It was a turgid, sun-smitten Sunday afternoon at the Portals' house on
the Berea. Through the open French windows of the drawing-room came the
chink of many tea-cups, and a desultory but not unsprightly murmur of
conversation. Some one's hand was straying absent-mindedly on the keys
of the Bechstein, making little ripples, and sometimes a girl would
laugh on two notes--a short, but peculiarly melodious sound like the
beginning of a song in a bird's throat. Evelyn Carson, on the west side
of the verandah, arguing with Bill Portal about water-fowl in
Madagascar, found that laugh curiously distracting. It reminded him of
an old dream that he was always trying to forget.
"You're thinking of a Francolin-partridge, my dear fellow," he said to
Portal; "very dark feathering ... almost black ... a little bigger than
the Natal grey hens." (There was that little tender laugh again! God!
What a dream that was!)
"Not at all," disputed Portal. "They were grouse, I tell you ...
sand-grouse ... the male bird has dark-brown wings ... very light back
and a pencilled head ... rather like English grouse ... with a black
neck. I got scores of them at Solarey ... splendid sporting shots----"
He lifted his voice slightly in his enthusiasm, and it was heard round
in the east verandah, where Mrs. Portal was sitting with her great
friend, Mary Capron, two other women, and Luce Abinger.
"Listen to the blood-shedders!" said Mrs. Capron.
"Yes, one of them is Bill," said Clem, "and I hoped he was looking after
people inside! Who is he talking to, I wonder."
Mrs. Capron opened her lips to answer, then closed them again and looked
away at the sea. Luce Abinger smiled to himself.
"That's C-Carson," he said. "He c-came up with me."
Abinger's slight stammer arrested people's attention and made them
listen to what he had to say. But to do him justice, what he had to say
was usually worth listening to. It is always worth while to be amused,
and a man's malice is invariably more amusing than a woman's because it
is not so small, and is more daring. What Abinger did not dare with his
tongue, he made bold to let you know with his eyes, which were as bad as
they could be. Not that he looked at all women with the same look Sophie
Cornell had once complained of. He was far too clever for that--he had
as many sets of expressions for his eyes as he had for his tongue.
But in whatsoever way he looked, he always made the woman he was talking
to _tete-a-tete_ feel that she was doing something rather wicked and
none the less fascinating because she could not be indicted on it by
Mrs. Grundy. And then his appearance was so peculiarly revolting! That
frightful scar running all the way down one side of his clean-shaven
face, from his eye to his chin, _must_ have been made with a knife; but
no one knew how it had been done, and that made it all the more
mysterious. Certainly he was not communicative on the subject.
At present he was sitting on the clean, sun-burnt boards of the verandah
floor, with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up, peacefully
considering the four women arranged in chairs on either side of him.
Mrs. Portal, bunched up with her elbows on her knees and her chin in
her hands, was not pretty, but her face bore the marks of race, and her
hair and her kind Irish eyes were full of sunshine. Abinger considered
that she had less style than any woman he knew, but that it must be
distinctly interesting to be Bill Portal. Mrs. Gerald Lace was silent
and reposeful, with the inevitable silent reposefulness of a woman with
a fourteen-inch waist. Mrs. Gruyere, warm and pink, fanned herself
vigorously with an expensive painted fan, and took breath for a fresh
onslaught upon the characters of her friends. Mrs. Capron, staring out
at the sea with her lovely, golden eyes, was sufficiently beautiful to
be forgiven for not saying much. It was enough to look at her.
Durban lay below them in green and white array, but the green was too
green, and the white blazed even through the drapery of passion-plant
leaves that hung and clambered on the verandah and let in the sunshine
upon them in jaggling Chinese patterns. The garden was delightfully,
raggedly picturesque. Two sloping lawns were divided by a tall hedge of
Barbadoes-thorn. There was a grove of orange-trees, and a miniature
forest of mangoes. Scattered everywhere, grew golden clots of
sunflowers, and away to the right a big Bougainvillea bush flaunted its
fearful purple-magenta blossoms against the blue. Far beyond was the
sea.
The Portals' house stood so high on the Berea that no sound from the
town or the sea reached it on a still day. The peace in the verandah was
unbroken, save for the _cheep-cheeping_ of some tame guinea-fowl in a
neighbouring garden.
If only Mrs. Gruyere could have ceased from troubling, they would all
have been at rest. "Why can she not be calm and still, like Mrs. Lace?"
thought Abinger. Mrs. Lace was not over-burdened with brains, but she
could say "Oh!" and "Really?" quite prettily at appropriate intervals,
and he much preferred her to Mrs. Gruyere, a most tiresome person, who,
if you did not tell her the truth, invented it. She now began to worry
Mrs. Portal about a girl inside, whom Abinger, not long arrived and
having got no further than his present seat in the verandah, had not
seen, but from the venomous tone of Mrs. Gruyere's inquiries he gathered
that she must, in some fashion, be worth seeing. Mrs. Portal said in an
airy way she had, that she knew nothing of Miss Chard except that she
was a Cheltenham College girl, and had pretty ankles--"both highly
desirable qualifications, surely?"
Mrs. Gruyere, who had been educated at a Colonial _seminary_,
immediately drew her feet, which had been obstructing Abinger's view of
the Indian Ocean, into the seclusion of her peculiarly ungraceful,
though doubtless expensive, skirt, and pursued the subject with more
intense malignity. Abinger was of opinion that Mrs. Portal had probably
made a life-long enemy for Miss Chard: which showed that she was
harassed, for he knew her to be the soul of tact and kindliness. As an
old ally, he felt that it behoved him to listen and prepare a weapon for
the defence.
"But, _dear_ Mrs. Portal, desirable qualifications are not always
sufficient ones. _Where_ did she come from, and who are her people, I
wonder? It seems _strange_ in a small place like Durban, not to have met
her before! What does she want here?"
"She paints charmingly," was all Mrs. Portal vouchsafed--"most beautiful
little water-colours." After a moment's consideration she added: "She is
going to do my miniature."
Thereafter, she looked dreamily into space, apparently thinking of
something else--an old ruse of hers when harassed about her harum-scarum
acquaintances. Abinger began to think it highly probable that she had
met the remarkable Miss Chard in a tea-shop, become interested in her
face (or her ankles), and gone up and spoken to her; but he quite
understood that these illegitimate proceedings must be concealed from
such a keeper of seals and red tape as Mrs. Gruyere.
"Indeed! An artist?" that lady insisted abominably. "I wonder if----"
Mrs. Portal removed her charming eyes from blue space and looked for the
hundredth part of a second in the direction of Abinger. He dashed
briskly into the conversation.
"Yes; an exceedingly c-clever artist. I saw an exhibition of her
pictures somewhere in Bond Street last year. Some of her sunset-effects
were brilliant--quite Whistlerian. But," he cocked his head meditatively
for a second, "if I remember rightly, it was with her miniatures that
she made her chief hit--yes, decidedly her----"
"Really?" said Mrs. Gerald Lace, all attention, thinking what a charming
miniature her blonde beauty would make.
Mrs. Gruyere said nothing. She was completely knocked out of the ring
for five seconds, during which time Mrs. Portal smiled an amazed smile
at the sunflowers on the lawn, and Abinger, with the pride of one who
has done exceeding well, rose and handed tea-cups and cake from the tray
of a neat and pretty maid--Hyacinth's English nurse, to be precise, who
was always harnessed-in on Sunday afternoons. Having modestly helped
himself to three sandwiches, he reseated himself upon the floor, for
time was up: Mrs. Gruyere had got her second wind.
Could it be true, she demanded of him, that there was talk of that
odious Sir Evelyn Carson getting a peerage next? Why should he have got
the Administratorship of Borapota, when there were so many fine men born
and bred in Africa, _much_ more eligible for the post? (Her own
brother, in fact--_hinc illae!_) Wasn't it a fact that Carson was exiled
to Africa ten years ago because he had been mixed up in a famous divorce
suit with Royalty and dared not show his nose in England again? Did
Abinger consider it likely that Carson would marry May Mappin, who was
still scandalously in love with him and ready to throw herself at him,
together with the fortune which her father had made by "running guns" to
the Zulus in '76?
"--And was made Mayor, and died!" she finished as though she had been
reciting a new kind of creed.
Some portion, at least, of this surprising indictment had made Mrs.
Capron's tinted cheek pale with anger. Clem Portal, too, was disturbed.
She glanced fiercely at Mrs. Gruyere, and remarked with great emphasis
and point:
"Rot!"
Mrs. Gruyere looked as if she would have liked to snort at this rude
reception of her news; she contented herself, however, with a sniff--a
Colonial habit of hers.
Mrs. Lace also roused herself to an effort. She had not Mrs. Portal's
pluck to fire boldly in the face of the enemy, but she was inspired to
make a little side-attack.
"He would never _dream_ of marrying a Colonial: Gerald told me so."
Mrs. Gruyere's nostrils broadened like a hippo's; she could have
tomahawked Mrs. Lace on the spot. For a moment she cast her inward eye
back across the trail of Mrs. Lace's past--if she had only been a
Johannesburg crow, with three coats of whitewash, _how_ Mrs. Gruyere
would have turned the waterspouts of truth on her! But as it happened,
Gerald Lace had extracted his blonde bride from a tender home at
Kingston-on-Thames--and that was a far cry! And since her marriage, she
was known to be what is called "absolutely de-_vo_-ted." What
satisfaction can be got out of a woman like that? Mrs. Gruyere was
obliged to hide her tomahawk for the time being. Smiling a thin smile
with an edge as sharp as a razor to it, she addressed herself to the
audience at large.
"At any rate, no one will deny that May Mappin is still throwing herself
at his head. Isn't that so, Mr. Abinger? You practically live with him
and should know."
Abinger's answers were as various as Mrs. Portal's sandwiches, and as
liberally supplied with mustard.
1. Yes; but he didn't live with Miss Mappin.
2. Carson had not asked his advice about the best place to spend a
honeymoon.
3. Miss Mappin had not told him that she loved Carson.
4. He did not read Carson's letters.
5. He could not swear that Carson was not already married.
6. All women were in love with Carson, anyway.
At that, Mrs. Gruyere sat back satisfied.
"I knew it," she said triumphantly, "and no good can come of it." She
made a hollow in her lap for her cup of tea and began rolling her veil
into a thick, black stole across the end of her nose.
No one was quite sure what she meant, and no one particularly cared, but
Mrs. Portal thought it quite time poor silly May Mappin was left alone.
Mrs. Portal talked scandal herself and enjoyed it, but she didn't
backbite, which is the difference between good and ill nature.
"You ask too much, Mrs. Gruyere," said she, sipping tea from her blue
cup, delicately as a bee sips honey from a bluebell. "When you are in
love with a man like Evelyn Carson, the only thing you can do is to pray
with fasting and tears that no bad may come of it."
"When _I_ am in love!" said Mrs. Gruyere loudly.
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Lace with a shocked little laugh.
"Isn't it true, Mr. Abinger?" Clem asked.
"Oh, Carson is not so black as he's painted," said he with a great air
of liberality.
"As he paints, I suppose, you mean," pertly rejoined Mrs. Gruyere.
"There is a form of colour-blindness that makes its victim see
everything black!" said Mrs. Capron drily. Mrs. Gruyere sniffed again.
"You need be colour-blind when you look at his eyes," she said
unpleasantly; "but some people have a morbid liking for deformity."
They all looked astonished.
"_Deformity!_" cried Mrs. Capron; "why, everybody admires his striking
eyes!"
"And, _dear_ lady," said Abinger, with great _tendresse_, "do you really
suppose that the colour of Carson's eyes has anything to do with it?
It's the flame inside him that draws us and scorches us. He's made up of
fire and iron, and----"
"Brass," said Mrs. Gruyere neatly--for her.
At this opportune moment Carson sauntered round the corner and joined
them, and Mrs. Gruyere's face became so like a Bougainvillea flower that
there was hardly any difference, except that the Bougainvillea was
prettier.
"How do you do, Sir Evelyn?" said Mrs. Portal, tendering him her hand
tranquilly. "Talking of brass, can it be true that you are very rich?"
Seeing no chair, Carson seated himself next to Abinger on the
floor--"two bad, dissolute men, cheek by jowl," said Mrs. Gruyere to
herself.
"Not very," he said apologetically, smiling at them all with his unusual
eyes. "Not so rich as Abinger. He says he has two pounds a week for
life. But we think he exaggerates."
Mrs. Portal and Mrs. Capron began to laugh, and Mrs. Lace to wonder how
they could wear such nice boots on such small incomes. But Mrs. Gruyere,
thoroughly disgusted with the contemptible tone of the conversation, was
about to rise and leave the scene, when there came a general exodus from
the drawing-room, preceded by Portal and a girl, who was laughing in her
throat like a bird about to begin a song.
It was Poppy.
The two bad men looked up.
She was amazingly arrayed in a gown that was a poem composed in
France--silky, creamy muslin, curving from throat to hip, and from hip
to foot in sleek full folds like the draperies of a statue. Some
unwonted emotion had brought a faint spot of colour to the high-pitched
bones of her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes were so large they
seemed to fill her eyes with darkness. She wore a wide hat of
pastel-blue straw, wreathed with silken poppies of an ashen shade, and
round her neck was slung a great rope of blue-and-green Egyptian
scarabei, which had cost her the whole price of one of her plays, and
which repaid her now by adding in some mysterious way to her glowing
personality.
Clem Portal rose, and, under cover of general conversation, said swiftly
to her:
"If Mrs. Gruyere puts you to the question--_you paint_--charming little
water-colours. You are going to do my miniature."
Poppy stood there, smiling at her through the spraying veils of her
hair. Her glowing loveliness had the effect of making the other women in
the verandah seem colourless. Even Mary Capron's classical beauty was
dimmed.
Carson felt the old dream stir. He gave her a long, long look. As for
Abinger, the expression of utter astonishment and bewilderment had
passed from his face; he was smiling.
"So _this_ is Miss Rosalind Chard!" he said softly, but not too softly
for Carson to hear him.
"_Who_ is she, do you say?" he asked in a low tone.
They had both risen from the floor.
"A Cheltenham College girl, with pretty ankles," was the enigmatic
response.
Unaccountably, they both found themselves at Mrs. Portal's elbow. She
introduced them with a gay inclusive little: "_Les amis de mes amis sont
mes amis_"; then turned away to bid a guest good-bye.
Miss Chard met Abinger's insolent mocking glance fearlessly, with a
prepared heart and, therefore, a prepared smile; then turned to Carson
for the first time: looking into his eyes the smile drifted out of her
face and suddenly she put up one of her hands and touched, with a
curious mystical movement, a dark-green stone she wore at her throat as
a brooch. To both men she gave the impression that she was crossing
herself, or touching a talisman against something evil.
Abinger stared, grinning. Carson, extremely disconcerted, appeared to
turn a deeper shade of brown, and his eyebrows came together in an
unbecoming line over his brilliant, sad eyes. Abinger, well acquainted
with the Irishman's temper, knew that the girl's action had got him on
the raw. If she had been a man she would have been made answerable for a
deadly insult. As it was, Carson struggled horribly with himself for a
moment, then smiled and made a characteristic remark.
"You are very _un-Irish_, Miss Chard, in spite of your face and your
superstitions."
This, said with great grace and gentleness, meant that no real
Irishwoman would have had the abominable taste to notice what Mrs.
Gruyere had termed his "deformity." But the girl either could not, or
would not, taste the salty flavour of his compliment. She made a curious
answer.
"I do not profess to be Irish."
For some reason Carson took this for a fresh affront, and it was more
than he could put up with. All his easily-lighted fires were ablaze now,
and the reflection of them could be seen in his eyes. He gave her one
fierce look, then turned away without a word. Abinger stood grinning.
But the lilac eyes filled with tears, and the scarlet mouth went down at
the corners like a child's.
"Oh, you mustn't mind Carson," said Abinger easily. "You see, he has
unfortunately got a real Irish monkey for sale."
"An Irish monkey?"
"Yes. Have you never heard of the species? Carson's is quite famous. It
used to be a source of revenue to the Transvaal and Rhodesia for
years--they thought nothing of giving him fifty pounds for letting it
out on the spree."
Her tears had slipped back unused to whence they came; she was now
dry-eyed and rather haughty.
"How could I know?" she began stiffly.
Abinger apparently thought it not wholly out of place to deliver her a
short lecture on the undesirability of hurting people's feelings,
together with the information that Carson, though hot-tempered and
rather mad, was one of the finest gentlemen in the world and happened to
share the misfortune of his nationality with a few of the most charming
people in South Africa, not excluding their pleasant hostess--Mrs.
Portal.
By the time he had finished his remarks Miss Chard had regained her
tranquillity.
"Thank you," said she sweetly. "I think it very nice and friendly of you
to tell me all these things. I suppose you are an Irishman, too?"
Some emotion kept Abinger dumb for several seconds; then under her
tranquil gaze he recovered himself.
"No, I am a cosmopolitan; incidentally of Scotch birth."
"Indeed!" Miss Chard looked politely interested. "You flatter yourself
chiefly on the first, I suppose?"
"I did, until to-day."
"To-day?"
"Yes. A cosmopolitan's chief pride, you see, is in the fact that he can
conceal his nationality, whilst able to detect instantly that of the
person he is speaking to. Now I should never have guessed that _you_
are--English."
Her colour remained unchanged: her eyes regarded him steadfastly.
"You took me for some new kind of barbarian, perhaps?"
He moved a hand deprecatingly: "Not at all; but if I had been asked for
an expression of opinion, I should have said, 'A little Irish vagabond
dragged up in Africa.'"
The girl's sweet laugh fell from her lips.
"What a ridiculous thing to say! You evidently have not heard that I
have only been in Africa for a few weeks or so--my _first_ visit."
Then, as though the conversation had ceased to interest her, she turned
away and began to talk to Portal--who introduced to her a man with a
satanic expression on a woman's mouth as Dr. Ferrand. The doctor
immediately began to talk to her about "home!"
She stemmed that tide.
"Why talk about 'home'?" she said impatiently. "It is far more
interesting out here."
"Why?" cried Ferrand the poetical. "_Why?_ Because the air of 'home'
still hangs about you. By just looking at you I know that you have
lately heard the jingle of hansom bells, and 'buses rumbling on asphalt,
and voices crying, 'Only a penny a bunch!'; that you have been tasting
the fog and getting splashed with the mud and smelling the Thames...."
"Yes," said Miss Chard; "and I infinitely prefer the smell of mangoes."
Ferrand would have turned away from her, if he had been able to turn
away from any woman.
Mrs. Portal, who had just joined them, agreed with her.
"How can anyone compare the two lives--flowers in your hands and the
Indian Ocean blue at your feet, to London with smuts on your nose and
nutmeg-graters in your chest?"
But still Ferrand looked at Miss Chard.
"'She is London, she is Torment, she is Town,'" he muttered.
"Don't believe it," said Mrs. Portal in her other ear. "He is his own
torment: he has his own box of matches.--Good-bye, Mrs. Gruyere ...
Good-bye, Mrs. Lace; so glad--Thursday, then, for polo, and you're going
to call for me; good-bye, good-bye. (You're not going, Cora, you and
your husband are staying to supper.)... Good-bye, Mrs. Leigh ...
yes--don't forget.... Good-bye."
Everyone was going except the elect few who had been asked to stay to
what was called "supper" on Sunday night, because no one wore
evening-dress--but was really an extra-specially excellent dinner. They
gathered at the end of the verandah, where Carson was swinging little
Cinthie Portal in a hammock and talking to Mrs. Capron seated on the low
stone balustrade above the steps.
She was a picture in pale-blue muslin, with deep-red roses on her hat.
The colour of her hair gave the impression that she was gilt-edged and
extremely valuable. Certainly she was the best-dressed Roman in Natal,
perhaps even in Africa; but at the moment she was wondering how she
could possibly get the address of Miss Chard's dressmaker without asking
for it.
"_Of course_, you are staying, Mary," said Mrs. Portal, sitting down by
her and putting an arm around her waist. "And you, too, Karri?"
But Carson had a grievance. He was suffering such bitterness of spirit
as only Irishmen with their half-mystical, half-barbaric, half-womanish
natures can suffer about nothing at all. The sun had gone out of his
sky, bitterness was in his mouth, and a snake ate his heart because a
girl, whom he did not know or care about, repudiated Ireland, and
touched a stone against the evil of his strange, Irish eyes. And he was
conscious of the girl standing at the other end of the hammock now; he
could feel the new movement in the hammock since her hand rested on it,
and she, too, swayed it gently; and he knew that she was looking at him
with dewy and wonderful eyes. Nevertheless, he excused himself to Mrs.
Portal.--Thanks--he was sorry, but he must go and look after Bramham--he
had promised--etc.
They all expostulated. And Rosalind Chard's eyes, through the veils of
her hair, besought him to look her way. With all her heart she willed
him to look her way. But after he had finished excusing himself to Clem
Portal, he looked Mrs. Capron's way instead.
Portal said that for two brass pins he would go himself and fetch
Bramham. De Grey said that Bramham would probably be found dining
peaceably at the Club, with no thought of Carson. Abinger declared that
he had, in fact, heard Bramham arrange to go and dine with a man from
the Rand. Mrs. de Grey remarked that it was a shame that poor Mr.
Bramham, even now that his wife was dead, could not go anywhere for fear
of meeting Mrs. Gruyere, who always came and stood near him and began
telling someone in a loud voice about his poor devoted wife living and
dying like a saint at home.
"Just as though it wouldn't have been far more saintlike to have come
out here and minded her sinner, if he _is_ one, which I don't believe,"
said Mrs. Capron.
"_De mortuis!_" broke in Clem, gently; and de Grey said, laughing:
"This country is full of sinners who keep their saints at home--and I
want to say that some of the saints have a jolly good time. We saw two
of them giving a dinner-party at the "Cafe Royal" last time we were
home; and for saints, they did themselves remarkably well--didn't they,
Cora? And looked remarkably well too."
"Yes: it's a becoming role--dressed by _Paquin_," said Cora de Grey
drily. _She_ never looked well, and had never had anything better than
an Oxford Street gown on her back: but her tongue was as dry as the
Karoo, and that helped her through a troublesome world.
Abinger began to stammer softly, and everybody listened.
"B-Bramham will be able to come forth at l-last. Mrs. Gru' has a new nut
to crack."
He smiled sardonically and felt in all his pockets as though about to
produce the nut--but everyone knew that this was merely a mannerism of
his. Mrs. Portal looked at him apprehensively, however, and for one
moment Poppy left off willing Eve Carson.
"And it will t-take her all her time to do it," he finished gently--even
dreamily.
"You frighten me!" said Clem. "What _can_ you mean?"
Poppy had the most need to be frightened, but she returned to her
occupation. It was now Mary Capron's turn to intervene. Perhaps some of
the "willing" had gone astray, for she had certainly given Poppy all her
attention for the last five minutes.
"Miss Chard," she cried suddenly. "I keep wondering and wondering where
I have seen you before. _I know_ we have met."
Her tone expressed extraordinary conviction, and everyone gazed at Poppy
with curiosity and even a faint hint of suspicion--except Clem, whose
eyes were full of warmth and friendliness, and Carson, who pretended to
be bored.
But Poppy only laughed a little--and by that had her will of Carson at
last. He forgot to be bored, and gave her a long, deep look.
Unfortunately, she was obliged to turn to Mrs. Capron at this moment to
make an answer.
"Perhaps," she said pensively, "we were rivals for a king's affection in
some past age----"
Mrs. Capron's proud, valuable look came over her, and she stiffened as
if she had received a dig with a hat-pin: the men enjoyed themselves
secretly. But no one was prepared for the rest of the context.
"--Of course, _I_ was the successful rival or it would have been I who
remembered, and not you."
This solution left Mrs. Capron cold-eyed and everyone else laughing in
some fashion; but there was a nervousness in the air, and Clem vaguely
wished that the gong would sound; for long ere this the dusk had fallen
deeply, and little Cinthie was asleep in the hammock. It appeared that
Carson still held to his plan to depart, and chose this moment to make
his farewells in a small storm of abuse and remonstrance. One person
minded his decision less than she might have done ten minutes before.
The eyes veiled behind mists of hair knew that their service had not
been in vain. The invisible hands, that had dragged and strained at Eve
Carson's will, slackened their hold and rested awhile. Only: as he went
down the flight of shallow stone steps that led to the gate--a tall,
powerful figure in grey--a woman's spirit went with him, entreating,
demanding to go with him, not to Bramham's home, but to the ends of life
and death.