"I know that Dick believed in him," she admitted grudgingly. "But then
Dick was one of those curious people who would believe in a man simply
because he could `stare you clear in the eyes' or `had a straight look
about his mouth.' He would pit those things against the blackest
evidence, and expect other people to be similarly impressed--dear,
sentimental, ridiculous fellow! But I'm afraid the Saurins are like
that."
"Yes, the Saurins _are_ like that," I said, "and thank God for it."
Later, when anger had been put away and we could speak more calmly and
dispassionately she said:
"Well, if you _must_ stay here and if you are so set on doing something,
why not undertake the care of Dickie for me? He begins to need
teaching, and of course it is too far to send him to the little school
in Salisbury; then it is very bad for him to be always with the black
boys and piccanins; they teach him all sorts of naughtiness; you can't
trust them. It would relieve me of a great worry if you would take
entire charge of him."
"But why not do it yourself, Judy?" It made me sick to think of Dick's
boy being left to the care of natives, but I wanted to be quite certain
that she was not inventing a task out of charity. She looked at me,
almost indignant.
"My dear girl! what time have I for teaching a child? You forget that
now Dick is gone I have simply everything to see about for myself: the
care of the property, the accounts, the servants, social duties--such as
they are--_everything_. I haven't a moment for Dickie. If you won't
undertake him I shall have to send him to Durban again, until I can sell
the place. My idea in staying on at all is to improve the property on
the lines Dick intended, with the help of his foreman, Mr Stibbert, and
presently sell it at a good price to some one of the people who will
come pouring into the country now that the trouble with the natives is
over."
After that I consented: but only on the condition that if she sold the
Mashonaland property she would at least refrain from parting with Dick's
Matabeleland farms and claims, but keep them for the boy. I had less
trouble in persuading her to this on reminding her of the splendid
reports that were coming in of the mineral wealth of the country.
Experts said that Matabeleland was full of gold.
So it was settled that I should stay, minding and teaching Dickie, and I
thanked God for a valid reason to remain in Mashonaland.
The household of Kentucky Hills consisted, I found, of ourselves; Mr
Stibbert a clever young German who understood farming on scientific
principles and had been engaged to manage Dick's cattle and land for
him; an elderly woman of the same type as Adriana who had brought Dickie
up by the East Coast; and a number of native servants. We were not near
enough to Salisbury to expect much social life, for it requires some
energy in Africa to mount your horse for a twelve-mile ride to pay an
afternoon call. Yet I was astonished to find how many people thought it
worth while to come galloping along the Mazoe Road for the sake of a cup
of tea and a cucumber sandwich. These things were much in request by
behabited ladies and begaitered men, in Judy's cool drawing-room; and
Judy was always ready to dispense them, looking very sad and sweet and
appealing in her little white crepe widow's cap. She told me that she
had never had so many visitors before, and that what they came for was
to see _me_, the contravener of bylaws and conventions from Fort George.
I thanked them much for that! But if it was true, their object was not
attained. I forsook the drawing-room on these occasions and was neither
seen nor heard. Judy, a skilful little social politician, told them I
had not recovered from my serious illness brought on by overwork among
the sick in Fort George, and shock at my brother's death. She was much
too clever to give them any inkling of the vexing arguments she had with
me on the subject; of her tart reminders that I was no longer an
heiress, nor even a girl with a few hundreds a year, who could go her
own way regardless of the opinions of the world; and of her constant
injunction to me to try to get the friendship of these women instead of
treating them with indifference.
"If you want to live up here you had better propitiate people and make
friends," she advised me, "so that you may at least share such interests
as there are in this benighted country."
But her arguments left me cold. I cared nothing for the interests or
the friendships of Salisbury, though I did not doubt for a moment that
as Dick had said there were many nice women in the place. All I wanted
was to be left alone; to be let roam the veldt; to climb the rocky
kopjes with Dickie, and dream up there in the sunshine of the days that
had been all too short, when Anthony Kinsella and I lived our brief
sweet hour of happiness. I could not bear to meet people who looked
upon that dream of ours as outrageous and illegitimate. And I did not
want to talk to people who spoke of Anthony Kinsella as one to whom much
should be forgiven because he was of the dead. I had outwardly accepted
the fact that he was dead and that a monument had been erected where he
died. But yet--but yet, why should he seem so alive to me still in my
dreams, and my thoughts? Why had nothing been found to identify him?
No one could swear to the bones that had been found. Ah, God! what wild
hopes and foolish thoughts my heart fed upon. But I wished for converse
with none who would rob me of those hopes and I found life easiest to
bear with only little gay-hearted Dickie for my companion.
And so, at the first sound of a horse's hoof Dickie and I were away,
scudding up a hill at the back of the house, there to lie hidden among
the rocks and sugar bushes until we heard the hoofs once more departing.
Sometimes we had a little kettle up there and made a fire for our tea,
and afterwards Dickie would climb the rocks pretending they were ship
masts while I lay on the short hot grass and dreamed of the days that
were no more, talking out my wild hopes--all that I had left, to ponder
upon and brood over.
If I had possessed any money I should have fitted out an expedition into
Matabeleland over the ground where Anthony had last been seen: and
drag-net the whole country for traces of him, or at least for full
details of the tragedy, if tragedy there had been. Some one would have
had to tell something. Some one should have been made to pay.
It is true that an official inquiry had been made after Maurice Stair's
report, but nothing further had transpired and the matter left for a
time had been gradually put aside in a country full of new interests and
new men. It is not much use being a dead man, or a missing man, in
Rhodesia, or any other country for that matter.
"To us the absent are the dead;
The dead to us must absent be."
The living have the best of it. The dead and the missing are soon
forgotten, except by the few who loved them personally.
I felt that if I could have gone out into the wild places penetrating
the great Somabula Forest and searching all along the thickly bushed
banks of the Shangani I should have found some trace, some news,
something to break the aching, mysterious silence, and confirm me in my
belief that Anthony was still alive somewhere. But across Africa's
rolling leagues of bush and rocks and empty, rugged, burning land no one
can travel without the accessories that only money can buy. Bitterly I
regretted my stolen thousands, and bitterly hated the old solicitor
Morton, whom we had so well and so unwisely trusted.
Poor Aunt Betty too had been badly hit over his defalcation, losing not
only her private fortune but the money she had made at sculpture in
years of hard work. Nevertheless, she had written and urged me to come
back to Paris and share with her all she had. But I steadfastly
resisted her urgent letters. I could not go if I would. Stronger bonds
held me fast in Africa than ever Betty van Alen's love could forge. I
had to stay with Judy and Dick's boy as long as I could be of use to
them. They had just claims. But even when the day came that they no
longer wanted me I should not leave Africa. The witch had dug her claw
in deep. I could not go if I would.
As it was I cost Judy nothing. For clothes and the necessities of life,
which since I lost my income had become luxuries, I parted one by one
with my jewels, sending them down to Durban to be sold.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
And so the months slipped by, until a year had gone since the night I
kissed Anthony Kinsella goodbye. Of all the old Fort George friends
there was only one left in my life--Maurice Stair. The rest were
scattered far and wide in Matabeleland, and the different camps and
townships springing up in every part of the country.
That is the way in Africa. People come into your life, live in almost
family intimacy with you, learn (very often) the very inmost secrets of
your heart, share joys and sorrows with you, then pass on and are lost
to you for ever. Only here and there you grasp a hand that you can hold
over hills and seas, though darkness hide you from one another and
leagues divide, until the end.
Of the Salisbury women I had known in Fort George: Anna Cleeve had
married her rich man and left Africa: Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was still,
to the fore in Salisbury and might always be found where scandals were
rifest and the battle of the tongues wagged hottest: but she did not
much afflict Kentucky Hills with her presence.
Mrs Valetta sometimes came riding out with Maurice Stair to visit Judy,
but she and I never met, and within the last few months she had gone
away with her husband to some new town in Matabeleland. I did not
inquire where. I asked nothing better than to forget Nonie Valetta, and
that she and I had ever crossed each other's paths.
Maurice Stair was very kind and gentle and silent always. I often let
him come with Dickie and me to the hill-tops. He was so quiet that I
could almost forget that he was there. Apparently he asked nothing
better than to be with me as often as his work allowed. His duties as
an Assistant N.C., which he cordially detested were not very arduous,
and often took him away for long spells. But whenever he was in
Salisbury he found his way to Kentucky Hills.
I liked him for several reasons. One was because he talked so little in
a country where everyone gossiped perpetually. Also, there was a kind
of quiet melancholy about him that suggested acknowledged failure, and
there is always a pathetic appeal to a woman in that. Certainly a man
of his age and education ought not to have been idling away his life at
work he hated and in which there was no probable advancement. I often
felt that, and apparently he felt it, too, though he made no effort as
far as I knew to change the tenor of his life. But really I knew very
little about him except what he told me in rare expansive moments. He
was a public school man, and had been prepared for the Army, a
profession he had set his heart on but had been prevented from entering
by the caprice of his guardian. This guardian was his uncle and only
relative, Sir Alexander Stair, a distinguished diplomat I had often
heard of at home--a very clever, witty, lonely, and sardonic old man,
and not at all a lovable character, people said. I half understood the
bitterness with which his nephew always spoke of him. But it seemed to
me very sad that two men, the last of their family and alone in the
world, should be so apart in sympathy. Yes: there were several
pathetic, appealing things about Maurice Stair, his gentle, dark eyes
and quiet, restrained manners, were in striking and refreshing contrast
with those of John Courtfield who was perpetually about the house. The
Australian's common ideas, expressed in common accents, did not offend
Judy as they did me. Nor was she outraged by the intimacy of his
horrible bulging eyes. I came to look forward to Maurice Stair's
presence as a relief from the colonial's obtrusive personality.
Not that John Courtfield came to see me. I did not in fact think he
came to see any one in particular, but that he simply made Kentucky
Hills a convenient stopping place on the way to a mining camp out Mazoe
way in which he was interested. But at last it dawned upon me that Judy
was the star in his sky. When I realised this I don't know whether I
was more shocked that such an unutterable cad should have the effrontery
to aspire to my brother's widow or that Judy should complacently permit
such an insolence; the latter I could hardly bring myself to believe
with poor Dick hardly yet part of the brown earth that covered him. But
the truth was thrust violently upon me one evening when just after
putting Dickie to bed I came into the drawing-room and found Judy and
John Courtfield sitting there in the half-light, holding hands and
gazing into each other's eyes like moon-struck sheep. I was so
horrified I almost fell upon her then with reproaches, but instead I
burst from the room as hastily as I had entered it and going to my own
room threw myself on my bed and wept for Dick.
A few moments later I heard John Courtfield's horse taking him away, and
Judy came scurrying to my room. I sat up with the tears streaming down
my face, and cried out bitterly to her:
"Oh, Judy! It cannot be true! You cannot have the baseness to think of
putting that man in Dick's place!"
She burst out crying too: called me cruel, heartless, one of those
cold-blooded women who do not understand a nature like hers that _must_
have love as a flower the sun--a clinging, helpless nature that must be
loved and cared for--that could not live without a man's love.
"I am so lonely," she wept. "I feel so helpless--it is sweet to be
minded. Of course my heart is buried in Dick's grave--darling Dick!
There can never be any one like him--but I'm sure he would not have
wished me to be lonely!"
"He would never have had a cad like that man Courtfield inside his
gates," I raged. But a moment later I was pleading with her, beguiling,
begging.
"Oh, Judy! if you _must_ marry again choose some one else; there are
lots of nice men here; why should you take one who is not even a
gentleman? You know it has been more than hinted to us that he is not
honourable. He cannot get in at the Club because of some shady thing he
did about money, and because he is so insufferably common that other men
detest him. Think how men loved Dick, and how much they think of you as
his widow! Do not, for Heaven's sake, make such a frightful _betise_.
You surely cannot _love_ him?"
She looked at me with eyes grown like two little grey stones, and her
mouth was a fast-shut trap.
"Haven't I told you that my heart is buried with Dick? But John
Courtfield is clever and rich, though you despise him. He is clever
enough to have got very rich. We would never have to worry about money
again."
"We!" said I fiercely. "You surely do not include me in your hateful
scheme to forget Dick--to disgrace his memory?"
At that she rose at me white-lipped.
"No, I do not: I am thinking of myself and my boy."
"Don't include Dick's son, either. His father thought of him and
provided for him; bought him a heritage with his life. He does not need
to live on the bounty of this horrible Australian. No: you are thinking
only of yourself, Judy. Oh! how can you? How _can_ you?"
I suppose I had no right to say these things. I did not mean them
cruelly either, only pleadingly; and in a just cause they seemed
excusable. I could not bear this thing to happen.
But she was furious at my opposition and said even bitterer things than
I did; told me that I was jealous because no one loved me enough to seek
me out; flung jibes at me about Tony Kinsella; said that I was talked
about all over the country, that women would not speak to me, that the
scandal reflected on her also who had never had a breath of scandal
attached to her. She would be glad to change a name that had been so
brandished she finished at last: and I doubt not in that moment I was as
white-lipped as herself. But I was not so eloquent. I was cold and
still as a stone. When she burst out crying, in weak reaction, and
began to mumble apologies, I did not speak but walked away from her out
of the room and out of the house. I had no gold to offer there for her
tinsel and dross--for the ashes and mud that had been flung at me.
I walked the ground until I was weary, then sat on a rock on the kopje
side, wondering dully what further daggers for my heart Africa had
hidden in her mantle. While I sat there I heard another horse at the
gates, and Maurice Stair's voice echoing across the garden and up the
hill. He stayed some time in the house, but later I saw him coming as I
knew he would to look for me. In my white gown I was plainly outlined
on the moonlit hill, and he came straight where I sat, but before he
reached me I called out abruptly, even rudely, for I was in no mood for
companionship:
"Do not come and talk to me to-night."
"I must," he answered, and came and sat at my feet. "Oh, do let me,
Miss Saurin. I have been talking to your sister-in-law. She was
crying, but would not tell me why. Only--I gathered that you and she
are not happy together. Dear girl that I love, why will you not let me
try and make you happy? Marry me, Deirdre."
"Do not speak of such a thing," I said gently. "It is impossible. You
don't know how sorry you make me. But--I can never marry any one."
"A girl like you cannot live alone, unmarried. By God! you were not
made for such a life!"
"God knows what I was made for," I answered bitterly. "I am beginning
to wonder. But I am sure it was not to many you, Maurice. You must not
think of this any further."
"Why not? Ah--but I know why not. You think Kinsella is still alive.
I know that is it. My poor child, how can you delude yourself so?"
"You don't know that it is a delusion," I said.
"But I do."
"You do not," I contended almost violently. "No one knows; no one can
know for certain--"
"But I do," he repeated oddly: so oddly that my attention was arrested.
My heart stood still.
"What do you know?" I demanded, in a trembling voice. "What can you
know that is not known to every one? And it is not enough. For me at
least it is not enough."
In the long while that seemed to me to elapse before he made an answer I
had time to soundlessly cry from my heart in exquisite bitterness and
fear:
"Oh, God! spare me this... spare me this... let this pass."
Maurice Stair looked strangely pale standing there in the moonlight.
When he did speak his voice was low and stammering: but I heard his
words as clearly as bells.
"I never told you before--it seemed unnecessarily brutal--but now I know
that it was a mistake. I ought to have told you. I found something on
the spot where the bones lay--something that made me absolutely certain
that the man killed there was Tony Kinsella. I have never told any one
of it. I--"
"How dared you keep it secret? Oh! how dared you? What was it? But I
do not believe you--nothing will ever make me believe you."
I thought to cry the words in a ringing voice, but I found that I was
speaking in a whisper. The ground was slipping away from beneath my
feet; Africa was dragging her gift from my heart; my eyes dimmed; I
swayed a little, almost falling: but still I whispered:
"I do not believe--I do not believe--"
At last I saw that he was holding something out towards me, and
speaking:
"I searched long and well for the other--but--either it was washed away,
or the kaffirs took it."
The thing that lay in the palm of his hand stared up at me like a dull
blue eye. I took it with trembling, frozen fingers--_a little turquoise
ear-ring_!