No game was ever yet worth a rap.
For a rational man to play;
Into which no accident or mishap
Could possibly find a way.
It was on the evening of the following day that he came upon the convoy
of waggons outspanned a few miles beyond Christmas Pass--a romantic spot
with a backing of velvet mountains, a foreground of rolling plain, and a
three-quarter moon like a crushed pearl hanging over all. Evening fires
were alight, there was clank of pan and pannikin, and pleasant savoury
odours pervaded the air. Little groups of men lay upon the ground--many
of them had tramped all day and were weary. Women were unpacking
provision baskets and children pranced happily about the fires.
In all, about forty people were travelling together down to the coast
with the idea of getting away for a time from a country which during the
last year had suffered the double mischance of war and cattle pest.
Some of the travellers were ruined farmers, others were miners whose
machinery and property had been destroyed by the natives. There were
men too, who, having been wounded in the fighting, were going down to
Durban or the Cape to recruit. Several families were leaving the
country altogether, disheartened by the disasters they had suffered.
The war was over, but on account of the existing danger of small parties
being attacked by still revengeful natives, the Government had placed
this convoy of waggons, with drivers and boys at the disposal of such
people as were anxious to get away. The regular mail service not yet
having been resumed, Bettington, in a great hurry to reach Johannesburg,
had been thankful, like many another, to avail himself of this
opportunity to get down-country.
He picked his way through the camp, stopping only to inquire as to the
whereabouts of his boy and McKinnon's waggon; greeting an acquaintance
or two; and refusing a pressing invitation to sup at the waggon of the
"wounded bunch," one of whom, an American surgeon on crutches with a
bullet lodged in his hip bone, was a very good friend of his.
Bettington had not joined any mess coming down from Salisbury, for he
was a fellow of moods and tenses, and constant companionship bored him.
Times were when he liked his society high, and times were when he
preferred it low, but always he chose to seek and cull it for himself,
and for that which was thrust upon him he had no use. He rather
estranged people by giving the impression that he believed the world
made for the special benefit of Bettington, and nothing in it quite too
good for Bettington; but this arrogance of character was more assumed
than real; for he had discovered that it rid him of society he did not
need, and insured him against intrusion when he wanted to work, or in
those dark hours which came to him as to the most self-satisfied of us
when he was face to face with the fact that Bettington was no very great
chalks after all, and not within a thousand miles of the fine fellow he
set out to be originally.
It cannot be pretended, however, that he was suffering from any such
mood at this time. Quite the reverse. A man who has potted his lion
overnight owns a little secret fountain of vainglory to drink at that
will keep him from being thirsty for some time.
He was hungry, however, and hot, and slightly footsore, for he had
handed over his borrowed horse to Randal's messenger and thereafter
tramped some miles of bad road with the thermometer at something over a
hundred and ten.
As he approached his waggon, he became aware of a woman's slight
graceful figure sitting on a box not far off, with a little child
playing at her knees. Her profile etched against the firelight, was one
which, though he had only seen it once, he very well remembered. From
the shadows came forth his servant, a meek-eyed Makalika scoundrel,
anxious to see how his baas would take the information that a lady and
her "bebe" were in part possession of his waggon.
"_That's_ all right, Bat," said Bettington trying to keep an inflection
of nobility out of his voice. "Camp my things out under that tree over
there, and get me a towel. Which way is the river?" (No outspan is
ever very far away from a river.)
"Just over there, my baas."
"Have my supper ready when I come back. I suppose you got some fresh
meat and bread in the town?"
"No, my baas," was the modest reply.
"What? The dickens take you--"
"I didn't know when my baas would be back, my baas."
"Oh! Hel--p! Get out some bully beef then, you--you idiot!"
Bettington gulped down worse things, wondering gloomily how he was going
to suppress the expression of his real opinion of Bat during the rest of
the journey, for the boy was a most particular fool and the bane of his
life.
Moreover, on returning from his dip with the appetite of a wolf gnawing
his vitals, he found that though his blankets had been perfunctorily
unrolled under the specified tree, of supper there was no sign. His box
of provisions had not been got off the waggon, and there was not so much
as a tin of bully in sight!
"Bat!--you--you _bat_!" he roared in a terrible voice. But Bat was _non
est_. Wise for once, he had melted away into the night.
"Of all the miserable!" Bettington was obliged to put his pipe into his
mouth and bite on that. Bitterly he thought of that invitation to
supper recently refused and by now probably a dead letter.
"My Inkosisan wants to speak to the baas," a voice so gentle and modest
that it might have been Bat's own, spoke at his elbow. It was in fact
another of the afflicted Makalika race who stood waving an apologetic
hand in the direction of the lady by the waggon. As Bettington moved
towards her, she rose from her box and addressed him in a charming but
distressed voice.
"I can't tell you how awfully sorry I am, but it appears that I have got
your box of provisions."
"Don't mention it," said Bettington, mechanically polite.
"Mine has evidently been put on to some other waggon by mistake, and I
was actually just about to eat your things for my supper." She motioned
to where on another packing-case set out with white enamel plates some
slices of bully beef had been arranged with a tomato salad.
She looked young and slight in the firelight, and her hair was bronzier
than ever. Bettington put on his most velvety manners.
"And I hope you still will. I'm delighted that the things have been of
any use, though I'm afraid the box contains only the most ordinary kind
of junk."
"Not at all--it is full of good things. I had my lunch and breakfast
out of it to-day--it never occurred to me for a moment until I heard
your boy questioning mine about your box--then I casually glanced at the
lid--and to my horror, the name Bettington!"
"I am sorry my name should so unpleasantly inspire you," he deplored.
"Oh, of course--I didn't mean--I--"
"The only possible amends I can make is to go at once and look for your
box while you finish your supper."
"Oh, but I couldn't--I am so ashamed. First, it appears, I deprive you
of your tent--and now of your food."
"I assure you I have never used the tent in my life. I always prefer to
sleep out in the open. As for the food, it makes no odds at all, please
believe me."
"But your boy ran away when he could not find your box. You will have
no supper!--You _must_ share mine," she proffered shyly. He gave a
surreptitious glance at the wafery slices of beef and tomatoes, then
answered with alacrity:
"Not at all, not at all. I wasn't going to have any supper anyway.
I'm--I'm not hungry."
He had in fact decided that this was no time to put on exhibition the
wolf that raged within him. And his manners being persuasive as well as
pretty, he eventually convinced the lady of his sincerity, and she sat
down to finish her supper alone while he departed with the air of a man
with a mission--which was exactly what he was.
Straight as a homing pigeon he headed for the waggon of the wounded
warriors. Most of them had already turned in, but the American surgeon,
resting near the remains of a good meal, hailed him blithely:
"Hullo, Bet!"
"For the love of Michael Angelo give me a drink, and a wedge of bread
and bully," said the hapless Bet. "And send your animal of a Makalika
to search every waggon until he finds Mrs Stannard's box of provisions.
When found, deliver to me."
Later, his inner man replenished, he returned to McKinnon's waggon with
the air of a conqueror and the recovered box of provisions.
"Well! we've got it, Mrs Stannard!"
She looked up at him with such surprise that he wondered at first
whether she had never expected to see it again. Then the truth occurred
to him.
"I beg your pardon. But I was in Randal and Hallam's the day you came
in to do your shopping. You wouldn't of course have noticed me," (the
expectant pause he made here was almost imperceptible), "but I was
impertinent enough to inquire your name."
"And you recognised me again?"
"There are some faces one never forgets," he said quietly, but
effectively. Looking up into his eyes, she saw there something which
she had seen in the eyes of men before that night; and which always
roused in her a longing to rub their noses in the dust.
"Let us hope they are not all crowned with hats," she said laughingly.
"Memory might be over-crowded."
He was delighted with her. To be witty as well as pretty! That made
the game worth the heat and toil of the chase! Thus they stood, the
rose-lights from the fires about them, the great crushed pearl above
them; taking each other's measure, marking down each other's weaknesses,
and each secretly registering a vow to the other's undoing. But they
parted with the pleasant conventional phrases under which both good and
bad intentions are so subtly concealed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
She breakfasted within sight the next morning, but he did not go near
her, being content after having exchanged a morning greeting, to sit
under his tree and reflect upon the ten good days to come. She made a
charming picture in her dark short skirt, white blouse, and the rather
rakish Panama he remembered so well as a feature of their first
encounter in Randal's _winkel_. She had brightened up wonderfully since
then, he thought. Perhaps the relief of leaving all her domestic
troubles behind her had something to do with it, but certainly
disillusion had done no harm to her complexion so far, nor worry spoiled
the fine line of her cheek and chin. Her looks had an edge to them that
appealed to the connoisseur in him. It was not so much that she was
pretty, as that she had good lines and that her clear pallor, the tilt
of her head, and her dainty walk, carried an air of race and insolence
with them; both things that meant something to a man like Bettington who
admired the quality of insolence in women almost more than anything--
probably because he knew how unworthy he was of anything but their
insolent toleration.
Before the day's trek began, there was a lot of gathering up and stowing
away of belongings to be done, and it was natural that Bettington being
on the spot should help Mrs Stannard.
Natural too that he should suggest a tramp ahead as per the example set
by numerous other couples, all anxious to avoid the dust and monotony of
the trek and get some exercise into the bargain. She tramped a little
while with him, and he liked her long swinging walk, and found her mind
as buoyant as her feet. When the boy who was perched on the brake of
her waggon guarding little Aimee came running to report that the bebe
was awake and crying, Bettington could have kicked him with the greatest
blessing in the world. Moreover it occurred to him that babies were
odious little beasts, and that no nice woman ought to saddle herself
with such things.
But on later afternoons he blessed the pale and fretful Aimee, for
without her as a chaperon he could not have sat hour after hour on the
brake of Mrs Stannard's waggon talking to her on every subject in the
world but the one that filled his mind and was to be read plainly in his
eyes by anyone who took the trouble to look deep enough.
Mrs Stannard was very careful to look neither deep nor long.
Bettington came to the conclusion that she was a very clever woman,
though he often wondered where she had got her experience. Marriage
with Stannard might well have constituted an education, of a kind. But
where had she learned that delightful way of assuming all the frank
innocence of a young girl?--that lent such piquancy to the fact that she
was really a married woman doing a bolt from her duties! And where
achieved the subtle art of keeping a man with his toe to the chalk line,
without wearing him out or allowing him to show his impatience for the
starting bell? Bettington admired her almost to stupefaction for these
things. At least it was to stupefaction he assigned the fact that he
sometimes found himself sitting and gazing at her until the red crept in
a little curly wave from her chin to the bronzy hair. Then indeed it
was time to talk about literature, or make himself so useful and amusing
to Aimee that Aimee's mother would not have the heart to drive him away,
under the pretext that she had a headache or that Aimee wanted to go to
sleep.
She had beautiful eyes of an uncommon colour, rather like liquid amber,
and as full of dots and dashes as a Marconi message, only far more
interesting to read. So thought Bettington at least, and would have
liked to spend a great deal of time in sorting out and classifying the
natural shades and shadows in them from those brought flickering there
by humour or melancholy or any other mood that seized her. When he
found out one day by picking up a bracelet which belonged to her that
she was called Amber, he rejoiced with his journalistic sense at the
singular appropriateness of it, and that night found him lying under the
waggon scribbling in his note-book a poem which began:
O amber heart, and amber eyes!
That the subject of it was sitting not far off in the gloaming shadows,
hushing Aimee to sleep and looking rather like a gentle modern Madonna,
lent the sting of secret and forbidden pleasure to his occupation. As
Wilde says: "The simplest thing is a joy when it is secret!"
The one fly in the amber, so to speak, was Aimee. She was always on the
spot, and as ubiquitous as only a baby less than a year old can be.
True, Mrs Stannard commanded the services of a nurse-boy called
September, but the latter was mostly busy with the pots and pans, and
Aimee preferred the society of her mother or, failing that, of
Bettington. Yes, much to his secret annoyance (and this secret was no
joy) the little animal actually liked to sprawl over him, clutching at
his moustache and poking her fingers in his ears and up his nose.
Sometimes she howled for him to hush her to sleep, and once she refused
to take her bottle unless he gave it to her! Another time she spilled
her bottle all over his very spick and span breeches and gaiters, and
upon that festival he could very willingly have killed and eaten her.
Another and horrible occasion when he was lying peacefully on his rug
under the waggon, with Amber Eyes sitting sewing on a water barrel near
by, the baby crawled over to him, lolled upon him amorously and was sick
amongst his hair! Amber released him from its clutches and he escaped
to the river, but he hated to look back on that moment--it was not one
of those in which he could truthfully claim to have been the master of
his fate and the captain of his soul!
He never could make out what on earth Mrs Stannard saw in the little
monkey to justify the amount of devotion she lavished on it. Many a
time and oft, when to _his_ mind a sound spanking would have filled the
bill, he was astonished to see with what tenderness and patience Amber
Eyes beguiled the peevish elf back to happiness. But, somehow, though
it made him impatient he never could help liking her all the better for
it. The trouble was that everything she did made him like her the
better, but she gave no sign of being similarly affected, and the ten
good days were speeding by with never a silver arrow nor a red rose to
mark their flight! Five were already gone, and nothing achieved but
this one-sided love affair with the abominable Aimee! When he came to
think of it, it made him tired. After all, he was a man and a
journalist, and something more he hoped to Gad, than food for babes and
sucklings! What did Amber Eyes take him for? Having asked himself this
question several times, he grew very broody, and wasted a sixth day in
sulking.
This, he was delighted to note brought her to her bearings, and she
began to give him more of her attention. Aimee, whose health was
visibly improving from day to day, was handed over more often to the
tender care of September, and Mrs Stannard and Bettington resumed their
tramps ahead of the waggons, spending long afternoons and evenings in an
intimacy that for two people who were nothing to each other would have
been almost impossible anywhere else in the world except on the South
African veld. None of the other people with the waggons made any
comment, most of them being busy grinding little axes of their own, and
the rest too full up with the weariness of life to care two bones how
that fellow Bettington (who thought such a deuce of a lot of himself!)
and Mrs Stannard (whom none of them knew) were occupying their time.