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