in which to reveal the other side of his soul to Amber Eyes. In fact,
he felt that it was up to him to show her the kind of man she had been
turning into a nurse-maid and mother's help; and Bettington in the
showing-off attitude was an entrancing spectacle. Fortunately, he
sometimes became so interested in the mind of his listener that he
forgot to "show off" and then she was really to be felicitated, for
Bettington, once you got past a thin outer crust of conceit and
arrogance, was an uncommonly clever fellow. In fact, in the matter of
his work, he was something of a genius, and when a man has the star of
genius glimmering--however faintly--within, a dozen good qualities will
be sure to be found, like attendant satellites waiting upon it and
throwing it into prominence. Furthermore, he loved his profession with
a wholehearted love and knew the practising of it inside out, and up and
down the earth, and backwards and forwards upon it, and most things that
were to be known about literature past, present, and future. And to his
intense satisfaction, Amber Eyes cared also for these things. Her mind
had not been spoiled by shallow reading, for she had been educated with
great simplicity, and since coming to Rhodesia had lived among men more
familiar with sport and outdoor life than with intellectual matters.
But she had a natural taste for literature and took to all things
pertaining to it as a duck to water. Bettington found her mind not only
ready to receive, but to retain what he could feed to it and thereafter
to formulate opinions and convictions on what she had heard. He was
greatly pleased with her, and as happy as a sparrow on a pump handle,
until she went away from him to eat or sleep or mind the baby. Then, he
poignantly remembered that it was not thus he had planned to spend the
time between Umtali and Beira! What booted it to him to turn a pretty
unhappy woman's eyes inwards to the cultivation of her literary
instincts instead of in his own direction? He derided himself for a
duffer and was more tormented by the thought of imaginary silver arrows
gone astray than was Saint Sebastian by the real steel-tipped article.
He dreamed of red roses left ungathered by the roadside, and he wrote
another poem.
It was at Massi-kessi that she found it lying loose between the leaves
of a volume of Henley he had lent her, and she could not but read it for
it wore her initials at its head:
You came and called me when the world was grey,
You whispered of a land of endless May;
Of flowers abloom, fair skies, birds always singing:
And I, half-listening, lingered on my way.
Yes, I half-lingered with a troubled heart,
Your dearest sweetness had a touch of smart!
Ever at fall of eve I heard the tolling
Of Life's grim curfew bidding us to part.
Ah! was it well to take the lonelier way?
To thrust with prudent hands the cup away,
To leave the harvest of your heart ungarnered,
And all the precious treasure of our love to pay?
When she had read it, she gave a curious, furious little laugh and said,
"What abominable impertinence!"
But if Bettington could have seen the colour in her cheeks he would have
counted unto himself the first red rose.
They left the waggons at Massi-kessi for it was the railway terminus
from the coast and they were all to embark next day on the Portuguese
train for a journey through Portuguese territory. In the meantime, most
of the travellers--for the sake of sleeping in a bed again, and eating a
dinner cooked on a stove and served on a table--adjourned to the
corrugated-iron hotel which stood bleak and blue in the midst of a waste
of sands. Mrs Stannard and her baby were amongst those who went over,
and, needless to say, Bettington followed the trail. He spent a good
deal of the morning arranging the _menu_ for an exclusive little dinner
party composed of himself and Mrs Stannard. It was a charming dinner
too and the _menu_ a great success, though it embraced nothing more
original than a fried sole, lamb cutlets with green vegetables, a sweet
omelette, fresh fruit for dessert, and a bottle of wine on ice. This
does not sound pretentious, but in the "good old times" in Rhodesia
people never saw fresh fruit or fresh fish from one month's end to
another; goat was the only meat ever available and ice a thing
remembered only in fevered dreams as a feature of life in some far-away
fair land of a long-ago existence. Wherefore Bettington and his guest
dined _chez_ Lucullus that evening, and felt very well and happy after
it as they sat with a dozen other people on the cool dark stoep, or
strolled up and down the one long street of sand. There was a huge
mountain of wool-bales lying ready for transportation just beside the
hotel, and Amber Eyes, who for some reason was as gay as a canary in a
golden cage, had a fancy for climbing this mountain and sitting on its
summit, so as to get as near the stars as possible, she said. Their two
cigarette tips were the only points of light in the vapoury darkness.
She had never smoked a cigarette in her life before, and this fact
refreshed the jaded heart of Bettington, accustomed to women who mostly
smoked too many. They sat talking there, under the stars and their old
friend the crushed pearl who arrived late, until after midnight, and he
beguiled her with brilliant tongue and words sweeter than honey in the
honeycomb. But her hand was never once within reach of his. Neither
did she confide in him that her husband was a brute! Certainly she was
an original woman!
Since none of the usual confidences were forthcoming from her direction
then, Bettington began to unfold (so eloquently that he almost believed
it himself) on the poignant loneliness and misery of such a lot in life
as his. But his word pictures evoked nothing better from her than
silvery giggles, and after she had had enough, she took a firm hand on
the reins once more, and turned his nose into the safe fields of
literature and adventure. He had tired of these subjects and was a
little inclined to fall into gloom when she would not listen to the
tales of his woes, but she was so gay and sparkly it seemed a pity to
dim her pleasure, and churlish not to sparkle and be gay with her. So
he bottled up his emotions for the time being, though he did not omit to
put as much of them as he dared into his good-night handshake. He
possessed very firm magnetic hands and had rather specialised in the use
of them in cases where speech was not permitted.
He slept badly that night. It seemed to him that, in spite of all the
good fun he got out of his success as a soldier of fortune and
journalist, he was missing some vital thing in life and he could not
bear it. He hated missing things. It made him feel like the "weariest
river" making a bee-line for the nearest sea.
In the tender sunshine of early morning, they took train for the coast.
The carriages were two long narrow affairs on a two-foot gauge, built
like tram-cars, with seats running down the sides and the passengers
sitting in two lines facing each other. Amber Eyes and her baby had a
seat in a corner of the men's compartment because for one reason, Aimee
could not bear to be separated from her unwilling love, Bettington, and
for another because in the other compartment a woman was too critically
ill to be able to bear the noise of a little child.
Hour by hour, the tender sunshine of dawn developed into smiting, biting
heat that blistered the paint on the roof above their heads. Some of
the men slept uneasily and some sat wrapt in reflection. Bettington
could have done with an idle hour himself, but Aimee kept him busy. She
sprawled and clambered on him, and banged his watch against his nose.
He would have liked to bang _her_ nose on the floor, but the fact that
Amber Eyes in her corner grew paler and paler every moment, drooping
like a flower in the heat, kept a galvanised smile on his face. If he
did not look after Aimee she would torment her mother, and that
contingency was not to be thought of. But oh! how he would have enjoyed
pushing the little worm out of the window,--and probably would have done
it if it could have been engineered without suspicion attaching to
himself. He saw some of the wounded warriors exchanging facetious
smiles as Aimee tore his hair, whooping like a Comanchee on the
war-path, and could only glare at them and curse inwardly, meditating on
the revenge he would take out of their pockets on the voyage down coast.
"I'll rook them of every red cent at poker," he promised savagely.
"I'll make them cough up their last bone!"
Towards afternoon Aimee felt seedy, and despite all his efforts to keep
her, climbed over to Amber Eyes and lay lamenting in her arms. Then did
Bettington sitting forward, contort his face and do strange tricks with
his fingers, and almost burst himself in the effort to amuse her. But
nothing was any good. She would stare for a moment with her large
slate-coloured eyes, then they would fill up and brim over with tears,
even while they remained wide open and observant, and she lamented like
a banshee. Sometimes she screwed herself into a ball and ejected sharp
barking sounds, and sometimes she lengthened herself into a plank that
would not be bent up again; but always at spasmodic intervals she
howled. The heat beat down through the carriage roof on to the
cooped-up travellers and came in sweltering waves through the open
windows. Mrs Stannard grew paler than ever and great purple shadows
lay like pansies under the amber eyes. Suddenly her hold on the baby
relaxed and the latter rolled on to the floor. Some other man picked
her up and comforted her as best he might while Bettington made play
with the water bottle and brandy flask. After a little while, Mrs
Stannard recovered and rewarded him with a pale smile and stammering
apology.
"I am ashamed. It is too bad of us--first Aimee and now me. How you
must hate us!"
It was at about that time that Bettington began to realise that he loved
her. The real thing had got hold of him at last. He wished he could
take her in his arms and kiss away her troubles and her tears forever.
He would have given his skin to sole her shoes with. He wished he could
die for her. But he only turned very pale himself, and set his arrogant
jaw, and took Aimee on his knees and hushed her, and didn't give a damn
any more what the other men thought, and prayed for the end of that
infernal journey as he had never prayed for anything in his life.
At length, the weary day drew to a close, and in the hot darkness the
train pulled up at Fontes-Villa, which is--or was in those days--a
unique little corrugated-iron Hades situated on one of the best malarial
and mosquito sites in the world. The swamp on which it stood sizzling
resembled a large stage carpet made of coarse artificial grass and
rushes dyed a bright green by the arsenate-of-copper process. Sliding
past in stealthy grim silence, full of crocodiles, and germs, and green
slime, was the Pungwe River.
Here the train stood brooding for some hours as if considering the
advisability of a midnight plunge. No one seemed to know what was going
to happen next, and no one cared much. Enough that after the waggling,
jerking, switch-back movements that had prevailed all day there was
quiescence. A turgid, heavily-smelling breeze of sorts that meandered
unwillingly through the long compartment seemed a heaven-sent zephyr,
and everything would have been beautiful if only Aimee had not been
vile. She continued her clamourings with renewed energy, and Amber Eyes
said that she needed a bottle and that if Bettington would hold the poor
little thing she would go and find September and send him up to the
hotel (if there was one) to get warm water and mix a bottle of condensed
milk. Naturally Bettington volunteered to go and lug out September
himself from the truck in which the native boys were sleeping. After an
interval then, September arrived with the mixed bottle and Aimee got her
supper. But before she was half through it, Amber Eyes discovered that
the water was stone cold and would probably be the cause of cramps in
Aimee's anatomy for the rest of the voyage. Again the luckless
Bettington went a-hunting for September, but this time the quest was
unsuccessful of any result except the news that both September and his
own boy Bat had made up their mysterious and labyrinthian minds that
they did not care to proceed further on the journey, therefore had taken
their blankets and headed back for Umtali. Another thing that
Bettington learned was that September had not gone to the hotel at all
for water for the baby's bottle, nor even looked for an hotel, but had
simply slunk down to the river's edge, shipped a bottle of the
grey-green slime and mixed it _au naturel_ with the condensed milk.
This information the journalist kept to himself. He did not think it
would be of the slightest use to Mrs Stannard, and if Aimee were
poisoned--_tant pis_ for Aimee! But he doubted there being any such
luck. Aimee, he felt convinced, was destined to live to be the scourge
of other fine men.
His next job was to go up to the hotel himself and get hot water to make
the bottle. Even that was better than sitting still in the little
devildom Aimee was creating in the compartment since she found herself
robbed of the solacing bottle. Besides Bettington was getting used to
his job, even as eels get used to skinning.
One thing to the good was that when he _did_ discover the hotel and
rouse the inmates he was able to achieve a whiskey and soda, and
sandwich for himself, and bear back similar trophies to the fainting and
haggard Amber Eyes. As for Aimee, she had her bottle at last, and
Bettington felt that the whole noble army of martyrs were not in the
running with him. "And after all these vices there was peace!"
Just as silence and slumber were spreading their wings over the weary
caravan, the railway officials appeared from nowhere and briskly routed
the passengers out in a great hurry to cross the river on a pont and
embark on another train waiting on the further side. Ensued a great
struggle and scramble after baggage. Eventually the change was
accomplished and the journey continued until arrival at the Beira
station.
It was for the passengers to find out for themselves that the station
was about two miles away from the only possible hotel, and the country
between of the roughest kind of veld--all scrub, hillocks, bush, and
ant-holes; that there were no conveyances or porters; and that it was up
to every man to shoulder his own pack and foot it for home. And it was
for Bettington, the brilliant journalist, fascinating man of the world,
and gifted poet, to take up the White Man's Burden once more. With
Aimee in his arms, a basket containing Aimee's impedimenta on his back,
his own knapsack slung about his waist, and Amber Eyes laden with
smaller articles bringing up the rear, he felt like a prehistoric man on
a forced march for fair pastures and better hunting. And in his heart
he was saying:
"I may as well take on the job for good! I've become a family man.
I've got used to fixing baby's bottle now and lugging her around. Oh,
pot!"
All round them, struggling in the dimness over ant-hill and ant-bear
hole, were other baggage-laden forms, faithfully padding the hoof. The
"wounded bunch," as became warriors were making light of their woes.
From their ranks came an occasional laugh and snatches of a ribald song
set to the opening bars of the "Soldier's March" in _Faust_, accompanied
by bang and boom of a tin pannikin and some hollow article (perhaps a
bread box?)
Drunk (bang!) last night,
Drunk the night before (boom!)
Drunk (bang!) last night,
Never get drunk any more! (Boom!)
Bettington felt that he was different to these men. Nobler in some
sort. Between them and him lay a great gulf fixed. He had deeper
depths and could rise to higher heights. Thank God he was not as these!
Eventually they reached the hotel and Amber Eyes having engaged a room
disappeared with the baby and Bettington was his own man once more. He
in turn engaged himself a room, and went to bed, to dream that he had a
baby of his own and was going to take in washing to earn his living.
As no steamer awaited them at Beira, the passengers from Rhodesia had to
amuse themselves as best they might until a steamer turned up. No
difficult feat this. Beira also was a corrugated-iron Hades, but at
least the verandah of the Royal Hotel was deep and cool and palm-shaded;
and there were supplies of fresh fish and fruit; and ice to clink in the
glass; and though the sea was chocolate-coloured and "jiggers" hid in
the sands, it _was_ the sea, and it smelled of home, and brought
memories of far-away joys that were getting nearer! Anyway, it was good
to be leaving Rhodesia and trouble behind, with faces set to a new
horizon where trouble had not yet materialised! So thought most of the
travellers. And perhaps it was the philosophy of Amber Eyes too, and
perhaps that was why she so visibly brightened and bloomed. All was
well with Aimee as Bettington had opined, in spite of Pungwe River
germs, and all was well with the world.
Only Bettington was troubled in his mind. He too had a philosophy that,
so far, had helped him to waggle his way pretty well through a weary
world, but for the moment it seemed to be suffering from a weak spine.
His philosophy had always been to desire things and he would get them,
especially if he gave Fate a leg up every now and again, and reached out
far enough. True the leg up sometimes hit him a clout in the eye, and
the reached-out hand sometimes got its fingers burned; but that was all
in the day's shooting and part of the game. The main point was that
always in the long run he had got what he greatly desired.
And now it did not look as if things were going to work out that way!
He found himself desiring something that was already in the possession
of someone else--for "better or worse, for richer or poorer!" He who
had made up his mind never to have a wife and baby of his own, was now
hankering to take possession of the wife and baby of someone else! The
thing was ridiculous of course. It was so silly that he could even
laugh at it himself.
"What a fool I should look carting Stannard's baby round the world.
Blow that Aimee! After all, if I'm going to be a nurse-maid, surely I
can get a baby of my own to mind!"
Yes, he could laugh and gibe at it himself, but even in the act of doing
so something gripped him round the heart and made him feel physically
sick. It was the thought of the day when he would see the Amber Eyes no
more! Wherefore he gazed into them all that day as much as decency
permitted, and a trifle over. He was overjoyed to see that she could no
longer return his gaze with her frank, disarming glance of girlish
innocence. A bird sang in his breast every time the colour sprang into
her cheek under his hardy eye.
She had got another nurse-boy for the baby and so had a little liberty
in which to roam about Beira, looking at the coolie curio-shops, and
riding on the trollies that ran up and down the town. She bought
herself an Indian silk shirt of delicate rainbow tints softly blending
into one another, and he acquired a set of six twisted gold bangles for
an imaginary sister, and a little one for Aimee. Then he wanted to give
Amber Eyes a little black ebony walking-stick knobbed and tipped with
ivory. But she would not have it.
"Not even a little remembrance of our journey down?" he pleaded.
"It looks like a _memento mori_," she protested.
"It will be one if you use it to walk away from me."
"I am able to do that without the use of a crutch," she laughed.
"I daresay. What you are _not_ able to do is to prevent me from
following, even if I have to come on crutches."
"Surely you are too clever a man to waste your time?"
She turned away from him with a bright cheek, leaving no time for a
response. Not that he had a response ready. He was not quite sure
whether he _was_ a clever man or not, nor whether he stood on his head
or his heels. But he meant to keep his balance. And he did--right up
to nine o'clock that night.
At that time he was seated beside her in a trolley car which also
contained half a dozen other people bent on a moonlight drive. The
little bag she carried slipped to the floor and in stooping to recover
it for her in the contracted space his face touched her knee whereon lay
her hand. Under an uncontrollable impulse he pressed his lips to it.
She instantly drew it away, and they sat in silence for a moment. Then,
below the noise of the trolley wheels she heard his voice very low and
vibrating:
"Amber, I love you!"
She stared straight ahead, making no kind of response. He was left to
wonder whether or not she had heard, and obliged to assume an air of
calm he did not feel. A little of the red had slipped out of his
complexion before they reached the end of the drive, but also his jaw
had taken on its most dogged look, and as they all dismounted and began
to stroll towards the hotel he said with the quiet deliberation of the
man who means to have his way:
"Walk down to the little bridge with me, please. I must speak to you."
"It is getting late," she demurred.
"I shall not keep you long."
They walked in silence, their feet slipping and slithering in the loose
sand, until they reached the bridge; then stopped to lean on the low
parapet and stare down at the water just below.
"You heard what I said in the car?" he asked.
Perhaps she thought he was addressing the fishes for she made no answer.
Then very quietly he said again:
"I love you, Amber!"
There was a great stillness between them. Truly as the wise people of
old held, to give a man the use of your name is to give him power over
you! He felt that he had power over her and perhaps that was why her
hand lying on the bridge rail trembled, though her voice was quite
level.
"Why do you call me by that name, Mr Bettington?"
"Because I love you, woman with the amber eyes, and the amber hair, and
the clear amber heart," he said gently and strongly, and took her hands
in his. "And I think that you love me."
"You are mistaken," she said coldly, drawing away her hands.
The light went out of his face like a quenched flame. He turned away
and leaned heavily on the bridge. She continued calmly:
"You merely have for me the terrible charm that a bad man has for a
woman when he is the first bad man she has ever known."
"Me?" cried Bettington, forgetting dignity and grammar and everything
else in genuine astonishment. "I'm not bad! I like that! What about
Stannard?"
She seemed flabbergasted for a moment, then:
"How generous you are!" she said scornfully. "Besides he is not really
a bad man, only a weak one."
"One bad man is worth forty weak ones," averred Bettington bitterly. He
was astonished and indignant at the line the conversation had taken.
"I do not deny that there is much good in you," she said more kindly.
"I can never forget how kind you have been on the journey down. When I
think of all the things you did for me and Aimee I hardly know how to
thank you."
"Don't try," he interrupted. "I did nothing any man wouldn't have done
for you."
He had to gulp all the same, thinking of Aimee and her bottles and her
bag of impedimenta.
"And now you spoil it all," she said sorrowfully. "By taking me for one
of those hateful, disloyal women to whom any man may make love the
moment she is out of her husband's sight!"
"In all humility I beg you to forgive me," said Bettington.
There was no doubt about it that for once in his life he was getting the
worst of it, but somehow he minded that fact less than he minded the
tightening grip round his heart. In grim earnest, now, he heard "the
tolling of Life's curfew" bidding them to part, and he wondered what he
should do with the rest of his life. She had not quite finished rubbing
his nose in the dust.
"How can I forgive you? I should not consider myself worthy of the
worst or weakest man in the world if I were such a woman as you
thought."
But Bettington's nose was too sore for any further ill-treatment. His
natural combativeness began to reassert itself.
"I didn't think anything," he said moodily. "I just couldn't help
loving you, that's all. If you want me to abase myself any more, Amber,
say so, and I'll do it. But that won't prevent me from going on loving
you."
She intimated with great dignity that she wished nothing further of him
but the courtesy of his escort back to the hotel. They returned in
silence, but at the door of the stoep, just as she was on the point of
going in, she said quietly:
"I may as well tell you that my name is Juliet. Amber is my sister's
name."
That was the last straw! He went away raging. How could he have wasted
the golden treasure of his heart on her? She was one of those
coldblooded brutes of women who think they can do anything they like
with men--(instead of letting men do anything they like with them!) He
thought he should never feel better again, except after a bottle of
Guinness's mixed with a pint of champagne. But even that had a less
satisfactory effect than usual.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
No sign of her for the greater part of next day, and discreet inquiry of
Rupee, the new nurse-boy, elicited the fact that she was resting with a
bad headache. For some occult reason the information cheered Bettington
wonderfully. The steamer that was to take them all down to Durban
arrived, and he and some of the warrior men went down to choose their
cabins for the next day's departure. Bettington knew the Captain well,
and accepted an invitation to lunch. He had a sort of feeling that by
so doing he was scoring off the falsely-called Amber. She should see
that though she didn't want him somebody else did,--if it was only the
Captain of a Union-Castle liner. He knew the feeling was childish, but
he had it all the same.
When he got back to the hotel, there she was sitting in the verandah.
She went on writing her letters and pretended not to see him, so he got
a newspaper and pretended to read it. This state of affairs continued
for a long time, until an interruption came in the shape of a Cape cart
with four spanking mules which pulled up before the hotel. A little
hardy blue-eyed woman descended, and Bettington immediately recognised
in her a lady whom he knew very well. She was the wife of a South
African railway contractor, and the Madame Sans Gene of Salisbury, from
whence she and her husband had evidently just driven in their own
conveyance. She did not see Bettington at once, but pounced on Amber
Eyes and shook her hand vigorously.
"How do, Miss van Rimmel? We came through Umtali and I saw your sister,
Mrs Stannard. She loaded me with loving messages for you. I also have
a parcel for the baby. Hope she's fit?"
"Ah! Thank you," cried Amber Eyes, and looked over the other woman's
shoulder to where Bettington stood with mouth open and eyes starting in
his head. "My sister's baby is very well. I had such excellent help
with her on the way down."
"Good! Mrs Stannard was rather anxious as to how you would manage.
Stan is getting along fine, and they hope to join you and Aimee in
Durban much sooner than they expected. Hullo, Bet! What _you_ doing
here?"
Bettington came forward and made such genuflections as were expected of
him. His eyes had resumed their normal position, and his mouth was now
trimmed with a sarcastic smile. But it is fair to say that the sarcasm
was at his own expense. When Mrs Paulton had gone in and left them
alone, he said gravely:
"I hope it gave you great pleasure to make a fool of me?"
"To do one's duty should always be pleasant," she responded with a ghost
of a smile in her eye.
"Do you think you played quite fair?"
"Do you think _you_ did? Because I look like my sister, and borrow her
Panama, and wear her bangle, are those any reasons why you should take
me for a married woman--and a disloyal one at that?"
Bettington had to take his medicine like a man. The best he could do
was to mutter with a pious eye that he "thanked God she was not."
"I thank God too," she said inflexibly. But a little later she added
more kindly:
"Perhaps we both rather meanly took advantage of private information."
"I don't know what inexpiable things you could have heard about me?" he
asked reproachfully, secure in a sense of self-righteousness.
"When I persuaded my sister to let me go at the last moment instead of
herself, Mr Randal gave me a brief resume of your character and career.
No doubt he thought it might interest me to know something of the man
whose waggon I was to share."
Ah! He almost wished he had time to go back to Umtali for a few days.
Yet he really could not feel very mad with Randal or anyone else. Life
looked so beguilingly fair all at once. His heart was light as a cork,
but he pitched his voice to a becomingly humble key.
"Don't you think we might begin again from quite a new basis?" he asked,
looking at her with all the arrogance gone out of his eyes. "Without
remembering any secret information or old scores?"
She considered a little while with downcast eyes, and a faint flush in
her cheek. At last: "All right," she said softly. Then added
reflectively: "Aimee will want a lot of looking after on the voyage."
But Bettington's spirit was not quite broken.
"No!" he said clearly and firmly, "I bar Aimee."
"She _is_ rather a little reptile," said Aimee's aunt.