"I don't care. I'll say it again. It's a beastly shame him leaving you
alone like this."
"But you are not to say it again, or to say it at all. Remember of whom
you are speaking."
"Oh, no fear of my forgetting that--of being able to forget it. All the
same, he ought to be ashamed of himself."
And the speaker tapped his foot impatiently upon the virgin soil of
Mashunaland, looking very hot, and very tall, and very handsome. The
remonstrant, however, received the repetition of the offence in silence,
but for a half inaudible sigh, which might or might not have been meant
to convey that she was not nearly so angry with the other as her words
seemed to imply or their occasion to demand. Then there was silence.
An oblong house, of the type known as "wattle and daub," with
high-pitched thatch roof, partitioned within so as to form three rooms--
a house rough and ready in construction and aspect, but far more
comfortable than appearances seemed to warrant. Half a dozen circular
huts with conical roofs, clustered around, serving the purpose of
kitchen and storehouse and quarters for native servants; beyond these,
again, a smaller oblong structure, constituting a stable, the whole
walled round by a stockade of mopani poles;--and there you have a far
more imposing establishment than that usually affected by the pioneer
settler. Around, the country is undulating and open, save for a not
very thick growth of mimosa; but on one hand a series of great granite
kopjes rise abruptly from the plain, the gigantic boulders piled one
upon the other in the fantastic and arbitrary fashion which forms such a
characteristic feature in the landscape of a large portion of Rhodesia.
"Well?"
The woman was the first to break the silence--equally a characteristic
feature, a cynic might declare.
"Well?"
The answer was staccato, and not a little pettish. The first speaker
smiled softly to herself. She revelled in her power, and was positively
enjoying the cat and mouse game, though it might have been thought that
long custom would have rendered even that insidious pastime stale and
insipid.
"So sorry you have to go," she murmured sweetly. "But it's getting
late, and you'll hardly reach home before dark."
The start--the blank look which overspread his features--all this, too,
she thoroughly enjoyed.
"Have to go," he echoed. "Oh, well--yes, of course, if you want to get
rid of me--"
"I generally do want to get rid of people when they are sulky, and
disagreeable, and ill-tempered," was the tranquil reply. But the
expression of her eyes, raised full to his, was such as to take all the
sting out of her words.
Not quite all, however, for his mind was in that parlous state best
defined as "worked up"--and the working-up process had been one, not of
hours or of days, but of weeks.
"Well, then, good-bye." Then, pausing: "Why do you torment me like
this, Hermia, when you know--"
"What's that? I didn't say you might call me by my name."
"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs Blachland," was the reply, bitterly,
resentfully emphatic. Then, thawing suddenly, "You didn't mind it the
other day, and--well, you know what you are to me and always will be."
"Until somebody else is more so," came the smiling interruption.
"Hark"--raising a hand suddenly, and listening intently. "Yes, it is.
Will you be a very dear boy, Justin, and do something for me?"
"You know I would do anything for you--anything in the wide world."
"Oh, this is nothing very great. There are guinea-fowl over there in
the kopje--I can hear them. I only want you to take Hilary's gun, and
go and shoot me a few. Will you? The supplies are running low."
"Of course I will," was the answer, as they both went inside, and Justin
Spence, invested with an excellent Number 12 bore, and a belt full of
cartridges, started off on his errand of purveyor to the household, all
his ill-humour gone. He was very young, you see, and the next best
thing to glowing in the presence of his charmer was to be engaged in
rendering her some service.
She stood there watching his receding form, as it moved away rapidly
over the veldt in long elastic strides. Once he turned to look back.
She waved her hand in encouragement.
"How good-looking he is!" she said to herself. "How well he moves too--
so well set up and graceful! But why was he so emphatic just now when
he called me that? Was it accidental? I wonder was it? Oh yes, it
must have been. That's the worst of an _arriere pensee_, one is always
imagining things. No, the very fact of his putting such emphasis upon
the name shows it was accidental. He'd never have been so mean--Justin
isn't that sort."
She stood for a little longer, shading her eyes to gaze after him, again
smiling softly to herself as she reflected how easily she could turn him
round her little finger, how completely and entirely he was her slave;
and, indeed, Justin Spence was not the only one of whom this held good.
There was a warm-blooded physical attractiveness about her which never
failed to appeal to those of the other sex. She was not beautiful,
hardly even pretty. Her dark hair was plentiful, but it was coarse and
wavy, and she had no regularity of feature, but lovely eyes and a very
fascinating smile. Her hands were large, but her figure, of medium
height, was built on seductive lines; and yet this strange
conglomeration of attractions and defects was wont to draw the male
animal a hundredfold more readily than the most approved and faultless
types of beauty could ever have done.
Still musing she entered the house. It was cool within. Strips of
"limbo," white and dark blue, concealed the wattle and thatch, giving
the interior something of the aspect of a marquee. There were framed
prints upon the walls, mostly of a sporting character, and a few framed
photographs. Before one of these she paused.
"I think you are tired of me, Hilary," she murmured, as though
addressing the inanimate bit of cardboard. "I think we are tired of
each other. Yet--are we?"
Was there a touch of wistfulness in the words, in the tone as she gazed?
Perhaps.
The eyes which met hers from the pictured cardboard were the eyes which
had been all powerful to sway her, body and soul, as no other glance had
ever availed to do; the face was that which had filled her every
thought, day and night, and as no other had ever held it. Ah, but that
was long ago: and time, and possession, utterly without restriction, had
palled the heretofore only dreamed-of bliss!
"Yes, I think we are tired of each other," she pursued. "He never takes
me anywhere with him now. Says a camp's no place for me, with nothing
but men in it. As if I'd go if there were other women. Pah! I hate
women. He used not to say that. Ah, well! And Justin! he really is a
dear boy. I believe I am getting to love him, and when he comes back I
shall give him a--Well, wait till he does. Perhaps by then I shall have
changed my mood."
She had dropped into a roomy rocking-chair--a sensuous, alluring
personality as she lay back, her full supple figure swaying to the
rhythmic movement of the rocker, kept going by one foot.
"It is as Justin said," pursued the train of her meditations, "an
abominable shame--a beastly shame, he called it--that I should be left
all alone like this. Well, if I am, surely no one can blame me for
consoling myself. But what a number of them there have been, all mad,
quite mad, for the time, though not all so mad as poor Reggie. No, I
oughtn't to be proud of that--still I suppose I am. It isn't every
woman can say that a man has blown his brains out for her--and such a
man as that too--a man of power and distinction, and wealthy enough even
for me. If it hadn't been for Hilary, he needn't have done it. And,
now Hilary and I are tired of each other. Ah!"
The last aloud. She rose and went to the door. The sound of a distant
shot, then another, had given rise to this diversion. It came from away
behind the granite kopjes. Her deputed hunter had got to work at any
rate, with what result time would show.
The afternoon sun was declining. His rays swept warm and golden upon
the spreading veldt and the pioneer residence, the latter looking,
within its stockade, like a miniature fort. The air was wonderfully
clear and pure; the golden effulgence upon the warm and balmy stillness
rendering life well-nigh a joy in itself. The distant mellow shouts of
the native herders, bringing in the cows; the thud of the hoofs of
knee-haltered horses, nearer home, driven into their nightly stabling--
for lions were prone to sporadic visits, and nothing alive could with
safely be left outside; and then, again and again from time to time, the
distant crack of the gun away behind the great granite kopjes,--all
seemed much nearer by reason of the sweet unearthly stillness.
"He is doing me real service," said Hermia to herself, as she gazed
forth over this, and as each far-away report of the double-barrel was
borne to her through the sweet evening air. "I think I can see him,
sparing no pains--no trouble--climbing those horrid rocks, blown,
breathless, simply because I--_I_--have asked him to do so."
The sensuous glow of the rich African evening seemed to infect her. She
stood, the sunlight bathing her splendid form, in its easy but still
well-fitting covering. She began to wrap herself in anticipation, even
as the glow of the declining day was wrapping her in its wondrous,
ever-changing light. He would be back soon, this man whom she had sent
out to toil through the afternoon heat in obedience to her behest. What
would he not do if she so ordained it? And yet, as a saving clause,
there was ever present to her mind the certainty that in any great and
crucial matter his will would come uppermost, and it would be she who
should have to receive instructions and follow them implicitly.
But then, if no great or crucial matter ever arose, her regard for him,
so far from growing would, in time, diminish. He was younger than she
was; his knowledge of the world--let alone his experience of life--
immeasurably inferior to hers. Why, even his whole-souled and entire
devotion to herself was the outcome of a certain callowness, the
adoration of a boy. But to her omnivorous appetite for adoration it
counted for something at any time, and here, where the article was
scarce, why, like everything else in that remote corner of the earth,
its value stood vastly enhanced. Yet even she could not in candour
persuade herself that it contained the element of durability.
And that other? Well, he was tired of her--and she was just a little
tired of him. Yet she had at one time pictured to herself, and to him,
that life, alone with him, such as she was now leading, would be simple
and unalloyed Paradise--they two, the world apart. She had looked up to
him as to a god: now she wondered how she could ever have done so; there
were times, indeed, when she was not careful to avoid saying as much.
He had never replied, but there was that in his look which had told her
plainer than words that she was fast driving nail after nail into the
coffin of their love. His absences had grown more frequent and more
prolonged. When at home he was graver, less communicative, never
confidential.
And yet--and yet? Could that past ever be slurred over? Had it not
left too deep, too indelible a mark on her, on both of them for that?
This was a side, however, upon which Hermia never dwelt. Though
physically seductive beyond the average, she was lacking in imagination.
This kept her from looking forward, still more from such unprofitable
mental exercise as retrospect. In sum, she was little more than a mere
animal, enjoying the sunniness of life, cowering and whimpering when its
shadow came. Just now, sunshine was uppermost, and her strong,
full-blooded temperament expanded and glowed with pulsating and generous
life.
Her meditations were broken in upon, and that by the sound of distant
whistling, rapidly drawing nearer. Somehow the strains of "A bicycle
made for two," and "Ta-ra-ra boomdeay," seemed to frame a jarring
harmony to the sweet sunset beauty of that green and golden sweep of
surrounding--the feathery mimosa and the tropical mahobo-hobo tree, and
the grey granite piles, yonder, against the purple and red of the
western sky--but the shrill whoop and dark forms of the Mashuna boys
bringing in the cattle fitted in with the picture. But no eye or ear
had she for any such incongruities, any such contrast. Justin Spence
was drawing nearer and nearer to the house, with rapid impatient
strides, and she could see that he was not returning empty-handed
either.
Assuming her most seductive manner and most bewitching smile, she
strolled down to the gate to welcome him.