Kimberley was once the most famous diamond diggings in the world.
Rhodes founded his fortunes there, and the friendships that backed him
throughout his career. In the tented camps, hundreds of men became
millionaires, and hundreds of others went to jail for the crime of
I.D.B. (illicit diamond buying). Later, stately buildings and
comfortable homes took the place of tent and tin hut, and later still,
the town, like a good many other mining towns in South Africa, became
G.I. A mine is G.I. (meaning "gone in") when there is no longer any
output. This was hardly true of Kimberley. It continues until this day
to put out diamonds, and still may be found there "the largest hole in
the world." But Kimberley's day was over when gold was found in the
Transvaal, and the adventuring crowd left it, never to return.
At the present time, it is chiefly remarkable for its scandals, dust,
heat, and the best hotel in South Africa, which is not so much a hotel
as a palatial country house started by the De Beers magnates for the
entertainment of their friends or for their own use when they are bored
with home life. Notabilities are often entertained there as guests of
the famous company, but, even if not a guest of De Beers', a traveller
may stay at the Belgrove for about a pound a day and be silent and cool
as in an ice-house while all the rest of Kimberley is a raging furnace.
Mr Rhodes entertained General French at dinner here after the relief of
Kimberley. There is a picture over the dining-room mantelpiece of the
two men meeting on the famous occasion of the relief of Kimberley.
Loree Temple, seated at a table just below it, looked often at this
picture and then contemplatively at her own image in a mirror on the
wall. It seemed a pity that Rhodes was dead, the Boer War over and all
the mining adventurers gone away. She would have liked to live and love
among such men instead of being married to Pat Temple. None but the
brave deserve the fair, and she imagined her beauty adorning a scene of
"triumph and roses and wine" when gallantry returned to white arms and
the soft rewards of victory. She had often dreamed herself back in
ancient Rome, seated in a chariot beside some blood-stained general,
with pearls strung in her hair and immense uncut rubies and emeralds
against her dazzling whiteness. Or perhaps led into the banquet as a
slave, with chains upon her wrists, part of the spoils of war, proud and
sad and exquisite in her doom. At other hours, she remembered the words
of Arthur, bitter and tender, to his queen:
--With beauty such as never woman wore
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee.
No doubt she took an exaggerated view of her own case. At any rate, her
women friends would have found much pleasure in telling her so. It was
only natural she should think herself a great deal more beautiful than
she was. All pretty women do. But there is no denying that the sight
of her, as she sat there, would have spoiled many a woman's sleep and
gladdened the heart of any man--a girl with red hair and a redder rose
in it, the milky skin such hair ensures, a sweet ensnaring mouth, eyes
with a plaintive expression in them, a string of small but perfect
pearls round her young throat, and a black georgette gown by Viola. Pat
always liked her to wear black while he was away. The simple soul had
an idea that in black she would not be looked at so much.
Needless to say, Pat Temple was neither a blood-stained general nor a
mining adventurer. He made his income honestly enough out of a
cold-storage plant, and though indirectly he dealt with corpses, they
were legitimate corpses of beef and mutton. This was hard on Loraine
Loree (as her mother had romantically named her after Kingsley's poem),
with her secret thirst for glamour and glory and strange jewels. But
husbands often know nothing of their wives' secret thirsts. Pat Temple
knew that he had found the girl he wanted growing like a flower in a
Channel Island garden--a "Jersey lily," with French blood in her veins--
and that was enough for him. He meant to get her the best the world can
give before he had finished, but he never mentioned his intentions. At
the moment, he was up North trying to persuade Rhodesians to install
cold-storage plants in all their big towns. That was why Loree was
alone in the luxurious Kimberley hotel. He had told her it was better
for her to keep cool and comfortable there than be bucketing about all
over Rhodesia.
So there she sat in her black gown, reflecting and drawing the string of
little pearls softly back and forth across her fresh lips. The
difference between real pearls and false is that you can play with the
real ones in this manner or twist them perpetually between your fingers;
artificial ones should be more discreetly used and are best worn
unassumingly under chiffon or only allowed to peep with modesty from the
V of your gown.
Loree had always adored jewels, but never owned any until she married.
This string of three hundred and sixty-five little pearls, one for each
day in the year, was more precious to her than bread. Which was only
right, for its purchase had made a considerable dent in Pat's capital
(though he had never mentioned that, either). She also had two rather
fine single pearls in her ears, and some pearl rings. For a dealer in
carcasses, Pat Temple's taste in jewellery was curiously eclectic. She
had never possessed a diamond. Nor had she particularly wished to do
so, though, like most women, she sometimes lingered to gaze at a display
of them in a shop window, wondering if they would become her. But it
was only since she came to Kimberley that the romance of them had taken
hold of her imagination. It was seeing "the biggest hole in the world"
that started it. She had gone by herself, and gazed, long into the vast
excavation delved by the hands of men in the search for those strange
little _cadres_ of imprisoned light, each with a mysterious past behind
it and an almost eternal future before it. She wondered what became of
diamonds. They seem indestructible, yet where were all the millions of
them that had been taken from this one great hole alone--that, down
_there_, out of the light, were still being dug and groped and sweated
for?
And it was all for women! That gave her a thrill she had never felt
before. Men slaved and wore out their lives and were killed down there,
so that women might wear diamonds. Those little sparkling stones were
tokens of love between men and women--imperishable counters of passion!
It began to stir her uneasily from that moment to think she had never
possessed a diamond. Why had Pat only given her tristful white pearls?
Perhaps she was missing something. Perhaps the great things of life
were passing her by.
Her eyes wandered round the dining-room. There were not many women, but
every one of them had a glimmer of light somewhere--in her ears, at the
bosom, or on her fingers. One woman, who, like Loree, was dining alone,
wore a single stone slung round her neck on an almost invisible chain,
and at every movement it sent long pin-rays of light darting across the
room to where Loree sat. Every time a ray reached her, it seemed to
give her a prick, increasing her uneasy sense that she was missing
something in life. There seemed a magical power in the thing. She
determined that after dinner she would, speak to the wearer and examine
the jewel more closely.
The lady was a Mrs Cork, a dark woman who did her hair in a classical
knot at the back of her head and looked as if she had a past. She was a
widow from Johannesburg, not beautiful, but the kind of woman who would
be looked at in a room before all the pretty women. Her brilliant,
weary eyes wore an expression of having seen everything in the world
worth seeing, and finding that nothing was worth having. Loree admired
and intensely envied her air of "having lived," and the cynical flavour
of her speech. They had already exchanged smiles and fragments of
conversation when meeting in the lounge and drawing-room, and Mrs Cork
had told her that she was in Kimberley to consult a noted pedicurist
about some trouble with her left foot.
Another person who interested Mrs Temple now entered the dining-room
and sat down at a table a few yards away, with his chair so placed that
there was nothing between him and an uninterrupted view of Loree except
the little delicately shaded electric lamp. Very unobtrusively, he
moved the light slightly aside. Immediately Loree experienced the same
odd pricking in her blood as the rays of the diamond seemed to cause
her. Only, she no longer felt that she was missing something, or that
life was passing her by on the other side.
For three days he had deliberately courted her with a pair of fine,
golden-brown eyes that contained melancholy, power, a whimsical
reflective expression, and a whole world of admiration for Loree Temple.
He was a dark, gracefully-built man with thick dark hair brushed back
smoothly on his well-shaped head. Everything about him was right, from
his hair to his shoes. He was the kind of man who could not make any
mistake about dress, and gave distinction to anything he wore. His name
was Quelch, and Loree was aware that he was a power in the hotel and in
Kimberley.
The first day at lunch, when the heat was sizzling outside among the
fernlike leaves of the pepper-trees and coming through the windows in
almost visible waves--Mrs Temple's red head had drooped rather like a
poppy overtired by the sun, and she had fanned herself a little wearily
with the menu-card. A low-spoken word at Quelch's table and a shade of
the outside verandah was moved by swift hands so that it darkened the
window behind her without shutting off the air. A moment later, a huge
block of ice standing in a deep tray of greenery miraculously appeared
on the window-sill, and a fan daintily composed of lace and ivory lay at
her elbow. In the evening, she found that beside her table a wooden
tree had sprung up through the floor and blossomed into an electric fan
whose zephyrs were for her exclusive refreshment. There were lovely
flowers everywhere, but a silver bowl of deep-red roses distinguished
her table from the others. There are some things you know for certain
without knowing them for sure, as the saying is. Without any evidence,
Loree was aware of Quelch's responsibility for these delicate miracles.
He was a power. He spoke, and things happened.
The roses were there again to-night, deep and red and dewy, as if they
had been plucked in a misty valley and were still wet with the dawn.
As she left the table, she took one from the bowl and stuck it into the
V of her gown. It was carelessly done, but her hands trembled a little
and her veins thrilled again as if in answer to some magnetic current
which, whether it came from a magic stone or from a man's eyes, made her
feel curiously alive and daring. There is no thrill like the thrill of
playing with fire that _may_ blaze out and consume you (but you won't
let it), or standing on the edge of a precipice where you _might_ fall
over (but you are not going to).
Betaking herself to the cool gloom of the verandah, where coffee was
served, she sat down by Mrs Cork. Out in the garden spectral figures
were drenching the trees and flowers with water after the cruel heat of
the day, and the place was full of the scent of wet earth. Said Mrs
Cork:
"I have been so dull all day. Not a thought but to lie _perdue_ under
my mosquito-curtains until the sun went down."
"Do you dislike the heat?" said Loree. "I find it stimulating."
The other woman considered her with heavily shadowed eyes.
"It flattens me out like a glass of spilled milk. You haven't been here
long enough for it to take toll of you, but it will--body, soul, and
spirit."
Loree laughed, secure in her fresh beauty. Besides, it felt very safe
to be Pat Temple's wife.
"I should be inclined to challenge that if I had come to stay. We are
only out here on a trip."
"You're lucky. Africa is all right as long as you can get away from
her. But you should not challenge her. Like Fate, you never know what
she has up her sleeve."
She sipped her coffee, looking moodily into the dark garden. Loree
snatched this opportunity to scrutinise the diamond. It winked at her
like a little demon with bluish-green eyes.
"Will you think me very inquisitive if I ask whether your diamond came
out of the Kimberley mine?" she said.
Mrs Cork smiled indifferently.
"No: it is a Brazilian. Are you interested in diamonds?"
"They exercise a sort of fascination over me," said Loree slowly.
"Though I never thought about them much before."
The other woman examined her thoughtfully.
"Yes: one does begin to think about them here. Kimberley is a wicked
place."
The statement gave Loree a sensation--not altogether disagreeable.
"It seems so quiet and peaceful."
The other smiled cryptically.
"There is a _mot_ current in South Africa with regard to the degree of
wickedness to be found in different towns. It runs: `Kimberley, first
prize; Cradock, second; Hell, highly recommended.'"
Loree could not help laughing, and at that moment Quelch sauntered out
from the hall and stood in the light close beside them. Mrs Cork,
lifting her voice slightly, addressed him.
"Mr Quelch, come here and help me convince Mrs Temple that the
wickedness of Babylon was as nothing compared to the wickedness of this
sweet and tranquil town."
He laughed: they all laughed, and a moment or two later they were
sitting together, discussing the matter. Quelch repudiated the libel on
Kimberley. If "wickedness" was in question, he thought that
Johannesburg ought, at any rate, to receive an honourable mention.
"There are no diamonds in Johannesburg," said Mrs Cork.
"Diamonds!" Quelch looked musingly at Loree. "`The most exquisite of
gems, known only to kings.' Pliny wrote that of them in the year 100
_Anno Domini_!"
His voice held a melancholy cadence; the dark beauty of his face
suggested the East where women are addressed with a musical, caressing
softness. Loree was susceptible to voices and she listened fascinated.
It appeared that the Tintara, a mine outside Kimberley which had
produced some remarkable diamonds, belonged to him, but he spoke of it
carelessly, as if it were a broken-kneed horse he owned. He showed them
a stone that had been discovered that day. It was rather like a piece
of washing soda, with no glitter or spangle at all. Difficult to
believe that it could be cut and polished into dazzling beauty. It must
go to Europe for that though. There are no lapidaries in Africa.
Loree heard for the first time of the theory that diamonds come from the
skies, and of the possibility that the mines in various parts of the
world are meteorites so immense that in falling they penetrated the
earth's crust and became part of it. This theory is backed by the
curious fact that meteorites which fell in Arizona, Russia and Chile all
contained small diamonds. As to the destructibility of diamonds she
learned that they can be converted by the action of heat or electricity
into that most banal substance--black lead! Entranced by these strange
tales by Quelch's wonderful voice, she sat spellbound while he told of
the famous diamonds of the world. The _Star of South Africa_ bought by
Lord Dudley for 25,000 pounds; the _Great Mogul_, "a rose-cut stone tall
on one side"; the _Orloff_ stolen by a French soldier from the eye of a
Brahmin idol, and stolen again and again until it was bought for 90,000
pounds for Catherine the Second and kept among the Russian crown jewels
ever after; the blue-white _Koh-i-noor_ shaped like an egg; the lovely
pale rose pear-shaped _Taj-e-mah_ belonging to the Shah of Persia; the
_Nassak_, a beautiful stone in the possession of the Duke of
Westminster; the brilliant blue Hope diamond lost and found so often,
and reputed to bring bad luck; the _Tiffany_, a magnificent
orange-yellow stone of 125.5 carats; the _Dresden_, part of the Saxon
crown jewels, only 40 carats in weight but of a unique apple-green
colour. Then there were the lovely little stones to be gathered like
dewdrops in a forest in Rhodesia--the Somabula. Most of the best South
African diamonds it seemed were of a flawless clearness and water-white.
It was wonderful to head Quelch speak of them. It seemed to Loraine
that his words were like the gems themselves sparkling and rippling and
tumbling in cascades.
Before they parted that night, he invited them to go next day and see
the diamonds at the De Beers offices. They accepted with fervour, and
he said he would have a car waiting for them.
"He is not a De Beers man himself," Mrs Cork told Loree as they went
upstairs, "but immensely rich and hand in glove with the diamond crowd
here. He can do anything he likes in Kimberley. Fascinating brute,
isn't he?"
"Why brute?" asked Loree, surprised. It was not a word she would have
thought of applying to him.
"He has such a gentle voice," Mrs Cork said, and seemed to think that
answer enough. "He had a wife once--a lovely woman, they say. He is
mad about beauty. She died in childbirth about fifteen years ago,
leaving him a son whom he adores. He has the reputation of being
extreme in his loves and hates. Extreme people are always dangerous."
Smiling her weary enigmatic smile, Mrs Cork bade her good night.
A beautifully appointed car fetched them the next day in the cool of the
afternoon, and Quelch met them at the door of the famous Diamond Office,
a substantial stone building with no hint in its squat face of the
romance it housed. Quelch trod its corridors as if he owned them.
Because of being his guests, they were not constrained, like other
visitors, to stand behind a rail, but invited to approach the counter
where men and women sat pushing innumerable little objects that looked
like dull bits of broken glass into cone-shaped heaps. It was difficult
to believe in the concealed splendour of those dingy heaps. The two
women lingered, plunging their fingers into hidden glory and speculating
on the possible future of each stone. Some were for the engagement
rings of little shop-girls, some might gleam in a crown, and be dyed
with a queen's blood, as were the diamonds of poor Draga of Serbia. The
past of each was silence, a secret buried in the earth's bowels; its
future endless, almost eternal, like the hills. _Tout passe, tout
lasse, tout casse_--only the hills remain--and diamonds!
Among the exhibits specially shown to the guests of Heseltine Quelch was
a macabresque souvenir of the swift and sharp death that sometimes
descends upon those who work in the depths of a diamond mine. It was a
strange cleft object, floating in a jar of spirits-of-wine. Mrs Cork
gave one quick glance and looked away with a shiver, but Loree stared in
great curiosity.
"What can it be?" she exclaimed.
"A thing often spoken of but seldom seen," said the young De Beers man.
"A broken heart."
It was indeed a human heart that had once beaten in a man's breast, and
it was cleft apart from top to point almost as if divided by a sharp
knife or hatchet. But no weapon had performed this grim piece of
artistry. It was the fantastic result of a great fall of reef upon the
head of a native. Death must of course have been instantaneous, for
though when the body was recovered it was not so crushed as might have
been expected, a medical investigation revealed the strange phenomena of
the broken heart which is kept to this day by De Beers, as one of the
wonders of the world.
There were freakish stones, too. Curiosities kept just as they had been
dug from the mine. One had the face of a clock clearly marked on it,
though by no human agency; another showed a church window, another a
perfectly shaped capital V. One was like the bead of a rosary, with all
its points pushed in instead of projecting. Mrs Cork exclaimed much
over these, but what moved Loree most was the sight of the cut and
polished gems which a clerk set out before them. These were the
show-stones kept for the glory of De Beers and the ravishment of
visitors, row upon row of them nesting in cases upon such delicate
shades of velvet as best became their beauty.
Loree's breath came in little gasps as she gazed upon them--rose-red,
amber-coloured, silvery, sherry-brown, smoky blue and water-white. It
seemed to her that she was drinking some magic draught in an enchanted
garden full of roses, dancing daffodils, and frozen dewdrops imprisoning
a thousand spurts of flame.
Quelch stepped into the garden, too. The slow music of his voice as he
gathered up the stones and let them fall from his fingers to hers was
for her alone, and became part of the glamour and the dream. One
exquisite thing, the colour of a dog-rose and radiating a thousand
minute roses of fire, fell into the pearly pinkness of her palm and
nestled there.
"As if it wishes to stay," said Quelch. "As if it knows that for such
hands diamonds are sought and found."
The words were spoken musingly and very low. Loree heard them, but they
did not disturb her. The spell of diamonds was on her. The garden had
turned into enchanted woods, and Pan was fluting there.
When they were leaving the building some minutes later, they met a man
who stopped Quelch and showed him something he had picked up. Loree
recognised it, for already her eye had learned to discern a diamond in
the rough. Quelch gave a glance and handed it back.
"Worth about a hundred and seventy," he said carelessly.
"What was it? Where did he find it?" asked Mrs Cork eagerly, as they
passed on.
"A seven-carat diamond. He found it in the street close by, and is
going to hand it in."
"But may one not keep a diamond if one finds it?" asked Loree wistfully.
He smiled at her ignorance.
"I'm afraid not, Mrs Temple. Findings are not keepings here. Every
stone within a large radius is the property of the De Beers Company."
"How strange!" she sighed. "One would think that what is lying loose in
the world would be every one's property?"
"On the contrary, if that fellow had kept it, he might have got from
five to ten years in jail for illegal possession."
"And for being honest--what will he get?" inquired Mrs Cork.
"Nothing. He is a company's man. De Beers employes are not expected to
pick up seven-carat diamonds in the street. If encouraged such
accidents might develop into habits."
"And if I had found it?" she pursued.
"Ah! You, as an innocent stranger, would be paid a reward of twenty per
cent on its value."
"It seems worth while to keep one's eyes open," she laughed, and began
to shuffle with the toe of her shoe in the dusty street.
"I should hardly advise that course," smiled Quelch. "There are
detectives all about us, as well as in the office. The innocence of
strangers is only presumed as long as they keep a roving look out of
their eyes and do not stoop down to pick interesting things from the
dust."
Both women looked startled. Mrs Cork, indeed, was rather indignant.
"How horrible! Do you mean to say that even _we_ might be suspected?
That we were being watched in there?"
"I'm afraid so," admitted Quelch apologetically. "As you said yourself,
this is a wicked place."
They got into the car, and he asked permission to accompany them,
suggesting a drive round the open mine. Loree did not mention that she
had already been there. She longed to see it again. Mrs Cork sulkily
declared that, though she did not mind prolonging the drive, she wanted
no more to do with mines. When they reached the big hole, she closed
her eyes, tucked herself under her mauve sunshade and said they could
inspect it if they liked, but that her interest in the diamond industry
was damped for ever.
"I believe she is really upset," said Loree to Quelch, as they walked
away.
"She need not be. The rule of watching is never relaxed. Every one is
suspect while in contact with diamonds, and no one trusted. Even the
watchers are watched."
"How curious--and how terrible!"
"In spite of it, many thousands of pounds' worth are stolen every year."
They looked down into the mine. The pit's colourings ranged from
surface red and yellowish clay to the famous "blue ground" in which the
gems are found. Far below, amid the jutting blocks of rusty rocks that
are the barren "reef," tiny figures moved busily, pushing infinitesimal
trucks. But Quelch explained that surface work had practically ceased.
The real labour took place out of sight.
"It is down in the bowels of the earth that the work goes on," he said.
"Thousands of natives groping and toiling in the gloom--for women." He
had only put her own thoughts into words, but, somehow, spoken in his
arresting tones, the fact became more potent. "I was going to say for
women like you, but that would have been foolish. There is no other
woman in the world like you."
His habit of looking abstractedly into distance while he talked lent an
impersonal note to his remarks that was strangely contradicted by his
voice. Young as she was, Loree Temple had tasted the sweets of homage
before now, and learned when it is fitting to lightly accept or coldly
pass them by. But this man's homage, both bold and subtle, was outside
of her experience. She was a little frightened--disturbed yet held in
thrall. She had an instinct that he was dangerous, but wild horses
could not have dragged her away. In the meantime, she used such women's
gifts as the good God had given her. She gave a little careless laugh.
"Oh--there are lots of women like me in the world. But diamonds are not
for all of us."
He looked steadily across the mine.
"If I believed there was another--"
Perhaps he saw the fleeting glance she cast toward the car, for he broke
off abruptly, and she did not hear what would happen if he believed
there was another woman like her in the world. But her pulses were
beating furiously. If some one had tried to push her into the mine and
she had escaped by a hair's breadth, she could not have been more
inwardly perturbed. Yet there was no outward and visible occasion for
it. He was talking calmly and interestingly as he had done the night
before, about diamonds. They were _not_ for everybody, he said, but for
beauty only. From Cleopatra down to Cleo de Merode it had been the
same. The advent of a lovely woman, duchess or actress, into the world
affects the diamond market as the sensitive plant is affected by the
approach of a human hand. A thousand waves and wheels are set in
motion. Dealers, designers, skilled workmen, and common cutter--all
feel the magnetic thrill. Even the thieves in the underworld become
busier and greater quantities of raw diamonds are stolen. Buyers make
hurried journeys to Amsterdam and Antwerp.
Parcels of rare stones change hands. Immense sums are expended on pure
chance--as in the case of the famous necklace commenced in France
immediately on the advent of Dubarry into Royal favour and afterwards
bought by Rohan for Marie Antoinette, becoming the _clou_ of the great
Court Scandal. In modern time such beautiful women as Mrs Langtry,
Cora Brown-Potter, Gaby Deslys, Pavlova and Edna May had all had their
influence on the diamond market and set it moving. Beauty was the pivot
round which the diamond market revolved, he said. The jewels that fill
shop windows are, it seems, only for ordinary women. For the
extraordinary ones, something special must be made. For them the
combination of flawless stones, exquisite enamels, and rare design.
It was strangely interesting to hear these things. Loree did not know
why they should move her so profoundly, and become all mixed up with the
sparkling joys of the flowers in her enchanted garden. Perhaps the
fluting of Pan had something to do with it.
When they returned to the car, Mrs Cork had recovered her good humour.
Quelch proposed a drive to Alexandersfontein (a sort of Southern Coney
Island) and dismissing the chauffeur, took the wheel himself. Loree had
the sensation of tasting life very sweet between the lips as they flew
along through the cooling air into the heart of a blazing sunset. She
knew that the strangely attractive man beside her was more than a little
in love with her--and when will such knowledge cease to exhilarate a
woman's blood? The only crumpled rose-leaf in her happy cup was an
accident that happened as they dismounted from the car for tea. Quelch
stepped on her frock and tore it from its gathers, necessitating her
retiral to a dressing-room and the assistance of a maid, who took some
time to fix it up. Mrs Cork's temper appeared to be of uncertain
quality and unable to bear strain of any kind, for she looked very sulky
at being kept waiting for her tea, and all Loree's apologies (on her
return) and Quelch's civilities, surmounted by a heavenly tea, could not
disperse her gloom. She said that the drive had made her eyes ache, and
the sight of strawberries and cream made her sick. For the homeward
drive Loree offered her the front seat, but she preferred silence and
solitude in the body of the car, and the others did not deny her. When
two people are on the brink of an entrancing flirtation, they cannot
truthfully "grieve as them that have no hope," if they are left to
themselves. In the warm rushing darkness of the night no word was
exchanged between Quelch and Loree, but they advanced quite a long way
on the perilous path of forbidden primroses. Arrived at the hotel, Mrs
Cork said abruptly:
"You won't see me again to-night. I've got one of my awful headaches
and shall go straight to bed!"
They breathed sad sympathy over her, smiling in their hearts. It was
plain to see that the poor woman was suffering. Her attractiveness had
quite gone, and her skin taken a yellowish pallor with heavy lines about
her eyes. Loree was really sorry, but the heart of youth is light, and
the troubles of other people do not unduly depress it. Moreover, she
was in the throes of the first interesting thing that had happened to
her since she married Pat Temple a year ago. She was sure that she was
very strong and clever and well able to look after herself, and keep
Quelch where he ought to be kept--outside of Pat Temple's garden of
happiness. But it was fascinating to philander over the gate, and would
hurt no one _who ought not to be hurt_.
"I don't want to make him unhappy, of course," she murmured virtuously,
as she hurried out of her afternoon things and splashed herself with
cooling waters. "But if men will go looking for scalps, they must
expect a few scars."
It was past the dinner-hour. She flung on the little black gown and
fastened Pat's pearls in her ears and about her neck. They seemed
extraordinary unimaginative ornaments, somehow--not a sparkle or glimmer
about them anywhere. More virtuous indignation moved her--this time
against the giver of the pearls.
"If I flirt a little it is his fault for leaving me behind in this dull
place--while he is enjoying himself."
Even her own cheek blushed at this casuistry, and a photograph of Pat on
the mantelpiece gave her a reproachful glance. She remembered that she
had not written to him that day.
"I will after dinner," she murmured. "Not that he deserves it. If he
really cared for me he would not neglect me in this manner."
Another blush brightened her cheek. But it rally served to enhance the
violet of her eyes.
Needless to say, she did not write after dinner. It was so very
pleasant sitting in the verandah, smelling the drenched roses out in the
gloom of the garden and listening to Quelch's voice. He no longer
talked about diamonds, but about life. Of its loneliness. Of its
irony. Of chance that comes too late. Of being rich and going empty.
Of suffering thirst and knowing the torment of mirage. Of the
desolation of being on the wrong side of the gate of the one "blue
garden" in all the wide desert of the world. Among the things that she
learned was that it is not right for any woman's hair to have the rich
red browns of the back of an old violin--a priceless Stradivarius--and
that when a man sees a certain plaintive _priez-pour-moi_ look in a
woman's eyes, he is ready to throw his immortal soul under her feet.
She felt extremely elated when she went up to bed at somewhere about
eleven o'clock. It had been a charming evening, and the morrow held a
further prospect. Quelch was to fetch her in his racing car at five and
take her to see the Rhodes Memorial.
Her garments of the afternoon still lay in confusion about the room.
The servants had turned down the bed and arranged the mosquito-net, but
everything else was as she had left it. She began to pick up things and
put them away, but her mind was preoccupied. She stopped to examine the
colour of her hair in the glass as though she had never seen it before.
And she looked long at her eyes. Had they really a _priez-pour-moi_
expression? At last she hung up her gown and prepared leisurely for
bed. Her gloves lay flung on the dressing-table, and she took them up
and put them into a drawer. Then she stood still staring. Where the
gloves had lain something glittered. Something was lying there like a
fallen star.
At first she hardly dared touch it. But at length she lifted it
tremulously and gazed into its scintillating heart. It was the lovely
dog-rose diamond that had nestled in her palm that afternoon. The touch
of it warmed her all through, then slowly froze her into fright. How
had it come there? The only possible explanation seemed to be that,
after playing with and handling the diamonds, this one had slipped into
some fold of her clothes and been brought home by her. The alternative
was that some one had brought it and placed it on her dressing-table.
But that seemed too fantastic. The one person connected in her mind
with this stone was Quelch. Yet she had found him in the dining-room
when she went down and had been with him ever since. Who on earth would
have any object in leaving a valuable diamond on her dressing-table?
She _must_ have brought it herself. But how terrible! The watching
detectives must know that it was missing. Even now she might be under
suspicion of stealing it! A wild impulse came to her to fly and tell
Quelch. But he had gone to bed, and she did not know where his room
was. Besides, she realised in a moment that was an impossible idea.
Quelch was the last person she could go to. Mrs Cork, then? But her
room was also unknown. And she was so bad-tempered and would be furious
at being disturbed. It was late, too. Midnight. She had been dawdling
and dreaming longer than she supposed. Impossible to do anything about
it until morning. With the decision came relief. There was poignant
pleasure in the thought that she could spend the night alone with the
rose-coloured diamond!
For another hour or more she stood turning the smiling thing in her
hand, twisting it, flashing it this way and that. It was the size of a
good-shaped pea, only flatter and exquisitely cut. Its rays seemed to
mesmerise her eyes and paralyse her will. At last she finished
undressing and approached the bed. Kneeling down, she murmured her
prayers as usual, but mechanically, her eyes fixed all the time on the
heart of rose-pink fire lying before her. An unrequested phrase thrust
itself into her mind:
Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
She could not remember where such an odd injunction came from. It
sounded like the Bible and reminded her of her childhood, so she thrust
it out of her mind again quickly. Neither the Bible nor her childhood
harmonised with the rose-red diamond. She got into bed, taking the
stone with her, and lay awake a long time watching it. At length, when
her eyes grew heavy, she slid it under her pillow just beneath her head.
But even in her sleep her hand jealously guarded the treasure.
As soon as she woke, her first thought was how lovely it would look in
the morning light. Eagerly she drew it forth and plunged her gaze once
more into its mysterious depths. Hitherto, her happy custom had been to
rise and seek the breakfast-table with healthy interest. But to-day she
broke her habit and stayed long abed with her fascinating companion.
She felt no hunger or thirst but for its beauty. Besides, it was safer
in her room. She had an idea that if she once opened her door, the
delicious thing might be ravished from her grasp. Who knew? Perhaps a
hateful detective waited in the corridor! A plan must be formulated by
which she could thwart any evil-intentioned person and keep the diamond
in her possession. After all, it was hers. Plainly it was hers. Was
there not a sort of magic predestination about the whole affair? Quelch
had said, when the diamond lay in her palm, that it seemed as if it
wished to be there--as if it knew it had been sought and found _for
her_. And lo!--she had found it. It had come to her--followed of its
own accord! If that was not lawful possession, she would like to know
what was. Surely a natural preference on the part of the diamond should
rank higher than any mere stupid diamond law!
The question next arose as to where to keep it out of the range of
vulgar and prying eyes yet in her close and constant company. The
answer was:--a tiny bag to be slung round her neck and hidden in her
bosom. Diligently she hunted for a scrap of silk and a needle and
cotton. Then as the air in her room was close, and the be-blinded
balcony, which ran all round the square-built hotel, seemed steeped in
silence and solitude, she stepped out of the French window and seated
herself in a basket chair. The diamond lay in her lap and blinked at
her lazily while she sewed. She felt like a happy young mother making a
dainty garment for her baby.
So peaceful and preoccupied was she that Mrs Cork, coming suddenly
round a corner, was upon her before she was aware. She caught the
treasure up in her clenched hand, but not before the shrewd eye of the
other had spied it out.
"But how lovely!" she cried. "What is it?"
"Only a little pink topaz of mine," said Loree calmly, and held it fast
and hidden. But her heart beat wildly and her cheek was pinker than any
topaz ever found on an island in the Red Sea.
"Ah," said Valeria Cork, "I've never seen a pink topaz close enough to
really examine it."
This was a plain hint, but Loree sewed furiously, her left hand
clutching both stone and silk.
"And what is the little bag for?"
Without hesitation Loree answered firmly.
"To wear a piece of camphor in round my neck."
"But there is no epidemic about, is there?"
"No: it's just a superstition of mine."
Brusquely she rose, stuffing sewing and stone into her pocket. She
glanced at her inquisitor coldly. We usually dislike people to whom we
are obliged to lie.
"How dreadfully ill you look!" she remarked, with an accent on the
"dreadfully." A faint colour came into the elder woman's cheek. She
had looked upon the face of forty, and to-day the fact was painfully
revealed. The contrast between herself and the girl in all the bloom
and heyday of youth was striking.
"Bad heads take time to get over," she said curtly, "and it is stuffy in
one's room."
"Ah yes. Where is your room?" asked Loree eagerly. Anything to get
away from the subject of topazes and camphor-bags.
"On the hot side of the hotel," said Mrs Cork dryly. "We can't all
afford the best side, like you."
This was the first time Loree had heard of a best or worst side but not
the first time it had been brought home to her that, where she was
concerned, Pat never considered the best too good.
"I should have come round to you last night if I had known where your
room was," she said thoughtlessly.
Valeria Cork looked surprised.
"Why? Did you need anything?"
"Only to borrow an aspirin tablet," said Loree, looking sweet and pure
and good, and as though she had never told a lie in her life. And, in
fact, until this morning, lying had not been among her accomplishments.
"You had better come round now; then you will know where I am if you
want me any time," suggested the other, and they strolled idly round the
balcony. There was no one about except a negro flicking dust from
chairs and glancing with sleepy black eyes into the open bedrooms as he
passed.
Mrs Cork's room was indeed tiny, and not to be compared with Loree's
for comfort. She proffered cigarettes and gave her visitor the most
comfortable chair. There were beautiful ivory articles on the
dressing-table, but they were yellow from use and the monograms faded.
The silk wrapper she was wearing had a faded loveliness, too. All her
possessions wore an air of yesterday, as of things bought in prosperity
and never renewed. The only up-to-date object was a photograph of a
hopeful-looking boy in his teens. On inquiry, Loree discovered that
this was her only son, and was vaguely surprised to hear the name of the
public school he was at--one of the most expensive in England. He had
his mother's handsome eyes, but not their haggard glance.
The two women gossiped awhile, then Loree rose, saying she must dress
for luncheon. Mrs Cork announced her intentions of lying down again,
as her headache was returning.
In her bedroom, Loree hastened to finish the little bag and place her
treasure in it. When it lay in her warm bosom, she felt excited yet
curiously content. The prickle of it against her skin was as pleasing
to her as the rasp of his hair shirt to the saintly hermit. She went
down to lunch in a kind of dream of joy. Quelch was not there. He
always lunched at his club. There were but few people about, and those
casual and uninteresting. No one looked like a detective. Loree felt
secure, but not calm. Her feverish desire was to be alone with her
twinkling treasure once more, and she wasted no time in getting back to
her room.
Late in the afternoon she dressed hurriedly in a delightful frock of
transparent blue muslin the colour of asphodels, and prepared for her
drive with Quelch. When she glanced into the mirror just before
leaving, she saw that, like Bathsheba, she was fair to look upon. But
it was a new and glittering beauty that she had. Her cheek glowed; her
eyes burned. Pat Temple would hardly have known his wife.
Quelch's eyes told her even more than the mirror. As she came down the
main stairway, she saw him standing in the hall, reading a letter which
had just been handed to him from the office. Its perusal seemed to
afford him pleasure, but nothing like the unfeigned gladness with which
he looked up at her. Neither he nor any one else could have guessed
from outward and visible signs that the sweet vision in diaphanous
draperies of Madonna blue carried a canker at her heart--a canker in a
little silk bag.
The racing car was at the door--a keen-nosed silvery affair, with no
seats, only flat cushions of sleek grey silk. They had to climb over
the sides and sit cheek by jowl on the floor, and there was a great
sheaf of scarlet roses for Loree's lap. It is no use denying that these
charming attentions touch women deeply. Only stupid men underrate the
magic influence of gifts, especially the fragrant gift of flowers.
Those roses scented all the afternoon.
Quelch had the art of communicating himself without words. Loree was
acutely aware of his insolent pride in her beauty as they drove through
the streets. Men possess a curious degree this scratch-brant delight in
the lust of the eye and pride of life. In Africa, perhaps they indulge
it more than in most places. Climate may have something to do with it,
but it is a dull affair to be a plain woman there, and to be a pretty
one singularly intoxicating. There was something barbaric in the warm,
bold satisfaction of Quelch's eyes as they rested on her. She had the
sense once more of living life to the full, and that old dream of hers
of driving triumphant through the streets of Rome seemed curiously
fulfilled. It was not strange to hear him say, very low:
"Don't you feel that we have been together before somewhere?"
She did not answer, only smiled. A blue ripple of her gown resting on
his grey-clad knee acted like an electric current between them.
The Rhodes Memorial stands a little way out of the town--a rather
enchanted-looking Asian Temple, built of sandstone from the Matoppo
Hills. They climbed its steep stairs and stood gazing from
marble-pillared openings at a great vista of empty veld and a far line
of hills. The Boers occupied those hills during the siege, and peppered
Kimberley with fifteen hundred shells from their Long Tom, being
blithely answered by Long Cecil, the big gun made in the De Beers
workshops. Quelch recounted the tragic fate of Labran, the maker of
this gun, who was killed by the second response from Long Tom.
Afterward, he fell into silence. It was Loree who talked lightly and
incessantly. She had become aware of the danger of silence. When you
are loitering on the perilous precipices, where the fire-flowers blow,
words are little ropes and holds by which you keep your footing. But
Quelch smiled like a man who has his feet on firm ground, and enfolded
her always with his bold yet subtle glance.
She was vaguely thankful for the presence of a man reading on a bench,
and when Quelch wanted to drive her out into the empty veld, which the
sinking sun had flooded with blood-red light, she resisted the
adventure, murmuring that she must return and write a letter to catch
the night post for Rhodesia.
His face darkened at the words. Pat Temple had never been mentioned
between them, but Loree felt no doubt that he knew where her husband was
and all about him. One of the first things you learn in Africa is that
every one knows your private affairs nearly as well as you do yourself.
So the drive into the veld was renounced, but home was reached only by a
route both long and obvious. Loree missed the post for Rhodesia by just
ten minutes. There was time for nothing before dinner except a few
moments' secret genuflection at the shrine of a rose-pink idol. And
after dinner-time flew past in the same astonishing fashion of the
previous evening. Mrs Cork's headache had evidently persisted, for she
did not appear, and they neither missed nor mourned her. Instead of
sitting in the verandah, where the rest of the world was liable to note
the silence that now held between them, they walked in the garden among
the wet roses and languorously scented night-flowers. Playing with
danger is fascinating anywhere, but in Africa the _mise en scene_ is
always specially arranged for this pastime.
Next morning, by the early post there was news from Pat. He had been
down with a touch of malaria, and the Wingates were looking after him.
Ethel Wingate was a remote cousin and her husband an old school-friend.
They had not much money, Pat wrote, but it was wonderful to see their
happiness. They had been married ten years and never parted a day,
weathering storms and sunshine together.
"It has made me think a bit (the letter ran) and realise that while one
is busy hustling about the earth, piling up a fortune for the future,
one may be missing something more important in the present. What do you
think, darling mine?"
Loree was disturbed by the question, as a happy dreamer might be
disturbed by a shout in the ear. She had closed the door of her
thinking mind for the time being, and did not wish to open it, for fear
of what was crouching there--a little drab-faced thing called
conscience. She desired no communication with that thing, nor with her
soul, which was a soul obsessed. The best way to forget Pat's query was
to get out the little idol that lay in her bosom, and lose herself in
its sparkling loveliness. But, somehow, it did not look quite so
beautiful as before. Its lustre seemed dimmed. Its fires had paled a
little. This annoyed her. She felt as if she were being cheated in the
value of something for which she had paid a heavy price.
Discontent seized her, and she went down to lunch feverishly anxious for
any excitement that would revive the delicious spell under which she had
lain for forty-eight hours and which now appeared to be dying off.
Quelch was sitting in the hall, gossiping idly with Mrs Cork and
watching the staircase. His habit of lunching at the club, for reasons
of his own not far to seek, had been renounced. If ever a man took a
woman into his arms with his eyes, he did it as Loree came toward him.
The excitement she sought was supplied. Hot colour surged in her cheek
and glowed to her hair.
Valeria Cork's cynical eye computed the situation, and she smiled
somewhat dryly behind her cigarette. She was looking better, but still
proclaimed her inability for dissipation of any kind, and refused
Quelch's invitation to the theatre that night. He had a box for _The
Gay Lord Quex_. Loree hesitated to accept alone. But they both seemed
to think it surprisingly simple of her to suppose that there were any
conventions of outrage in South Africa, also that, as a married woman,
she did not do as she pleased. Put on her pride in this manner of
course she decided to go. Something fluttered like a frightened bird
behind that door of her mind (or heart, or soul) which she had so
carefully closed. It might have been the little drab-faced conscience.
However, a fascinating champagne cocktail drugged it into silence, and
they enjoyed a merry lunch together.
The afternoon was spent about as busily as the lilies of the field spend
their afternoons. She rested a good deal, shook out her best gown for
the evening, tried a new way of doing her hair, and brooded over the
diamond in an effort to recapture the first fine early magic of
possession. In this she was not altogether successful, but, at any
rate, she managed to obliterate from her memory Pat's query and the
general wistfulness of his letter. That, at least, was something
accomplished, something done to earn a night's amusement.
Certainly the lilies of the field could not have been fairer than she,
descending at eight "clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," and
wearing Pat's rope of three hundred and sixty-five pearls. The only
colour about her was her radiant hair, but hiding under her heart a
little pink god soiled and sparkled in secret.
She looked _ravissante_. No wonder every man in the hotel found a good
and proper reason for being in the hall while Quelch put on her wraps
and conducted her to the car. Many a glance of admiration came her way,
mingled with undisguised envy of her companion. Afterward, some grinned
with joy at the prospect of the indomitable Quelch riding to a fall;
some derided the absent husband, and some pitied the woman. But the two
in the car recked nothing. Quelch's philosophy was that if you are
strong enough, will pay high enough, and play a waiting game skilfully
enough, you can get most things for yourself, even unto your heart's
desire. Loree's experience of waiting games and players who compute the
value of every gambit was absolutely nil, and her philosophy, such as it
was, took no account of the disintegrating influences of climate,
flattery, sparkling things, and the pits that vanity digs for the feet.
She was entirely occupied with being beautiful and desirable and admired
of all men, especially the one at her side. It seemed as if the earth
was for her and the fulness thereof. It is a delusion many women have
while walking on the edge of the ravine where the fire-flowers blow.
If Quelch's methods had been less fine, she might have been safer.
Because he was so very quiet and gentle, refraining even from touching
her hand, she inclined to believe herself very wise and secure. Yet, in
the closed and silent car, there was a certain breathlessness. Once she
had a sensation of drowning in the scent of roses. Arrival at the
theatre was almost like a rescue.
Surrounded by people and lights and noise, she became very brilliant and
gay. Her remarks sparkled like the jewels on the white shoulders of the
women in the audience. All eyes were turned to the lovely red-haired
girl alone in a box with Quelch. She got more attention than Pinero's
play. But on the return drive she was less sure of herself. Quelch's
eyes, as he had watched and listened to her all the evening, made her
afraid, and the intimate silence of the car was a fresh plunge into the
sea of roses that had power to suffocate. Her gaiety became a little
forced. She sat apart in her corner as if attempting to isolate
herself. In her companion, there was no departure from the gentleness
he always used; but half-way home, in his tender, velvety voice, he
asked a question:
"Do you remember saying there were other women like you in the world?"
"Of course." She essayed to laugh lightly, but the silence that
followed had nothing reassuring in it. The car drew up at the hotel
entrance before he spoke again.
"If I thought there was another, I would seek her day and night, and
never rest until she was in my arms--_mine_!"
The chauffeur opened the door. Quelch helped her to descend, and they
entered the dim hall. Without meeting his glance, she bade him good
night and passed swiftly upstairs, well aware that he remained standing
there, following her with his eyes. Breathlessly she closed and locked
the door upon herself. But she could not shut out the agitation of her
veins or the wild beating of her heart. Fright had come into the room
with her. The thing had gone too far--grown too big for the
manipulation of the little hands she had thought so clever. She sat
staring at them, and at the white reflection of herself in the glass.
Flirtation had overswept the neat confines laid down by her, and come
washing over in a big wave that had nearly overwhelmed her. This would
never do. She must get back to where she was before, on the safe and
unassailable rock where she had always dwelt as Pat Temple's wife. It
was incomprehensible that she had ever lost her footing from that rock,
and she could not quite remember how or when it had occurred. Somehow,
the little pink idol was mysteriously connected with the event. It
occurred to her now to calm her troubled musings by a sight of it.
Gazing into its deep-pink fire-lit heart, her agitation passed; at last
she rose and began to take off her gown. But in the middle of
undressing, her movements and her glance became fixed. On a small
writing-table at the foot of her bed something was glittering with the
emerald eyes of a hundred serpents. For a moment she stood rigid, then
flew to it, as a foolish bird flies to the snare. All the stars in
heaven seemed to have come down to lie there linked together by a
silvery thread.
It was a chain of diamonds, flexible and long as her chain of pearls and
of a loveliness and brilliancy indescribable. Tenderly, adoringly, she
gathered it up. It ran like fire and water through her fingers,
flashing laughing, winking. When she held it altogether in her two
palms, it was as though the sun had set in a pool of crystal dew. When
it slipped down over her red-brown hair to her throat and shoulders and
the shadow of her bosom, her beauty seemed enhanced to unearthliness.
She gave a long sigh, and something went fluttering out of her. It
might have been the little pale-faced conscience. Perhaps it was her
soul taking wing. Whatever it was, she neither recked nor reasoned.
The work begun by the rose-red idol had been accomplished by the chain
of stars. She was lost.