"And are not afraid with any amazement."
"He is rich," said Judy for the twentieth time.
"And a clever business man. And he adores me. I do not see how you can
think yourself justified in being so hard and unsympathetic about it,
Deirdre. I am one of those extremely feminine women who must have some
one to look after me. You can have no idea how wretched and lonely I
am. It is all very well for you--so self-poised and full of character.
Women like you don't really know what it is to love and suffer. I don't
believe tall women feel things like little women either; and I am so
tiny--Dick always said I was like a tiny sweet rosebud."
"Oh, leave Dick out of it for God's sake, Judy," I groaned. "Content
yourself with the words of Mr Courtfield now. Let poor Dick rest in
his grave."
"How brutal you are, Deirdre!" A moment afterwards she added
vindictively, "It is really the best thing that could have happened for
both of us. You and I could not have got on together much longer. And
I can see you are beginning to set my boy against me too."
"Oh, Judy!" I burst out passionately, but the moment after my anger and
indignation evaporated, and I felt nothing but the dull aching pain that
would never leave me now. What did it matter what unjust, cruel words
she spoke? What did anything matter? I did not care. I did not care
about anything, nor want anything. Ah, yes! There was one thing I
wanted burningly, consumingly, terribly: to leave the pitiless brute of
a country that had beaten and broken and robbed me, that had ground me
to powder in its cruel maw.
But I did not know how to go, nor where. And I knew not how I should
bear to leave Dick's boy behind. I had no money, either. I must earn
it first. And how to do that? In a country where there was nothing for
a woman to do who had never been trained to work with her hands!
"What is there I can do?" I said to Maurice Stair. "For God's sake
tell me how I can earn money to leave this country and never see it
again."
"There is no way that a girl like you can earn money here," he said.
"There is only one thing to do, one thing which I am always urging--to
marry: to marry me. Be my wife and I will take you away."
"Oh! don't, _don't_. How can you ask me that? You know I have nothing
to give. You know I can never love you."
"I will make you love me, Deirdre," he cried, and even in my dull misery
a ghostly smile twisted my lips to hear once more that vain-glorious
boast so often on men's lips!
"I don't care--I will ask nothing of you--until you love me--Until then
I want nothing of you, only to be near you, to have the right to take
care of you, to give you all you wish for, to do all you desire. Oh!
Deirdre, do not turn away from me--I want you--I want you.--I am a
failure and a good-for-nothing now, but with you at my side to help and
guide me I feel that I could carve out a great career--make a great name
for you to bear. I know that I have it in me to do great things, and
for your sake and with you beside me I will do them. Why spoil two
lives?--mine as well as your own. You say your life is a wasted one!
Don't let it be. Do something with it: make a man of me! Help me to
become something, instead of pitching away my youth, a waster and loafer
who will never do or be anything. If you refuse me, my life will be
over as sure as I am standing here. God knows what will become of me."
He stood there pleading in his low, gentle voice, pale and handsome and
chivalrous-looking in the moonlight--the liquid, silver, African
moonlight that had tricked and mocked me! And the great, empty
woman-land echoed back to me his pathetic pleading words. The scarlet
stars hung overhead, and the golden moon that had seen Anthony Kinsella
lying dead smiled down her mocking smile. Everything mocked me in this
cruel land. How I hated it! How I hated the sun and moon and stars of
it!
"_If you will take me away from Africa_!" I cried at last, hardly
knowing what I said in my bitter pain.
"Yes--yes: I will do anything, everything you wish. We will marry and
go away immediately afterwards. My uncle has great influence in
diplomatic circles and can easily get me into the Consular service. We
will go abroad and begin a splendid new life in some other land."
"You offer me too much," I said, "for I have nothing to give in return.
Do you understand that, Maurice? I can only give you my services as a
sister, a companion, some one who will make your interests hers,
entertain your friends, help you in your career--"
"I swear to God I will ask nothing more of you, Deirdre--until you love
me."
"And you will take me away from Africa?"
"The minute I can break loose from my billet in the Chartered Company."
That is how I bartered myself away in marriage to Maurice Stair.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
He was of my religion though he had never been what is called "a good
Catholic." All _that_ was going to be altered now he told me, but I did
not think very deeply about it. My faith required that I should marry a
Catholic, but I had never cared for religious men, being content if
those I closely knew were just clean-hearted and generous-minded
gentlemen--"steel--true and blade-straight!"
We were married by one of the Jesuit fathers on a May morning a year and
ten months after my first coming to Mashonaland. The thought of being
married in May did not irk my superstitious soul as once it might have
done. It was unlucky every one said: but I knew that luck and I had
parted company. She had done her worst, and thrown me over. I laughed
with a wry lip when even Judy did not fail to repeat to me the old
rhyme:
"Marry in May
You'll rue the day,"
- just in case I might never have heard it before! I told her that rue
had been my portion for such a good time now that I was used to the
flavour, but it seemed to me the saying came with singular gracelessness
from her lips, seeing how much she had to do with my choice of that--or
any month in which to marry Maurice Stair.
It was to avoid seeing her marry John Courtfield, or in the alternative
to prevent the scandal my absence from her wedding would cause, that I
had let Maurice persuade me to be married at once instead of waiting for
the end of June when his service as one of the Company's officials would
be at an end. So after all, I should be obliged to stay another month
in Rhodesia--and that as Maurice Stair's wife.
The arrangement was that after a few days on the farm of a friend of his
we were to go for the rest of his service to a small new township in
Matabeleland, where he would take over the work _pro tem_ of another man
on leave. When I first heard of this I trembled and turned sick.
Not only was I to stay longer in this fateful land, but must turn my
feet towards the bleak portion of it that had robbed me directly and
indirectly of all I held dear in life. In that moment I strove to draw
back from the barren promise I had given Maurice Stair, telling him in
burning words that he was not keeping faith with me; that I had promised
to marry him but that his part of the contract was to take me from the
country without delay. I resented and resisted with all the strength
left in me; but that was no great amount. Strength of will, and many
other things seemed to have died in me on the night I took from his palm
that little blue turquoise. So his humble pleadings and arguments
prevailed.
I said to myself--why, being so wretched, make another equally so? and
sought with prayers and weeping for courage to take up my life afresh
and face my empty fate. And in some measure at last I found it, and
strength to cry with Stevenson:
"Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,
The rainbow or the thunder,
I fling my soul and body down
For God to plough them under."
I planned with myself a fine new plan of life. If mine must be empty of
the sweet personal passionate love that every girl thinks her rightful
due then I would fill it with a big altruistic love for all the world.
Like Heine, out of my great sorrows I would make little songs. I would
live a life of gentle sacrifice to the exigencies of others, of
unselfish devotion to all that was best and most beautiful in the
characters of the people with whom I came in touch. Surely that would
bring some solace and sweetness in the many years! I thought of faces I
had seen with stories of sorrow carved upon them that were yet most
noble and beautiful; and I said, mine shall be a face like that when I
am old. Of the first few years I expected little but lost battles and
"broken hopes for a pillow at night," but surely in time, in time, after
much stumbling and rising again to the fight, victory would come, and
peace from the passionate ache of youth. Perhaps in the end that peace
of God which passeth all understanding would descend like dew upon my
parched soul--and give me rest from the pain of love unfulfilled. I
could not die, I would live for others. Gold for silver!
These were the thoughts and plans that I took to the altar, and Maurice
Stair, standing by me, so gentle and chivalrous-eyed, so debonair in his
khaki and leather, seemed no ill-chosen companion for the path I was
setting my feet to.
We were married in travelling-kit. I shrank from putting on all the
panoply of a bride, and Maurice, when I asked him, diffidently enough,
to let me off white satin and orange blossoms, was perfectly content. I
was pleased at the time to find him so careless about outward forms and
conventions. Still, I felt it to be only fair to him, and the proper
fulfilling of my part of the bargain, to make myself look as charming as
possible, so I had a special little white crepe walking-frock made and a
wide wavy hat of white lace and roses.
Judy gave me away: Sore as my heart was with her, I had to remember that
she was Dick's wife. Also there was a concession to be paid for
unstintingly; she had promised, that because she must live in Buluwayo
for the first year of her married life she would let little Dickie come
to me wherever Maurice and I found the lines of our new life laid. I
was so thankful to her for this chance of keeping Dick's boy away from
the influence of his step-father that I could almost forget her treason
to that big loving heart lying out beyond Salisbury hill. _Almost_--not
quite; but at least for the sake of the dead man's son I tried to stifle
down my resentment of an act I could not prevent.
So I let her take my hand as we drove to church, and babble to me about
how sure she was that I was going to be happy--what a nice fellow
Maurice was--every one said so--and so handsome--and five hundred a year
apart from his salary--very few men had that out here--they all came out
to try and make it by hook or by crook--of course he was nothing like
some of the matches I might have made at home--but still--etc.
That aspect of the situation had indeed never occurred to me before, and
while she talked I considered it musingly, remembering suddenly that
there were indeed others I might have married. I wondered, vaguely then
for the first time, how I came to be marrying a man I knew so little of
as Maurice Stair when there were men at home who, to use their own
words, were "always to hand if I should change my mind at any time."
But Maurice was to hand too! He had in fact been right at hand, with a
plan for a useless, broken life at a moment when there seemed to be
nothing left to do but die. And there was something almost like a tie
between us in the knowledge that we shared of Anthony's fate; and in the
fact that he was the first to go forth to seek news for me. True I
could not thank him for such news as he brought; but somehow he seemed
almost sanctified to me in being the bearer of that little fateful blue
stone I wore against my heart; the last thing Anthony had worn: the last
tangible trace of him on earth!
Oh, yes, there were reasons, bitter cruel reasons why I should repay the
love and service of Maurice Stair, inasmuch as a loveless wife and the
empty shell of a heart could repay him. It seemed a poor bargain for a
man of thirty with ambitions for a great career, and all the world
before him, to make and be content with; but he never ceased to assure
me of his content, so the least I could do was to refrain from the
gracelessness of reminding him of it. And indeed I meant to do my part
for his career, at least. When his uncle had once launched him in the
Consular service well I knew that he would find no wife more able for
that kind of life than I who had been practically trained to society:
with my upbringing and knowledge of the world and its ways, with a heart
empty of any thing but ambition for my husband I could go far and I
meant to--in return for being wrenched from the claw of Africa!