaret's mind ran back nimbly. It was
the day on which Boy Bailey had made terms from the top of the dam wall,
the day on which the Kafir had kissed her hand, nearly two weeks before.
She had herself sufficiently in hand, and returned his gaze with a faint
smiling tranquillity that told him nothing.
"I have no information to give you, Mr. Van Zyl," she replied evenly.
"It is quite useless to ask me any questions; I shan't answer them."
He was not disturbed. "Sorry," he said, "but I 'm afraid you must. I
hope you 'll remember that I have my duty to do, Miss Harding."
"Must, eh?"
That was Ford, thoughtfully, from the couch. Van Zyl looked in his
direction sharply with a brief frown, but let it pass.
"It's no use, Mr. Van Zyl," said Margaret. "I simply am not going to
answer any questions, and your duty has nothing to do with me. So if
there is nothing else that you wish to say to me, your business is
finished."
"No," he said; "it isn't finished yet, Miss Harding. You refuse to say
where you were on that afternoon?"
Margaret smiled slowly and he made a quick note in his book.
"I ought to say, perhaps," he went on, looking up when he had finished
writing, "that the information I am asking for relates to a--a person,
who is wanted by the police on a charge of sedition and incitement to
commit a breach of the peace. You were seen on the afternoon in
question in the company of that--person, Miss Harding; and I believe--I
_believe_ you can help us to lay hands on him."
"Is it Samson?" inquired Ford, raising his head. "I 've always had my
suspicions of Samson."
"Oh, Mr. Ford," exclaimed Mrs. Jakes, pained.
"It 's not Mr. Samson," said the sub-inspector calmly; "and it is not
any business of yours, Ford."
"Oh, yes; it is," answered Ford. "Because if it isn't Samson it must be
me--unless it 's Jakes. You seem to think we see a good deal of company
here, Van Zyl."
"I don't think anything at all," retorted the sub-inspector stiffly;
"and I 've nothing to say to you. My business is with Miss Harding, and
you won't help her by making a nuisance of yourself."
"Eh?" Ford sat up suddenly. "What's that--won't help her? Are you
trying to frighten Miss Harding by suggesting that you can use any sort
of compulsion to her? Because, if that 's your idea, you 'd better look
out what you 're doing."
"I 'm not responsible to you, Ford," replied Van Zyl shortly. "You can
hold your tongue now. Miss Harding understands well enough what I
mean."
"Oh, yes," said Margaret, as Ford looked towards her. "I understand,
but I don't care."
It was taking its own strange course, but she was not concerned to
deflect it or make it run more directly. She conserved her powers for
the moment when the thing would be told, and Ford's indignant
championship arrested brusquely by the mere name of her offense.
Presently Van Zyl would cease to speak of "a person" and come out with
the plain word, "Kafir." How he had gained his information she did not
attempt to guess; but that he had the means to break her there was no
doubting. She would answer no questions; she was determined upon that;
but now that the hour of revelation was come, she would do nothing to
fog it. It should pass and be done with and leave her with its
consequences clear to weigh and abide.
She made a motion of the hand that hung over the back of her chair to
Ford, as though she would hush him. He was puzzled and looked it, but
subsided provisionally against the end of the couch again.
Van Zyl eased his shoulders in their bondage of slings and straps with a
practised shrug, crossed one booted leg over the other and faced her
afresh.
"Now, Miss Harding, you see that I am not speaking by guess; and it 's
for you to say whether you will have the rest of this here or in
private. I 'm anxious to give you every possible consideration."
"I shan't answer any questions," said Margaret, "and I decline any
privacy, Mr. Van Zyl."
"No? Very well. I must do my duty as best I can," replied the
sub-inspector, with official resignation. He referred to a back page of
his note-book perfunctorily.
"On the --th of this month, man discovered weeping and disorderly on the
platform at Zeekoe Siding, stated to Corporal Simms that he had been
robbed of five hundred pounds by confidence trick on down train. Under
examination, varied the sum, and finally adhered to figure of
forty-three pounds odd, which he alleged was part of fifty pounds he had
received from the--person in whose company he had seen you."
"Ah!" Margaret found herself smiling absently at the memory of Boy
Bailey making his bargain on the top of the dam wall, with his bare
unbeautiful feet fidgeting in the grass.
Sub-inspector Van Zyl surveyed her with his impersonal stare and
continued:
"He gave the name of Claude Richmond, but was afterwards identified as
one Noah Bailey, alias Boy Bailey, alias Spotted Dog, etc., wanted by
the police in connection with--a certain affair. On being charged,
feigned to fall in a fit but came to under treatment, and made a certain
communication, which was transmitted to me as bearing upon my search for
this--person. The communication was detailed, Miss Harding, and he
stood to it under a searching examination, and satisfied us that we were
getting the truth out of him. Acting upon the information thus
received, I next called upon you."
He looked up. "You see what I have to go upon?" he said. "Since you
know yourself what took place on the afternoon about which I asked you,
you can understand that the police require your assistance. Do you
still refuse to answer me, Miss Harding?"
"Of course," replied Margaret.
Now it would come, she thought. Van Zyl would spare her no longer. She
watched his smooth, tanned face with nervous trepidation.
He frowned slightly at her answer, and leaned forward with the note-book
in his hand, his forefinger between the pages to keep the place.
"You do?" he demanded, his voice rising to a sharp note. Ford sat up
again, watchful and angry. "You refuse, do you? Now, look here, Miss
Harding, we 'll have to make an end of this."
Ford struck in crisply. "Good idea," he said. "I suggest Miss Harding
might quit the room for that purpose, and leave you to explain to me
what the devil you mean by this."
Van Zyl turned on him quickly. "You look out," he said. "If I 've got
to arrest you to shut your mouth, I 'll do it--and quick too."
"Why not?" demanded Ford. "That 'll be as good a way for you to get the
lesson you need as any other."
"_You'll_ get a lesson," began Van Zyl, making as though to rise and put
his threat into action.
"Oh, please," cried Margaret; "none of this is necessary. Sit down, Mr.
Ford; please sit down and listen. Mr. Van Zyl, you have only to speak
out and you will be free from further trouble, I 'm sure."
"I 've taken too much trouble as it is," retorted the sub-inspector. "I
'll have no more of it."
He glared with purpose at Ford. Though he had not at any moment doffed
his formality of demeanor, the small scene had lit a spark in him and he
was newly formidable and forceful. Ford met his look with the narrow
smile with which a man of his type masks a rising temper, but so far
yielded to Margaret's urgency as to lean back upon one elbow.
"You 'll be sorry for all this presently," Margaret said to him
warningly.
"Very soon, in fact," added the sub-inspector, "if he repeats the
offense."
He settled himself again on his chair, confronting Margaret.
"Now, Miss Harding," lie resumed briskly. "Out with it? You admit you
were there, eh?"
"Oh, no," said Margaret. "You 're asking questions again, Mr. Van Zyl."
"And I 'm going to have an answer, too," he replied zestfully. "You 've
got a wrong idea entirely of what 's before you. You can still have
this in private, if you like; but here or elsewhere, you 'll speak or
out comes the whole thing. Now, which is it going to be--sharp?"
"I 've nothing to tell you," she maintained.
His blond, neat face hardened.
"Haven't you, though. We'll see? You know a Kafir calling himself--"
he made a lightning reference to his book--"calling himself Kamis?"
She made no answer.
"You know the man, eh? It was with him you spent the afternoon of the
--th, was n't it? Under the wall of the dam down yonder--yes? You 've
met him more than once, and always alone?"
She kept a constraint on herself to preserve her faintly-smiling
indifference of countenance, but her face felt stiff and cold, and her
smile as though it sagged to a blatant grin. She did not glance across
to see how Ford had received the news; that had suddenly become
impossible.
"You see?" There was a restrained triumph in Van Zyl's voice. "We know
more than you think, young lady--and more still. You won't answer
questions, won't you? You let a Kafir kiss you under a wall, and then
put up this kind of bluff."
There was an explosion from Ford as he leaped to his feet, with the
hectic brilliant on each cheek.
"You liar," he cried. "You filthy Dutch liar."
Van Zyl did not even turn his head. A hard smile parted his
squarely-cut lips as he watched Margaret. At his word, she had made a
small involuntary movement as though to put a hand on her bosom, but had
let it fall again.
"You may decide to answer that, perhaps," suggested the sub-inspector.
"Do you deny that he kissed you?"
There was a pause, while Ford stood waiting and the sound of his
breathing filled the interval. The fingers of Margaret's left hand bent
and unbent the flap of the envelope destined for the legal uncle, but
her mind was far from it and its contents. "You liar," Ford had cried,
and it had had a fine sound; even now she had but to rise as though
insulted and walk from the room, and his loyalty would endure,
unspotted, unquestioning, touchy and quick. She might have done well to
choose the line that would have made that loyalty valid, and she felt
herself full of regrets, of pain and loss, that it must find itself
betrayed. The vehemence of the cry was testimony to the faith that gave
it utterance.
And then, for the first time in the interview, she dwelt upon the figure
that stood at the back of all this disordered trouble--that of Kamis,
remote from their agitated circle, companioning in his solitude with
griefs of his own. He came into her mind by way of comparison with the
directness and vivid anger of Ford, standing tense and agonized for her
reply, with all his honest soul in his thin dark face. His flimsy silk
clothes made apparent the lean youth of his body. The other went to and
fro in the night and the silence in shabby tweeds, and his face denied
an index to the strong spirit that drove him. He suffered behind
blubber lips and a comical nose; he was humble and grateful. The two
had nothing in common if it were not that faith in her, to which she
must now do the peculiar justice that the situation required.
"Let 's have it," urged the sub-inspector. "He kissed you, this nigger
did, and you let him? Speak up."
Boy Bailey had said, imaginatively: "She held out both her arms to
him--wide; and he took hold of her an' hugged her, kissin' her till I
couldn't stand the sight any longer. 'You shameless woman!' I
shouted"--at that point he had been kicked by a scandalized corporal,
and had screamed. "I wish I may die if he did n't kiss her," was the
form that kicking finally reduced it to, but they could not kick that
out of him. He stood for one kiss while bruises multiplied upon him.
"Well, did he kiss you or didn't he?"
Margaret sighed. "I will tell you that," she said wearily. "Yes, he
did--he kissed my hand."
Sub-inspector Van Zyl sat up briskly. "I thought we 'd get something
before we were done," he said, and smiled with a kind of malice at Ford.
"You 'd like to apologize, I expect?"
Ford did not answer him; he was staring in mere amazement at Margaret's
immovable profile.
"Is that true?" he demanded.
Margaret forced herself to look round and meet the wonder of his face.
"Oh, quite," she answered. "Quite true."
His eyes wavered before hers as though he were ashamed and abashed. He
put an uncertain hand to his lips.
"I see," he said, very thoughtfully, and sat again upon the couch.
"Well, after that, what 's the sense of keeping anything back?" Van Zyl
went on confidently. "You see what comes of standing out against the
police? Now, what are your arrangements for meeting this Kafir? Where
do you send to let him know he 's to come and see you?"
"No," said Margaret. "It 's no use; I won't tell you any more."
"Oh, yes, you will." Van Zyl felt quite sure of it. He eyed her acutely
and decided to venture a shot in the dark. "You 'll tell me all I
ask,--d'you hear? I have n't done with you yet. You 've seen him at
night, too, when you were supposed to be in bed. You can't deceive me.
I 've seen your kind before, plenty of them, and I know the way to deal
with them."
His shot in the dark found its mark. So he knew of that night when Dr.
Jakes had fallen in the road. Mrs. Jakes must have told him, and her
protests had been uneasy lies. Margaret carefully avoided looking at
her; in this hour, all were to receive mercy save herself.
Van Zyl went on, rasping at her in tones quite unlike the thickish
staccato voice which he kept for his unofficial moments. That voice she
would never hear again; impossible for her ever to regain the status of
a person in whom the police have no concern.
"You 'll save yourself trouble by speaking up and wasting no time about
it," he urged, with the kind of harsh good nature a policeman may use to
the offender who provides him with employment. "You 've got to do it,
you know. How do you get hold of your nigger-friend when you want him?"
She shook her head without speaking.
"Answer!" he roared suddenly, so that she started in her chair. "What
's the arrangement you 've got with him? None of your airs with me, my
girl. Out with it, now--what 's the trick?"
She looked at him affrightedly; he seemed about to spring upon her from
his chair and dash at her to wring an answer out of her by force. But
from the sofa, where Ford sat, with his head in his hands, came no sign.
Only Mrs. Jakes, frozen where she sat, uttered a vague moan.
"Wha--what 's this?"
The door opened noiselessly and Dr. Jakes showed his face of a fallen
cherub in the opening, with sleepy eyes mildly questioning. Margaret
saw him with quick relief; the intolerable situation must change in some
manner by his arrival.
"I heard--I heard--was it _you_ shouting, Van Zyl?" he inquired,
stammeringly, as he came in.
"Yes," replied the sub-inspector, shortly.
"Oh!" Jakes felt uncertainly for his straggling mustache. "Whom were
you shouting at?" he inquired, after a moment of hesitation.
"I was speaking to her," replied the other impatiently.
The doctor followed the movement of his hand and the light of his
spectacles focused on Margaret stupidly.
"Well." He seemed baffled. "Miss Harding, you mean, eh?"