"In case you can't rouse him," said the Kafir, "you might like to know
that I am a doctor--M.B., London."
"Are you?" said Ford thoughtfully. "You're Kamis, are n't you?"
"Yes," answered the Kafir.
"I 'll let you know if there 's anything you can do,", said Ford.
The contrast between the Kafir's pleasant, English voice and his negro
face was strange to him also. But stranger yet, he could not in the
presence of the contemptuous policeman speak the thing that was in his
mind and tell the Kafir that he was to blame for the whole business.
The voice, the address, the manner of the man were those of his own
class; it would have been like quarreling before servants.
"Thank you," said the Kafir, as Ford went out to the stoep.
The sill of the study window was only three feet above the ground, a
square of dull light filtering through curtains that let nothing be seen
from without of the interior of the room. Ford wasted no more time in
knocking and calling; he drew off a slipper and using it as a hammer,
smashed the glass of the window close to the catch. Half the pane went
crashing at the first blow, and the window was open. He threw a leg
over the sill and was in the room.
A bracket lamp was burning on the wall and shooting up a steady spire of
smoke to the ceiling, where a thick black patch had assembled and was
shedding flakes of smut on all below it. The slovenliness of the
smoking lamp was suddenly an offense to him, and before he even looked
round he went across and turned the flame lower. It seemed a thing to
do before setting about the saving of Margaret's life.
The room was oppressively hot with a sickening closeness in its
atmosphere and a war of smells pervading it. The desk had whisky
bottles, several of them, all partly filled, standing about its surface,
with a water jug, a syphon and some glasses. Papers and a book or two
had their place there also, and liquor had been spilt on them and a
tumbler was standing on the yellow cover of a copy of "Mr. Barnes of New
York." A collar and a tie lay on the floor in the middle of the room
and near them was a glass which had fallen and escaped breakage. Dr.
Jakes was in the padded patient's chair; it had its back to the window,
and at first Ford had imagined with surprise that the room was empty.
He looked round wonderingly, till his eyes lighted on the top of the
doctor's blond, childish head, showing round the chair.
Dr. Jakes had an attitude of extreme relaxation. He had slipped forward
on the smooth leather seat till his head lay on one of the arms and his
face was upturned to the smirched ceiling. His feet were drawn in and
his knees protruded; his hands hung emptily beside him. The soot of the
lamp had snowed on him copiously, dotting his face with black spots till
he seemed to have broken out in some monstrous plague-rash. His lips
were parted under his fair mustache, and the eyes were closed tight as
if in determination not to see the ruin and dishonor of his life. He
offered the spectacle of a man securely entrenched against all possible
duties and needs, safe through the night against any attack on his peace
and repose.
"Jakes," cried Ford urgently, in his ear, and shook him as vigorously as
he could. "Jakes, you hog. Wake up, will you."
The doctor's head waggled loosely to the shaking and settled again to
its former place. It was infuriating to see it rock like that, as
though there were nothing stiffer than wool in the neck, and yet
preserve its deep tranquillity. Ford looked down and swore. There was
no help here.
He unlocked the door and threw it open. In the hall the Kafir and the
policeman were as he had left them.
"Come in here," he ordered briefly.
The Kafir came, with the trooper and the revolver close at his back.
The latter's eye made notes of the room, the glasses, the doctor, all
the consistent details; and he smiled.
"You 're a doctor," said Ford to the Kafir. "Can you do anything with
this?"
"This" was Dr. Jakes. Kamis made an inspection of him and lifted one of
the tight eyelids.
"I can make him conscious," he answered, "and sober in a desperate sort
of fashion. But he won't be fit for anything. You mustn't trust him."
"Will he be able to doctor Miss Harding?" demanded Ford.
"No," answered Kamis emphatically. "He won't."
"Then," said Ford, "what the deuce are we to do?"
The Kafir was still giving attention to Dr. Jakes, and was unbuttoning
the neck of his shirt. He looked up.
"If you would let me see her," he suggested, "I 've no doubt I could do
what is necessary for her."
Ford ran his fingers through his short stiff hair in perplexity.
"I don't see what else there is to do," he said, frowning.
The trooper had not yet spoken since he had entered the room. He and
his revolver had had no share in events. He had been a part of the
background, like the bottles and the soot, forgotten and discounted.
Not even his prisoner, whose life hung on the pressure of his
trigger-finger, had spent a glance on him. But at Ford's reply to the
suggestion of the Kafir he restored himself to a central place in the
drama.
"There will be none of that," he remarked in his drawling nasal voice.
Both turned towards him, the Kafir to meet the pistol-barrel pointing at
his chest. The trooper's mouth was twisted to a smile, and his
Punchinello face was mocking and servile at once.
"None of what?" demanded Ford.
"None of your taking this nigger into women's bedrooms. He 's my
prisoner."
"I 'll take all responsibility," said Ford impatiently.
The trooper's smile was open now. He had Ford summed up for such
another as Margaret, a person who held lax views in regard to Kafirs and
white women. Such a person was not to be feared in South Africa.
"No," he said. "Can't allow that. It isn't done. This nigger 'll stay
with me."
"Look here," said Ford angrily. "I tell you--"
"You look here," retorted the other. "Look at this, will you?" He
balanced the big revolver in his fist. "That Kafir tries to get up those
stairs, and I 'll drill a hole in him you could put your fist in.
Understand?"
He nodded at Ford with a sort of geniality more inflexibly hostile than
any scowls.
Ford would have answered forcibly enough, but from the doorway came a
wail, and he looked up to see Mrs. Jakes standing there, with a hand on
each doorpost and her small face, which he knew as the shopwindow of the
less endearing virtues, convulsed with a passion of alarm and horror.
At her cry, they all started round towards her, with the single
exception of Dr. Jakes, who lay in his chair with his face in that
direction already, and was not stirred at all by her appearance on the
scene that had created itself around him.
"O-o-oh," she cried. "Eustace--after all I 've done; after all these
years. Why didn't you lock the door, Eustace? And what will become of
us now? O-oh, Mr. Ford, I begged you to go to bed. And the Kafir to
see it, and all. The disgrace--o-o-h."
The tears ran openly down her face; they made her seem suddenly younger
and more human than Ford had known her to be.
"Oh, come in, Mrs. Jakes," he begged. "Come in; it 's--it 's all
right."
"All right," repeated Mrs. Jakes. "But--everybody will know, soon, and
how can I hold up my head? I 've been so careful; I 've watched all the
time--and I 've prayed--"
She bowed her face and wept aloud, with horrible sobs.
Ford was at the end of his wits. While he pitied Mrs. Jakes, Margaret
might be dying in her room, under the bland and interested eyes of Fat
Mary. He turned swiftly to the Kafir.
"Could you prescribe if I told you what she looked like?" he asked, in a
half-whisper. "Could you do anything in that way?"
"Perhaps." The Kafir was quick to understand. Even in the urgency of
the time, Ford was thankful that he had to deal with a man who
understood readily and replied at once, a man like himself.
"Let me pass, Mrs. Jakes," he said, and made for the stairs.
As soon as he had gone, the trooper advanced to the desk and laid hands
on a bottle and a glass. He mixed himself a satisfactory tumbler and
turned to Mrs. Jakes.
"The ladies, God bless 'em," he said piously, and drank.
Kamis, looking on mutely, saw the little woman blink at her tears and
try to smile.
"Don't mention it," she murmured.
She came into the room and examined Dr. Jakes, bending over him to scan
his tranquil countenance. There was nothing in her aspect of wrath or
rancor; she was still submissive to the fate that stood at the levers of
her being and switched her arbitrarily from respectability to ruin. She
seemed merely to make sure of features in his condition which she
recognized without disgust or shame.
"Would you please just help me?" she asked, looking up at the policeman,
very politely, with her hands on the doctor's shoulders.
"Charmed," declared the policeman, with an equal courtesy, and aided her
to raise the drunken and unconscious man to a more seemly position in
his chair. It was seemlier because his head hung forward, and he looked
more as if he were dead and less as if he were drunk.
"Thank you," she said, when it was done. "It is--it is quite a fine
night, is it not? The stars are beautiful. There is whisky on the
desk--very good whisky, I believe. Won't you help yourself?"
"You 're very good," said the trooper, cordially, and helped himself.
Ford came shortly. He ignored Mrs. Jakes and the trooper entirely and
spoke to the Kafir only. His manner made a privacy from which the
others were excluded.
"I say," he said, with a manner of trouble. "She 's still in a faint.
Very white, not breathing much, and rather cold. She looks bad."
The Kafir nodded. "You could n't take her temperature, of course," he
said. "There hadn't been any fresh hemorrhage?"
"No," replied Ford. "I asked Fat Mary. She was there, and she said
there 'd been no blood. I say--is it very dangerous?"
He was a layman; flesh and blood--blood particularly--were beyond his
science and within the reach only of his pity and his fear. He had
stood by Margaret's bed and looked down on her; he had bent his ear to
her lips to make sure that she breathed and that her white immobility
was not death. His hand had felt her forehead and been chilled by the
cold of it; and he had tried inexpertly to find her pulse and failed.
Fat Mary, holding a candle, had illuminated his researches, grinning the
while, and had answered his questions humorously, till she realized that
she was in some danger of being assaulted; and then she had lied.
He made his appeal to the Kafir as to a man of his own kind.
"I 'm afraid it 's not much use," he said--"what I can tell you, I mean.
But do you think there 's much danger?"
Kamis shook his head. "There should n't be," he answered. "I wish I
could see her. Cold, was she? Yes; temperature subnormal. I could
cup,--but you could n't. Do you think you could make a hypodermic
injection, if I showed you how?"
"I could do any blessed thing," declared Ford, fervently.
"Digitalin and adrenalin," mused Kamis. "He won't have those, though.
Do you know if he 's got any ergotin?"
"He has," replied Ford. "He shoved some into me. Mrs. Jakes--ergotin?
where is it?"
Mrs. Jakes was leaning on the back of the chair which contained the
doctor. She had recovered from the emotion which had convulsed and
unbalanced her at the discovery of the study's open door. She looked up
now languidly, in imitation of Margaret's manner when she was not
pleased with matters.
"Really, you must ask the doctor," she said. "I couldn't think
of--ah--disposing of such things."
Kamis had not waited to hear her out. Already he was overhauling the
drawers of the desk for the syringe. Ford aided him.
"Is this it?" he asked, at the second drawer he opened.
"Thank God," ejaculated Kamis. He could not help sending a glance of
triumph at Mrs. Jakes.
"Now attend to me," he said to Ford. "First I 'll show you how to
inject it. Give me your arm; can you stand a prick?"
"Go ahead," said Ford; "slowly, so that I can watch."
"Take a pinch of skin like this," directed the Kafir, closing his
forefinger and thumb on a piece of Ford's forearm. "See? Then, with
the syringe in your hand, like this, push the needle in--like this.
See?"
"I see."
"Well, now do it to me. Here 's the place."
The arm he bared was black brown, full and muscular. Ford took the
syringe and pinched the smooth warm skin.
"In with it," urged the Kafir. "Don't be afraid, man. Now press the
plunger down with your forefinger. See? Go on, can't you? You mustn't
mess the business upstairs. Do it again."
"That 's enough," said Ford.
Drops of blood issued from the puncture as he withdrew the needle, and
he shivered involuntarily. It had been horrible to press the point home
into that smooth and rounded arm; his own had not bled.
"Mind now," warned the Kafir. "You must run it well in. And now about
the drug."
He was minute in his instructions and careful to avoid technical phrases
and terms of art. He took the syringe and cleaned and charged and gave
it to Ford.
"Don't funk it," was his final injunction. "This is nothing. There may
be worse for you to do yet."
"I won't funk it," promised Ford. "But--" he appealed to the Kafir with
a shrug of deprecation--"but isn't it a crazy business?"
It was like a swiftly-changing dream to him. The hot and dirty room,
with the Kafir busy and thoughtful, the malevolent trooper and his
revolver, the sprawl of the doctor and his slumberous calm and Mrs.
Jakes groping through the minutes for a cue to salvation, were
unconvincing even when his eyes dwelt on them. They had not the savor
of reality. Six paces away was the hall, severe and grand, with its
open door making it a neighbor of the darkness and the stars. Then came
the vacant stairs and the long lifeless corridors running between the
closed doors of rooms, and the light leaking out from under the door of
Margaret's chamber. Through such a variety one moves in dreams, where
things have lost or changed their values and nothing is solid or
immediate, and death is not troublous nor life significant.
Fat Mary was resting in Margaret's armchair when he pushed open the door
and came in, carrying the syringe carefully with its point in the air.
She rose hastily, fearful of a rebuke.
"Miss Harding wake up yet?" Ford asked her.
"No. Missis sleep all-a-time," replied Fat Mary. "She plenty quiet,
all-'e-same dead."
"Shut up," ordered Ford, in a harsh whisper. "You're a fool."
Fat Mary sniffed in cautious defiance and muttered in Kafir. Since her
duties had lain about Margaret's person, she had become unused to being
called a fool. She pouted unpleasantly and stood watching unhelpfully as
Ford went to the bedside.
The blood had been washed away and there was nothing now to suggest
violence or brutality. The girl lay on her back in the utter vacancy of
unconsciousness; the face had been wiped clean of all expression and
left blank and void. Mrs. Jakes had known enough to remove the pillows,
which were in the chair Fat Mary had selected for her ease, and the head
lay back on the level sheet with the brown hair tumbled to each side of
it. Ford, looking down on her, was startled by a likeness to a recumbent
stone figure he had seen in some church, with the marble drapery falling
to either side of it as now the bedclothes fell over Margaret Harding.
It needed only the crossed arms and the kneeling angel to complete the
resemblance. The idea was hateful to him, and he made haste to get to
the work he had to do in order to break away from it.
The sleeve of the nightgown had soft lace at the wrist and a band of
lace inserted higher up; softness and delicacy surrounded her and made
his task the harder. The forearm, when he had stripped the sleeve back,
was cool and silk-smooth to his touch, slender and shining. His fingers
almost circled its girth; it was strangely feminine and disturbing. A
blue vein was distinct in the curve of the elbow, and others branched at
the wrist where his finger could find no pulse.
Fat Mary forgot her indignation in her curiosity, and came tiptoeing
across the floor, holding a candle to light him, and stood at his
shoulder to watch. Her big ridiculous face was gleeful as he took up
the syringe; she knew a joke when she saw one.
Ford pinched the white skin with thumb and forefinger as he had been
bidden and touched it with the point of the needle. The point slipped
and was reluctant to enter; he had to take hold firmly and thrust it,
like a man sewing leather. The girl's hand twitched slightly and fell
open again and was passive. He felt sickish and feeble and had to knit
himself to run the needle in deep and depress the plunger that deposited
the drug in the arm. Over his shoulder Fat Mary watched avidly and
grinned.
He drew the sleeve down again and laid the arm back in its place. He
passed a hand absently over his forehead and found it damp with strange
sweat, and he was conscious of being weary in every limb as though he
had concluded some extreme physical effort. He looked carefully at the
unconscious girl, seeking for signs and indices which he should report
to Kamis. The likeness of the marble figure did not recur to him; his
thoughts were laborious and slow.
He woke Mr. Samson on his way downstairs, invading his room without
knocking and shaking him by the shoulder. Mr. Samson snorted and thrust
up a bewildered face to the light of the candle. His white mustache,
which in the daytime cocked debonair points to port and starboard, hung
down about his mouth and made him commonplace.
"What the devil 's up?" he gasped, staring wildly. "Oh, it 's you,
Ford."
"Get up," said Ford. "There 's the deuce to pay. That Kafir 's
arrested--Kamis, you know; Miss Harding 's had a bad hemorrhage and
Jakes is dead drunk. I want you to go to Du Preez's and send a messenger
for another doctor. Hurry, will you?"
"My sainted aunt," exclaimed Mr. Samson, in amazement. "You don't say.
I 'll be with you in a jiffy, Ford. Don't you wait."
He threw a leg over the edge of the bed, revealing pyjamas strikingly
striped, and Ford left him to improvise a toilet unwatched.
The trooper was talking to Mrs. Jakes in the study when Ford returned
there. He had relieved himself of his hat, and his big head, on which
the hair was scant, was naked to the lamp. He had found himself a chair
at the back of the desk, and reclined in it spaciously, with his
half-empty tumbler at his elbow. The Kafir still stood where Ford had
left him, his eyes roving gravely over the room and its contents. The
trooper looked up as Ford came in, lifting his saturnine and aggressive
features with a smile. He had drunk several glasses in a quick
succession and was already thawed and voluble.
"Well," he said loudly. "How's interestin' patient? 'S well 's can be
expected--what? Didn't express wish to thank med'cal adviser in person,
I s'pose?"
Ford bent a hard look on him.
"I 'll attend to you in good time," he said, with meaning. "For the
present you can shut up."
He turned at once to the Kafir and began to tell him what he had seen
and done, while the other steered him with brief questions. The trooper
gazed at them with a fixed eye.
"Shup," he said, to Mrs. Jakes. "Says I can shup--for the present.
Supposin' I don't shup, though."
He drank, with a manner of confirming by that action a portentous
resolution, and sat for some minutes grave and meditative, with his
bitter, thin mouth sucked in. He never laid down the big revolver which
he held. Its short, businesslike barrel rested on the blue cloth of his
knee, and the blued metal reflected the light dully from its surfaces.
"Is it dangerous?" Ford was asking. "From what I can tell you, do you
think there 's any real danger? She looks--she looks deadly."
"Yes, she would," replied the Kafir thoughtfully. "I think I 've got an
idea how things stand. As long as that unconsciousness lasts, there 'll
be no more hemorrhage, and there 's the ergotin too. If there 's
nothing else, I don't see that it should be serious--more serious, that
is, than hemorrhages always are."
"You really think so?" asked Ford. "I wish you could see her for
yourself, and make certain. Perhaps presently that swine with the
revolver will be drunk enough to go to sleep or something, and we might
manage it."
The Kafir shook his head.
"If it were necessary, the revolver wouldn't stop me," he said. "But as
it is--"
"What?"
"Oh, do you think it would make things better for Miss Harding if you
took me into her bedroom? You see what has happened already, because
she has spoken to me from time to time. How would this sound, when it
was dished up for circulation in the dorps?"
Ford frowned unhappily. He did not want to meet the mournful eyes in
the black face.
"You think," he began hesitatingly--"you think it--er--it wouldn't do?"
"You were here when the other story came out," retorted Kamis. "Can you
remember what you thought then?"
"Oh, I was a fool of course," said Ford; "but, confound it, I did n't
think any harm."
"Didn't you? But what did everybody think? Isn't it true that as a
result of all that was said and thought Miss Harding has to risk her
life by returning to England?"
"No, it wouldn't do, I suppose," said Ford. "Between us we 've made it
a pretty tough business for her. We 're brutes."
The thick negro lips parted in a smile that was not humorous.
"At a little distance," said Kamis, "say, from the other side of the
color line, you certainly make a poor appearance."
Mr. Samson made his entry with an air of coming to set things right or
know the reason.
"Well, I 'll be hanged," he exclaimed in the doorway, making a sharp
inspection of the scene.
He had got together quite a plausible equivalent for his daily
personality, and had not omitted to make his mustache recognizable with
pomade. A Newmarket coat concealed most of his deficiencies; his
monocle made the rest of them insignificant.
Mrs. Jakes sighed and fidgeted.
"Oh, Mr. Samson," she said. "What can I say to you?"
"Say 'good-morning,'" suggested Mr. Samson, with his eye on Jakes.
"Better send for the 'boys' to carry him up to bed, to begin with--what?
Well, Ford, here I am, ready and waiting. This the fellow, eh?"
His arrogant gaze rested on the Kafir intolerantly.
"This is Kamis," said Ford. "Dr. Kamis, of London, by the way. He is
treating Miss Harding at present."
"Eh?" Mr. Samson turned on him abruptly. "You 've taken him up there,
to her room?"
"No," said Ford. "Not yet."
"See you don't, then," said Mr. Samson strongly. "What you thinkin'
about, Ford? And look here, what 's your name!"--to the Kafir. "You
speak English, don't you? Well, I don't want to hurt your feelin's, you
know, but you 've got to understand quite plainly--"
Kamis interrupted him suavely.
"You need n't trouble," he said. "I quite agree with you. I was just
telling Mr. Ford the same thing."
"Were you, by Jove," snorted Mr. Samson, entirely unappeased. "Pity you
didn't come to the same conclusion a month ago. You may be a doctor and
all that; I 've no means of disprovin' what you say; but in so far as
you compromised little Miss Harding, you 're a black cad. Just think
that over, will you? Now, Ford, what d'you want me to do?"
There was power of a sort in Mr. Samson, the power of unalterable
conviction and complete sincerity. In his Newmarket coat and checked
cloth cap he thrust himself with fluency into the scene and made himself
its master. He gave an impression of din, of shouting and tumult; he
made himself into a clamorous crowd. Mrs. Jakes trembled under his
glance and the trooper blinked servilely. Ford, concerned chiefly to
have a messenger despatched without delay, bowed to the storm and gave
him his instructions without protest.
"Mind, now," stipulated Mr. Samson, ere he departed on his errand; "no
takin' the nigger upstairs, Ford. There 's a decency in these affairs."
The trooper nodded solemnly to the departing flap of the Newmarket
tails, making their exit with a Newmarket _aplomb_.
"Noble ol' buck," he observed, approvingly. "Goo' style. Gift o' the
gab. Here 's luck to him."
He gulped noisily in his glass, spilling the liquor on his tunic as he
drank.
"Knows nigger when he sees 'im," he said. "Frien' o' yours?"
"Mr. Samson," replied Mrs. Jakes seriously, "is a very old friend."
"Goblessim," said the trooper. "Less 'ave anurr."
Kamis and Ford regarded one another as Mr. Samson left them and both
were a little embarrassed. Plain speaking is always a brutality, since
it sets every man on his defense.
"I 'm sorry there was a fuss," said Ford uncomfortably. "Old Samson 's
such a beggar to make rows."
"He was right," said Kamis; "perfectly right. Only--I didn't need to be
told. I 've been cursing myself ever since I heard that the thing had
come out. It 's my fault altogether--and I knew it long before the row
happened, and I let it go on."
Ford nodded with his eyes on the ground.
"You could hardly--order her off," he said.
"That wasn't it," answered Kamis. "Man, I was as lonely as a man on a
raft, and I jumped at the chance of her company now and again. I
sacrificed her, I tell you. Don't try to make excuses for me. I won't
have them. Go up and see how she is. What are we talking here for?"
"God knows," said Ford drearily. "What else 'is there to do? We 've
both wronged her, haven't we?"
There was no change in Margaret; she was as he had left her, pallid and
motionless, a temptation to death.
Fat Mary was asleep in the armchair, gross and disgustful, and he woke
her with the heel of his slipper on her big splay foot. She squeaked
and came to life angrily and reported no movement from Margaret. He had
an impulse to hit her, she was so obviously prepared to say anything he
seemed to require and she was so little like a woman. It was impossible
in reason and sentiment to connect her with the still, fragile form on
the bed, and he had to exercise an actual and conscious restraint to
refrain from an openhanded smack on her bulging and fatuous countenance.
He could only call her wounding names, and he did so. She drooped her
lower lip at him piteously and again he yearned to punch her.
There was no change to report to Kamis, who nodded at his account and
spoke a perfunctory, "All right. Thanks." The trooper sat in a daze,
scowling at his boots; Mrs. Jakes was lost in thought; the doctor had
not moved. Ford fidgeted to and fro between the desk and the door for a
while and finally went out to the stoep and walked to and fro along its
length, trying to realize and to feel what was happening.
He knew that he was not appreciating the matter as a whole. He was like
a man dully afflicted, to whom momentary details are present and
apparent, while the sum of his trouble is uncomprehended. He could
dislike the apprehensive and timidly presumptuous face of the trooper,
pity Mrs. Jakes, distaste Mr. Samson's forceful loudness, smell the
foulness of the study and wonder at the Kafir; but the looming essential
fact that Margaret lay in a swoon on her bed, lacking the aid due to her
and in danger of death in a dozen forms--that had been vague and
diffused in his understanding. He had not known it passionately,
poignantly, in its full dreadfulness.
He told himself the facts carefully, going over them with a patient
emphasis to point them at himself.
"Margaret may die; it 's very likely she will, with only a fool like me
to see how she looks. I never called her Margaret till to-day--but it
's yesterday now. And here 's this damned story about her, which every
one knows wrongly and adds lies to when he tells it. It would look
queer on the stage--Kamis doctoring her like this. But the point
is--she may die."
The sky was full of stars, white and soft and misty, like tearful eyes,
and the Southern Cross, in which he had never been able to detect
anything like a cross, rode high. He could not hold his thoughts from
wandering to it and the absurdity of calling a mere blotch like that a
cross. Heaps of other stars that did make crosses--neat and obvious
ones. The sky was full of crosses, for that matter. Astronomers were
asses, all of them. But the point was, Margaret might die.
"That you, Ford?"
Mr. Samson was coming up the steps and with him were Christian du Preez
and his wife.
"These good people are anxious to help," explained Mr. Samson. "Very
good of 'em--what? And young Paul 's gone off on a little stallion to
send Dr. Van Coller. Turned out at the word like a fire engine and was
off like winkin'. Never saw anything smarter. If the doctor 's half as
smart he 'll be here in four hours."
"That's good," said Ford.
"And Mrs. du Preez 'll stay with Miss Harding an' do what she can," said
Mr. Samson.
"I 'll do any blessed thing," declared Mrs. du Preez with energy.
Mr. Samson stood aside to let his companions enter the house before him.
He whispered with buoyant force to Ford.
"A chaperon to the rescue," he said. "We 've got a chaperon, and the
rest follows. You see if it don't."
There was a brief interview between Mrs. du Preez and the Kafir under
the eyes of the tall Boer. Mr. Samson had already informed them of the
situation in the study, and they were not taken by surprise, and the
Kafir fell in adroitly with the tone they took. Ford thought that Mrs.
du Preez displayed a curious timidity before the negro, a conspicuous
improvement on her usual perky cocksureness.
"Just let me know if there is any change," Kamis said to her. "That is
all. If she recovers consciousness, for instance, come to me at once."
"I will," answered Mrs. du Preez, with subdued fervor.
There seemed nothing left for Ford to do. Mrs. du Preez departed to her
watch, and it was at least satisfactory to know that Fat Mary would now
have to deal with one who would beat her on the first occasion without
compunction. Mr. Samson and the Boer departed to the drawing-room in
search of a breathable air, and after an awkward while Ford followed
them thither.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Samson, as he appeared. "Here you are. You 'd
better try and snooze, Ford. Been up all night, haven't you?"
"Pretty nearly," admitted Ford. "I couldn't sleep, though."
"You try," recommended Mr. Samson urgently. "Lie down on the couch and
have a shot. You 're done up; you 're not yourself. What d' you think,
Du Preez? He was nearly takin' that nigger up to Miss Harding's room.
What d' you think of that, eh?"
He was sitting on the music stool, an urbane and adequate presence.
The Boer shook his head. "That would be bad," he said seriously. "He
is a good nigger--_ya_! But better she should die."
Ford laughed wearily as he sat down. "That was his idea," he said.
He leaned back to listen to their talk. Sleep, he felt, was far from
him. Margaret might die--that had to be kept in mind. He heard them
discuss the Kafir stupidly, ridiculously. It was pothouse talk, the
chatter of companionable fools, frothing round and round their topic.
Their minds were rigid like a pair of stiffened corpses set facing one
another; they never reached an imaginative hand towards the wonder and
pity of the matter. And Margaret--the beautiful name that it
was--Margaret might die.
Half an hour later, Mr. Samson slewed his monocle towards him.
"Sleepin' after all," he remarked. "Poor devil--no vitality. Not like
you an' me, Du Preez--what?"
Ford knew he had slept when the Boer woke him in the broad daylight.
"The doctor is here," said Christian. "He says it is all right. He
says--she has been done right with. She will not die."
"Thank God," said Ford.
Mr. Samson was in the room. The daylight showed the incompleteness of
his toilet; he was a mere imitation of his true self. His triumphant
smile failed to redeem him. The bald truth was--he was not dressed.
"Everything 's as right as rain," he declared, wagging his tousled white
head. "Sit where you are, my boy; there 's nothing for you to do. Dr.
Van Coller had an infernal thing he calls a motor-bicycle, and it
brought him the twenty-two miles in fifty minutes. Makes a noise like a
traction engine and stinks like the dickens. Got an engine of sorts,
you know, and goes like anything. But the point is, Miss Harding 's
going on like a house on fire. Your nigger-man and you did just the
right thing, it appears."
"Where is he?" asked Ford.
"The nigger-man?"
Mr. Samson and the Boer exchanged glances.
"Look here," said Mr. Samson; "Du Preez and I had an understanding about
it, but don't let it go any further. You see, after all that has
happened, we could n't let the chap go to gaol. No sense in that. So
the bobby being as drunk as David's sow, I had a word with him. I told
him I didn't retract anything, but we were all open to make mistakes,
and--to cut it short--he 'd better get away while he had the chance."
"Yes," said Ford. "Did he?"
"He didn't want to at first," replied Mr. Samson. "His idea was that he
had to clear himself of the charge on which he was arrested. Sedition,
you know. All rot, of course, but that was his idea. So I promised to
write to old Bill Winter--feller that owes me money--he 's governor of
the Cape, or something, and put it to him straight."
"He will write to him and say it is lies," said the Boer. "He knows
him."
"Know him," cried Mr. Samson. "Never paid me a bet he lost, confound
him. Regular old welcher, Bill is. Van Coller chipped in too--treated
him like an equal. And in the end he went. Van Coller says he 'd like
to have had his medical education. I say, what 's that?"
A sudden noise had interrupted him, a sharp report from somewhere within
the house. The Boer nodded slowly, and made for the door.
"That policeman has shot somebody," he said.
Dr. Jakes waked to the morning light with a taste in his mouth which was
none the more agreeable for being familiar. He opened his hot eyes to
the strange disarray of his study, the open door and the somnolent form
of the policeman, and sat up with a jerk, almost sober. He stared
around him uncomprehending. The lamp burned yet, and the room was
stiflingly hot; the curtains had not been put back and the air was heavy
and foul. He got shakily to his feet and went towards the hall. His
wife, with coffee cups on a tray, was coming down the stairs. She saw
him and put the tray down on the table against the wall and went to him.
"Well, Eustace?" she said tonelessly. "What is it now?"
He cleared his burning throat. "Who opened the door?" he asked
hoarsely.
She shook her head. "I don't know," she answered. "It does n't
matter--we 're ruined at last. It 's come, Eustace."
He made strange grimaces in an endeavor to clear his mind and grasp what
she was saying. She watched him unmoved, and went on to tell him, in
short bald sentences of the night's events.
"Dr. Van Coller will be down presently," she concluded. "He 'll want to
see you, but you can lock your door if you like. He 's seen me
already."
He had her meaning at last. He blinked at her owlishly, incapable of
expressing the half-thoughts that dodged in his drugged brain.
"Poor old Hester," he said, at last, and turned heavily back to his
study.
Mrs. Jakes smiled in pity and despair, and took up her tray again. She
thought she knew better than he how poor she was.
He slammed the door behind him, but he did not trouble to lock it.
Something he had seen when he opened his eyes stuck in his mind, and he
went staggeringly round the untidy desk, with its bottles and papers, to
where the policeman sprawled in a chair with his Punchinello chin on his
breast. His loose hands retained yet the big revolver.
"He 'll come to it too," was Dr. Jakes' thought as he looked down on
him. He drew the weapon with precaution from the man's hand.
He stood an instant in thought, looking at its neat complication of
mechanism and then raised it slowly till the small round of the muzzle
returned his look. His face clenched in desperate resolution. But he
did not pull the trigger. At the critical moment, his eye caught the
lamp, burning brazenly on the wall. He went over and turned it out.
"Now," he said, and raised the revolver again.
*CHAPTER XIX*
Upon that surprising morning when Mr. Samson, taking his early
constitutional, was a witness to the cloud that rode across the sun and
presently let go its burden of wet to fall upon the startled earth in
slashing, roaring sheets of rain, there stood luggage in the hall,
strapped, locked, and ready for transport.
"Gad!" said Mr. Samson, breathless in the front door and backing from
the splashes of wet that leaped on the railing of the stoep and drove
inwards. "They 'll have a wet ride."
He flicked at spots of water on the glossy surface of his gray coat and
watched the rain drive across and hide the Karoo like a steel-hued fog.
The noise of it, after months of sun and stillness, was distracting; it
threshed vehemently with uproar and power, in the extravagant fashion of
those latitudes. It was the signal that the weather had broken,
justifying at length Mrs. Jakes' conversational gambit.
She came from the breakfast-room while he watched, with the wind from
the open door romping in her thin skirts, and stood beside him to look
out. They exchanged good mornings.
"Is n't it wet?" said Mrs. Jakes resourcefully. "But I dare say it 's
good for the country."
"Rather," agreed Mr. Samson. "It 'll be all green before you know it.
But damp for the travelers--what?"
"They will have the hood on the cart," replied Mrs. Jakes.
She was not noticeably changed since the doctor's death, three weeks
before. Her clothes had always been black, so that she was exempt from
the gruesome demands of custom to advertise her loss in her garments.
The long habit of shielding Jakes from open shame had become a part of
her; so that instead of abandoning her lost position, she was already in
the way of canonizing him. She made reverential references to his
professional skill, to his goodness, his learning, his sacrifices to
duty. She looked people steadily and defiantly in the eyes as she said
so, and had her own way with them. The foundations were laid of a
tradition which presented poor Jakes in a form he would never have
recognized. He was in his place behind the barbed wire out on the veld,
sharing the bed of little Eustace, heedless that there was building for
him a mausoleum of good report and loyal praise.
"Hate to see luggage in a house," remarked Mr. Samson, as they passed
the pile in the hall on their way to the breakfast-room. "Nothing
upsets a house like luggage. Looks so bally unsettled, don't you know."
"Things _are_ a little unsettled," agreed Mrs. Jakes civilly. "What
with the rain and everything, it doesn't seem like the same place, does
it?"
She gave a tone of mild complaint to her voice, exactly as though a
disturbance in the order of her life were a thing to be avoided. It
would not have been consistent with the figure of the late Jakes, as she
was sedulous to present it, if she had admitted that the house and its
routine, its purpose, its atmosphere, its memories, the stones in its
walls and the tiles on its roof, were the objects of her living hate.
She was already in negotiations for the sale of it and what she called
"the connection," and had called Mr. Samson and Ford into consultation
over correspondence with a doctor at Port Elizabeth, who wrote with a
typewriter and was inquisitive about balance-sheets. Throughout the
consequent discussions she maintained an air of gentle and patient
regret, an attitude of resigned sentiment, the exact manner of a lady in
a story who sells the home of her ancestors to a company promoter. Even
her anxiety to sell Ford and Mr. Samson along with the house did not
cause her to deflect for an instant from the course of speech and action
she had selected. There were yet Penfolds in Putney and Clapham
Junction, and when the sale was completed she would see them again and
rejoin their congenial circle; but her joy at the prospect was private,
her final and transcendent secret.
Nothing is more natural to man than to pose; by a posture, he can
correct the crookedness of his nature and be for himself, and sometimes
for others too, the thing he would be. It is the instinct towards
protective coloring showing itself through broadcloth and bombazine.
Mr. Samson accepted his coffee and let his monocle fall into it, a sign
that he was discomposed to an unusual degree. He sat wiping it and
frowning.
"Did I tell you," he said suddenly, "that--er--that Kafir 's going to
look in just before they start?"
Mrs. Jakes looked up sharply.
"You mean--that Kamis?" she demanded. "He 's coming _here_?"
"Ye-es," said Mr. Samson. "Just for a minute or two. Er--Ford knows
about it."
"To see Miss Harding, I suppose?" inquired Mrs. Jakes, with a sniff.
"Yes," replied Mr. Samson again. "It isn't my idea of things, but then,
things have turned out so dashed queer, don't you know. He wrote to ask
if he might say good-by; very civil, reasonable kind of letter; Ford
brought it to me an' asked my opinion. Couldn't overlook the fact that
he had a hand in saving her life, you know. So on my advice, Ford wrote
to the feller saying that if he 'd understand there was going to be no
private interview, or anything of that kind, he could turn up at ten
o'clock an' take his chance."
"But," said Mrs. Jakes hopefully, "supposing the police--
"Bless you, that 's all right," Mr. Samson assured her. "The police
don't want to see him again. Seems that old Bill Winter--you know I
wrote to him?--seems that old Bill went to work like the dashed old
beaver he is, and had Van Zyl's head on a charger for his breakfast.
The Kafir-man 's got a job of some sort, doctorin' niggers somewhere.
The police never mention him any more."
"Well," said Mrs. Jakes, "I can't prevent you, of course, from bringing
Kafirs here, Mr. Samson, but I 've got my feelings. When I think of
poor Eustace, and that Kafir thrusting himself in--well, there!"
Mr. Samson drank deep of his coffee, trying vaguely to suggest in his
manner of drinking profound sympathy with Mrs. Jakes and respect for
what she sometimes called the departed. Also, the cup hid her from him.
It was strange how the presence of Margaret's luggage in the hall
pervaded the house with a sense of impermanence and suspense. It gave
even to the breakfast the flavor of the mouthful one snatches while
turning over the baffling pages of the timetable. Ford, when he came in,
was brusk and irresponsive, though he was not going anywhere, and
Margaret's breakfast went upstairs on a tray. Kafir servants were
giggling and whispering up and down stairs and were obviously interested
in the leather trunks. A house with packed luggage in it has no
character of a dwelling; it is only a stopping-place, a minister to
transitory needs. As well have a coffin in the place as luggage ready
for removal; between them, they comprise all that is removable in human
kind.
"Well," said Mr. Samson to Ford, attempting conversation; "we 're goin'
to have the place to ourselves again. Eh?"
"You seem pleased," replied Ford unamiably.
"I 'm bearin' up," said Mr. Samson. "You seem grieved, though."
"That," said Ford, with venom, "is because I 'm being bored."
"The deuce you are." Mr. Samson was annoyed. "I don't want to talk to
you, you know. Sulk all you want to; doesn't affect me. But if you
could substitute a winnin' smile for the look you 're wearin' at
present, it would be more appetizin'."
"Er--the rain seems to be drawing-off, I think," remarked Mrs. Jakes,
energetically. "It might be quite fine by-and-by. What do you think,
Mr. Samson?"
Mr. Samson, ever obedient to her prompting, made an inspection of the
prospect through the window. But his sense of injury was strong.
"There are things much more depressing than rain," he said, rancorously,
and occupied himself pointedly with his food.
Ford made his apology as soon as they were free from Mrs. Jakes. She
had much to do in the unseen organization of the departure, and
apologized for leaving them to themselves. It was another adjunct of
the luggage; not within the memory of man had inmates of the Sanatorium
sat at table without Mrs. Jakes.
"Sorry," said Ford then, in a matter-of-fact way.
"Are you?" said Mr. Samson grudgingly. "All right."
And that closed the incident.
Soon after breakfast, when the stoep was still uninhabitable and the
drawing-room unthinkable and the hall uncongenial, Margaret came
downstairs, unfamiliar in clothes which the Sanatorium had not seen
before. Mrs. Jakes made mental notes of them, gazing with narrow eyes
and lips moving in a soundless inventory. She came down smiling but
uncertain.
"I didn't know it could rain," was her greeting. "Did you see the
beginning of it? It was wonderful--like an eruption."
"I saw it," said Mr. Samson. "I got wet in it. It 'll be cool for your
drive to the station, even if it 's a bit damp."
"There 's still half an hour to wait before the cart comes," said
Margaret. "Where does one sit when it 's raining?"
"One doesn't," said Mr. Samson. "One stands about in draughts and one
frets, one does."
"Come into the drawing-room," said Ford briefly.
Margaret looked at him with a smile for his seriousness and his manner
of one who desires to get to business, but she yielded, and Mr. Samson
ambled in their wake, never doubting that he was of their company. Ford,
holding the door open for Margaret, surprised him with a forbidding
scowl.
"We don't want _you_," he whispered fiercely, and shut the affronted and
uncomprehending old gentleman out.
The drawing-room was forlorn and very shabby in the cold light of the
rainy day and the tattoo of the rain-splashes on its window. Margaret
went to the hearth where Dr. Jakes had been wont to expiate his crimes,
and leaned her arm on the mantel, looking about the apartment.
"It 's queer," she said; "I shall miss this."
"Margaret," said Ford.
She turned to him, still smiling. She answered nothing, but waited for
him to continue.
"I wanted to tell you something," he went on steadily. "You know I love
you, don't you?"
"Yes," she answered slowly. "You--you said so."
"I said it because I do," he said. "Well, Dr. Van Coller was here
yesterday, and when he had done with you, I had a word with him. I
wanted to know if I could go Home too; so he came up to my room and made
an examination of me, a careful one."
Margaret had ceased to smile. "Yes," she said. "Tell me: what did he
say?"
"He said No," replied Ford. "I mustn't leave here. He was very clear
about it. I 've got to stay."
The emphasis with which he spoke was merely to make her understand; he
invited no pity for himself and felt none. He was merely giving
information.
"But," said Margaret,--"never? It isn't as bad as _that_, is it?"
"He couldn't tell. He isn't really a lung man, you know. But it
doesn't make any real difference, now you 're going. Two years or ten
years or forever--you 'll be away among other people and I 'll be here
and the gap between us will be wider every day. We 've been friends and
I had hopes--nothing cures a chap of hoping, not even his lungs; but now
I 've got to cure myself of it, because it's no use. I would n't have
told you, Margaret--"
"Yes, you would," interrupted Margaret. "You wouldn't have let me go
away without knowing, since you--you love me."
"That's it, exactly." He nodded; he had been making a point and she had
seen it. "I felt you were entitled to know, but I can't say why. You
understand, though, don't you?"
"Yes," she said. "I understand."
"I knew you would," he answered. "And you won't think I 'm whining. I
'm not. I 'm so thankful that we 've been together and understood each
other and that I love you that I don't reckon myself a loser in the end.
It 's all been pure gain to me. As long as I live I shall be better off
for it; I shall live on it always and never let any of it go. If I
never see you again, I shall still be to the good. But perhaps I shall.
God knows."
"Oh, you will," cried Margaret. "You 're sure to."
He smiled suddenly. "That's what I tell myself. If I get all right, it
'll be the easiest thing in the world. I 'll come and call on you,
wherever you happen to be, and send in my card. And if I 'm not going
to get well, I shall have to know it sooner or later, and then, if you
'd let me, I 'd come just the same.
"I shouldn't expect anything," he added quickly. "Not a single thing.
Don't be afraid of that. Just send in my card, as I said, and see you
again and talk to you, and call you Margaret. I would n't cadge; you
could trust me not to do that, at least."
"You must get well and then come," said the girl softly. "And if you
call me Margaret, I will call you--"
She stopped. "I never heard your Christian name," she said.
"Just John," he answered, smiling. "John--not Jack or anything. I will
come, you can be sure. Either free or a ticket-of-leave, I 'll come.
And now, say good-by. I mustn't keep you any longer; I 've hurt old
Samson's feelings as it is. Good-by, Margaret. You 'll get well in
Switzerland, but you won't forget the Karoo, will you? Good-by."
"I won't forget anything," said Margaret, with eyes that were bright and
tender. "Good-by. When your card comes in, I shall be ever so glad.
Good-by."
There was a fidgety interval before the big cart drove up to the house,
its wheels rending through the gritty mud and its horses steaming as
though they had been boiled. Mr. Samson employed each interlude in the
talk to glare at Ford in lofty offense; he seemed only to be waiting
till this dull business of departure was concluded to call him to
account. Mrs. du Preez, who had come across in the cart to bid Margaret
farewell, was welcome as a diversion.
"Well, where 's the lucky one?" she cried. "Ah, Miss Harding, can't you
smell London from here? If you could bottle that smell, with a drop o'
fog, a drop o' dried fish and a drop o' Underground Railway to bring out
the flavor, you 'd make a fortune, sellin' it to us poor Afrikanders.
But you 'll be sniffin' it from the cask in three weeks from now. Lord,
I wish it was me."
"You ought to make a trip," suggested Margaret.
"Christian don't think so," declared Mrs. du Preez, with her shrill
laugh. "He knows I 'd stick where I touched like a fly in a jam-pot,
and he 'd have to come and pull me out of it himself."
She took an occasion to drop a private whisper into Margaret's ear.
"Kamis is outside, waitin' to see you go. He 's talkin' to Paul."
The farewells accomplished themselves. That of Mrs. Jakes would have
been particularly effective but for the destructive intrusion of Mrs. du
Preez.
"Er--a pleasant voyage, Miss Harding," she said, in a thin voice. "I
may be in London soon myself--at Putney. But I suppose we 're hardly
likely to meet before you go abroad again."
"I wonder," said Margaret peaceably.
It was then that Mrs. du Preez struck in.
"Putney," she said, in a loud and callous voice, in itself sufficient to
scrape Mrs. Jakes raw. "South the water, eh? But you can easy run up
to London from there if Miss Harding sends for you, can't you?"
Kamis came eagerly to the foot of the steps as Margaret came down, and
Mr. Samson, with a loud cough, posted himself at the head of them to
superintend.
"I am glad you came," said Margaret. "I didn't want to go away without
seeing you."
He glanced up at Mr. Samson and the others, a conscientious audience
ranged above him, deputies of the Colonial Mrs. Grundy, and smiled
comprehendingly.
"Oh, I had to come," he said. "I had to bid you good-by."
There was no change in his appearance since she had seen him last. His
tweed clothes were worn and shabby as ever, and still strange in
connection with his negro face.
"And I wanted to thank you for what you did for me that night," said
Margaret earnestly. "It was a horrible thing, wasn't it? But I hear--I
have heard that it has come all right."
Mr. Samson coughed again. Mrs. Jakes, with an elbow in each hand,
coughed also.
"All right for me, certainly," the Kafir answered. "They have given me
something to do. There 's an epidemic of smallpox among the natives in
the Transkei, and I 'm to go there at once. It couldn't be better for
me. But you. How about you?"
The Kafir boys who were carrying out the trunks and stacking them under
Paul's directions in the cart were eyeing them curiously, and the
audience above never wavered in its solemn watch. It was ridiculous and
exasperating.
"Oh, I shall do very well," said Margaret, striving to be impervious to
the influence of those serious eyes. "You have my address, have n't you?
You must write me how you get on."
"If you like," he agreed.
"You must," she said. "I shall be keen to hear. I believed in you when
nobody else did, except Paul."
A frightful cough from above did not silence her. She answered it with a
shrug. She meant to say all she had to say, though the ground were
covered with eaves-droppers.
"I shan't forget our talks," she went on; "under the dam, with Paul's
models. You 'll get on now; you 'll do all you wanted to do; but I was
in at the beginning, wasn't I?"
"You were, indeed," he answered; "at the darkest part of it, the best
thing that ever happened to me. And now you 've got to go. I 'm keeping
you too long."
Mr. Samson coughed again as they shook hands and came down the steps to
assist Margaret into the cart.
"Remember," said the girl; "you must write. And I shall always be glad
and proud I knew you. Good-by and good luck."
"Good-by," said the Kafir. "I 'll write. The best of luck."
Paul put his rug over her knees and reached for his whip. The tall
horses leaned and started, and the stoep and its occupants, and the
Kafir and Mr. Samson, slid back. A thin chorus of "good-bys" rose, and
Margaret leaned out to wave her hand. A watery sun shone on them feebly
between clouds and they looked like the culminating scene in some
lugubrious drama.
When next she looked back, she saw the house against the gray sky,
solitary and little, with all the Karoo for its background. It looked
unsubstantial and vague, as though a mirage were left over from the
months of sun, to be the abode of troubles and perplexities that would
soon be dim and remote also. Paul pulled his horses to a standstill
that she might see better; but even at that moment fresh rain drummed on
the hood of the cart and came threshing about them, blotting the house
from view.
"That 's the last of it, Paul," said Margaret. "No more looking back
now."
Paul smiled slowly and presently found words.
"When we come to the station," he said, "I will find a Kafir to hold the
horses and I will take you to the train. But I will not say much
good-by."
"Why not?" inquired Margaret.
"Because soon I am coming to London too," he answered happily, "and I
will see you there."
Mr. Samson and Ford were the last to reenter the house. The Kafir had
gone off unnoticed, saying nothing; and Mrs. Jakes could not escape the
conversational attentions of Mrs. du Preez and was suffering in the
drawing-room. The two men stayed to watch the cart till the rain swept
in and hid it. Then Mr. Samson resumed his threatful glare at Ford.
"Look here," he said formidably. "What d'you mean by your dashed cheek?
Eh?"
"Sorry," said Ford calmly.