"Life is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love.
Its purification is sacrifice."
"Death is a great price to pay for a red rose. But love is better
than life."
Brown cotton stockings from Salzar's General Stores fell into holes
before one had worn them twice: yet they cost four and sixpence a pair!
Almost as much as spun silk ones at home, I reflected, as I sat mending
mine under the thorn tree. But was it possible that I had ever worn
silk ones? Could it be true that I had once worn diamonds on my
garters, and done many other absurd things! Had I really ever been
Deirdre Saurin, the petted and pampered and bejewelled heiress who had
announced to her mother, showering laughter:
"Life shall never make a tragedy of me!"
I smiled a little idle smile, that at least was free of regret, for the
petted and bejewelled part of the story; but I could find it in my heart
to sigh for the girl who came to Fort George and was scratched by all
the cats, and scratched them cheerfully back. I should like to have
been that girl again, for half an hour, just to see how it felt to be
care-free and _insouciant_, with the whole beautiful world made
expressly for one!
"Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone--"
Ah, that hurt! Better leave that--think of something else quickly. How
far off those days were! And the people in them all passed away or
passed on! Judy in Australia, happy with her cad. Mrs Rookwood
settled in Johannesburg--George had got rich in the mining world and was
now a king of finance, and she a leader of society. Elizabeth Marriott
was still in England with her boy; gold had been discovered on her
property in Matabeleland, and a brother had come out to look after it
for her until the boy was old enough to come into his own. Other Fort
Georgites were scattered far and wide. I heard sometimes from Colonel
Blow, in Buluwayo, and Gerry Deshon at Umtali; but people in Africa are
always too busy with the interesting people round them to have much time
for remembering those who have passed on elsewhere. Annabel Cleeve's
husband had died in England a few months after their marriage, and left
her a rich widow. Mrs Valetta was still living in Mgatweli.
I had never been to call on her, for I made few calls except the
official ones required of me. Even if I had not heard that she was too
ill to receive visitors, I could not suppose her anxious to renew so
painful an acquaintance as ours had been. She had never been well since
the Fort George days, they said. Fever! Malarial fever covers a
multitude of ills in Rhodesia. Would she get better when--Ah! that
hurt--think of something else quick!
But I could not think of _anything else_ for long. Back, back, my
thoughts came always to _that_ as my eyes went always back to the hills.
Maurice had been gone a week. No news yet. But sometimes when all was
still I seemed to hear the beating of horse's feet over the soft veldt
grass.
I missed Makupi's red blanket against the blaze of the zinias, where he
was wont to sit, expelling the melancholy of his soul with the throb of
his weird _tom-tom_, and hiding in his heart through all these months a
secret that changed the face of life for three people!
Down in the camp a trooper, sitting outside his hut, was at the same
business as myself--darning his foot-wear--and save for his idle song
there was no other sound to break the hot, tranquil silence of the
afternoon. Along the town road a boy with a letter held aloft in a
cleft stick was approaching, with the peculiar rhythmical motion
affected by letter-carriers. Everything was very still. The world had
a pregnant, brooding look to me.
The boy with the letter had reached the camp and given his letter to the
trooper, and the trooper had given it back, pointing to me. Carefully
the boy replaced it in his stick, as though he had still many miles to
go, and resuming his rhythmical step came up the winding path to me.
I did not know the straggly writing upon the envelope, nor at first the
signature at the foot of the brief note--_Annunciata Valetta_.
"_Will you come and see me. I am too ill to come to you. I have
something to tell you_."
At last I realised that Nonie was short for so beautiful a name as
Annunciata, and that it was the woman I had been thinking about who had
written to me. It is strange how often these coincidences occur! While
the boy sat patiently on his heels at the door I scribbled a note to say
I would come.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I cannot tell what instinct made me beautifully arrange my hair, and put
on my loveliest gown that night. I am very sure it was not vanity.
Many waters cannot drown love, but there are fires in life that can burn
out of a woman the last root of vanity; and I had been through those
flames. Some vague idea possessed me, perhaps, of hiding from the
cynical eyes of Nonie Valetta the scars the furnace had left on me. I
had always felt it to be due to Maurice, as well as myself, to cover up
the hollowness of our life from curious eyes, and I think no one had
ever suspected what we hid under our pleasant manner to each other in
public. In the last few months, especially, I believe ours had been
cited as a very happy marriage. But I feared the probing glance of
Nonie Valetta.
I wore a white silk gown, and threw about my bare shoulders, for the
night air was dewy, a long theatre-coat of black satin that was lovelier
within than without, for it was lined with white satin, upon which had
been embroidered, by subtle, Parisian fingers, great sprays of crimson
roses. So skilfully had the work of lining been done that every time I
took a step a big red rose would peep out somewhere, and if I put out my
arms I seemed to shower roses. I had designed it myself in the blithe
long ago. Betty used to call it my passionate cloak.
After my marriage she had gone to our various homes and gathered up all
my belongings--stacks of gowns, cloaks, kimonos, embroideries, and laces
that I had forgotten I ever possessed; together with pictures, china,
music, draperies, and curios; all the things I had collected in
happy-go-careless days and thought little of, but which were now
something in the nature of treasure trove. She had despatched them in
case upon case, and they had arrived within the last few months. The
huts were crammed with odd and lovely things, and I boasted a wardrobe
the like of which no other woman in Rhodesia, perhaps in Africa,
possessed. I had reason to be thankful that my taste had always run to
the picturesque rather than to the _chic_. Most of my gowns and all of
my wraps could never go out of fashion, for they had never been in it.
They would be useful and picturesque until they fell into shreds.
I went down through the zinias, which now I did not hate any longer.
Like the hills, they had become part of my life. I should take the
memory of them to Australia with me, and wherever I went they would go
too. In the moonlight their garishness was dulled to a uniformity of
pallor. They looked like armies and armies of little dreary ghosts.
I did not have to ask the way to the big thatched house the Valettas had
taken possession of. In a small town like Mgatweli one knows where
every one lives even though one does not visit them.
As I came to the deep, chair-lined verandah a man with the air of one of
Ouida's guardsmen threw away his cigarette and came forward looking at
me curiously. He seemed surprised when I asked for Mrs Valetta.
"My wife? Yes, but she is ill," he answered hesitatingly, evidently
knowing nothing of her note to me.
"I heard so, and have come to see her," I said. "She and I knew each
other long ago in Fort George. I am Mrs Stair."
"Ah! Will you come in? I'll tell her."
He led the way into a sitting-room, and in the light gave me another
enveloping stare full of the bold admiration men of a certain type
imagine appeals to women, not knowing that really nice women very much
resent being admired by the wrong men.
After one glance at him I turned away a little wearily. Early in a
girl's life these handsome, dissolute faces have their own special
_allure_. But I knew too much. Africa had educated me, and my mind
asked for something more in a man's face now than much evil and a few
charming possibilities for good.
Men who have reached the Rubicon boundary, which lies between thirty and
forty, should have something more than possibilities stamped upon their
faces.
"Is that Mrs Stair, Claude?" a very weary voice called from the next
room; the weakness, the terrible slow lassitude of it horrified me.
"Is she so ill?" I asked in a low voice, after he had called back:
"(Yes: coming, dear.) It is only a matter of days with her now," he
answered laconically.
And when I saw Nonie Valetta lying there, her pallid hands plucking at
the blue and white stripes of her coverlet, I knew that he had spoken
truth. Her hours were numbered. Pale as ashes, she lay there watching
me with her strangely coloured eyes, the old weary bitter curve still on
her lips. She too had eaten of the aloes of life.
I took her hand, and for a moment or two, as long as the nurse was in
the room, we murmured the little conventional things that always lie
ready on women's lips while the eyes are probing deep, deep for the
unspoken things. But as soon as we were alone she smiled her twisted
smile at me and said:
"I see why they call you Ghostie."
"It is very impertinent of them if they do," I responded, smiling a
little too.
"But it is true. You are the ghost of your old self when you came to
Africa. You were very lovely then. I knew the moment I saw you that my
life was over." I felt myself paling.
"Do not speak of those days. That is past grief and pain. We are all
much older and wiser now."
"You do not look a day older--only as though you had been burnt in a
fire, and there is nothing but the white ashes of you left. Yet if
anything you are more beautiful--there is something about you no man
could resist--something _unwon_--they'll lay down their lives and burn
in hell for the unwon. I am glad Tony Kinsella cannot see you to-night
looking like a white flame among red roses--What are all those red
roses? Yes--I am glad he cannot see you to-night."