"Ah, Love! there is no better thing than this,
To have known love, how bitter a thing it is."
On the Fort George side of the court next day I noticed a woman I had
not seen before. She was handsome and rather extraordinary looking, and
had a number of men talking to her; but the did not join the Fort George
ladies, and for their part they took no notice of her at all. I
wondered why, for they had struck me as being pleasant, friendly souls,
kindly disposed to all the world.
She had rather a sallow skin, that made her brilliant hair and bright
red mouth all the more amazing; and there was an odd, defiant air about
her, yet something curiously wistful in the glances she sent across the
court at me from her murky brown eyes. She laughed a great deal with
the men talking to her, but I thought her laugh a little too merry. In
a tailor-made fashion she was exceedingly well dressed--quite the best
turned out woman I had seen so far, though Anna Cleeve certainly knew
how to put on her clothes if she only had any to put on. I wondered why
this pretty woman was unhappy, for even in my limited experience I had
discovered that it is generally the woman who has missed happiness, who
tries to fill in the little round hole in her heart with clothes--the
smartest and prettiest she can find. Happy women usually have too much
in their lives to bother about making a fine art of dressing. Of
course, with girls it is different; they naturally love pretty clothes
and they have a right to them.
I wished she would come round to our side of the court and let me see
her properly, but she did not. Later I observed that the rest of the
women only looked at her when she was not looking; at other times they
looked through her and past her and over her. At last I became aware
that she was taboo. Even the men who stood about her were not the
nicest men, and I observed that no one went from our side to speak to
her, except Major Kinsella, who, as soon as he arrived, shook hands and
stood talking for some little time, at which her pleasure was obvious;
afterwards the looks she cast at the other women were more defiant than
ever. Consumed with curiosity I addressed a query to Judy sitting next
to me.
"That person?" said she, looking another way. "She calls herself
Rookwood, I believe."
"What has she done?" I asked. It was so very evident that the poor
wretch had done something.
"Oh, don't ask _me_," said Judy in a far-away voice. But Mrs
Skeffington-Smythe, who sat on my other side, was not so reserved.
"Do you see that big fair man with her? That is Captain Rookwood.
Handsome, isn't he? _She lives with him_."
"Do you mean she is married to him?"
"Married to him--not at all. She is married to a man called Geach, in
Cape Town, but she ran away from him with George Rookwood, and they have
been living together for six months now. Her husband by way of revenge
refuses to divorce her. Isn't it insolent of her to come here amongst
_us_?"
"Of course she always has a dozen men round her," Judy supplemented in a
low voice; "they do so love a _declassee_ woman, don't they?"
Afterwards I learnt that the man Geach was an enormous brute of a
half-Dutch colonial, who drank, and had been in the habit of beating his
wife constantly, and had once dragged her all through the streets of
Claremont by her amazing hair. Another time he had dipped her in the
sea before a crowd of people, and had afterwards been horsewhipped by
the crowd.
Of course, both as a Catholic and as a _femme du monde_ I was _agacee_
at these things. I knew that none of Mrs Geach's sufferings singly or
together constituted any excuse for her running away with another man
who happened to love her and would be good to her. It was to be
supposed that she knew this, too, and that if she did such a terrible
thing she would not only be committing a mortal sin, but must thereafter
be struck off the rolls and disqualified for any kind of social life.
However, she had chosen to do it; so now she had a merry laugh and a
defiant mouth, and gave more attention to her clothes than most women.
In spite of her sins I could not help being thankful that there is no
law, religious or worldly, that forbids one to feel sorry for
wistful-eyed sinners. Also, I began to dislike Mrs Skeffington-Smythe
very much indeed. It struck me that she arrogated altogether too much
holiness to herself, and that a little charity and loving-kindness would
not be out of place in her moral make-up. I was mentally arranging
something polite with a bite in it to say to her, when Major Kinsella
came and sat down beside me in the chair Judy had just left, and after
that I was too busy arranging polite bites for _his_ benefit to remember
Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and her malice.
It had been raining all the morning, drenching, thudding rain that
flooded the land with small lakes and rushing rivulets; the first taste
of the "wet season," every one said, though it was not really due until
November. I had looked forward disconsolately to a dreary afternoon
indoors. But by two o'clock every trace of wetness had disappeared with
the extraordinary haste that distinguishes the drying up of the rain in
the High Veldt. Only the freshly washed land gave up a ravishing odour
tinder the hot sunshine, and the sky above was a turquoise plain, across
which some giant hand had moved, sweeping all the billowy clouds into
one great mass in the west. There they lay piled one above the other in
snowy splendour. A blaze of hot light poured down on to the court,
making the women droop and blench in their chairs. But my veins sang
with delight. Never had I known such delicious heat, and I loved it,
and felt like a marigold flaring and revelling in the golden shine. It
seemed to me that I had never really been alive before I felt the heat
of the African sun. I said so to Anthony Kinsella, and his blue eyes
flashed at me.
"You will never be able to live away from it now."