John Ames was beginning to enjoy his leave, and that actively.
At first he had done so in a negative kind of way. It was pleasant to
have nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it in, to rise in the
morning and know that until bedtime at night he had only to please
himself and take no thought for anything whatever. He had a few
acquaintance in the neighbourhood, more or less busy people whose
avocations kept them in Cape Town throughout the working day, and so was
mostly thrown upon his own resources. This, however, was not without
its advantages, for the change had hardly benefited him much as yet, and
he was conscious of a sort of mental languor which rendered him rather
disinclined than otherwise for the society of his fellows. He liked to
mount his bicycle and spin for miles along the smooth level roads,
beneath the oak and fir shade, the towering wall of mountain glimpsed
ever and anon athwart the trees; or, gaining the nearest point of sea
shore, lie on the beach for hours, watching the rollers come tumbling
in, and the revels of bathers skipping amid the surf. Hitherto he had
been content to do all this alone, now he was not; and the name of the
agency which had effected this change was Nidia Commerell.
Nearly a fortnight has gone by since we introduced that entrancing
personality to the reader's notice; and whatever effects the same had
had upon John Ames, one at any rate was certain, viz. a conviction that
it was not good to be alone.
They had seen a good deal of each other within that time. Nidia had
carried out to the full her expressed intention of using him as an
escort, and he, for his part, had gladly welcomed the _role_, and
efficiently discharged it; and whether it was along bicycle ride, or a
more remote expedition by rail, or a scramble up the Devil's Peak, that
commended itself to the two ladies for the day's programme, there was
John Ames in sure and faithful attendance. It did him good, too. There
was an ingredient in the tonic which was stimulating, life-giving
indeed, and now in this daily companionship he felt that life was worth
living. Decidedly he had begun to enjoy his leave.
"Well, Susie, wasn't I justified in my prediction?" said Nidia to her
friend, as they were dressing for dinner after one of these expeditions.
"Which prediction? You make so many."
"Concerning John Ames,"--for so they had got into the way of designating
him when alone together.
"I said he looked as if he were nice, and also that he would come in
handy as an escort for two unprotected females. Well, he is both.
Isn't he?"
"Yes; he is a remarkably well-mannered, pleasant man."
"With more than two ideas in his head?"
"Yes; he can talk intelligently on any subject, and if he knows nothing
about it won't pretend to."
"As is the case with the average turned-out-of-a-bandbox,
eyeward-twisting-moustache type of Apollo one usually encounters in
one's progress through this vale of woe," supplied Nidia, with an airy
laugh.
"That holds good, too. But, gracious Heavens, child, don't pile up your
adjectives in that mountainous fashion, or you'll reflect no credit on
my most careful training and tuition."
"All rights Govvie," cried Nidia, with a peal of merry laughter--the
point of the allusion being that prior to her marriage Susie Bateman had
been a combination of companion and governess to the girl she was now
chaperoning; in fact, was a distant relation to boot. "But the said
careful training was such a long time ago. I'm beginning to forget it."
"Long time ago!"
"Yes, it was. In the days of my youth. I am in my twenty-fourth year,
remember. Is that nothing?"
"Of course it's nothing. But--what were we talking about?"
"Oh, John Ames, as usual."
"As usual--yes. But, Nidia, isn't it rather rough on the man? He's
sure to end by falling in love with you."
Again the girl laughed, but this time she changed colour ever so
slightly.
"To _end_ by it! That's not very complimentary to my transcendent
fascinations, O Susie. He ought to begin by it. But--to be serious--
perfectly serious--he isn't that sort."
"I'm not by any means sure. Why should you think so?"
"No signs. He'd have hung out signals long ago if he'd been trending
that way. They all do. The monotony of the procedure is simply
wearisome."
"Nidia, you are really a very dreadful child. Your talk is absolutely
shocking to the ears of a well brought up British female."
"Can't help it. If a series of idiots come to labour under the
impression that life outside my presence--ten days after first becoming
aware of my existence--is totally unendurable, where am I to blame? I
can't scowl at them, and nothing short of that will restrain them. Now,
the reason why I rather like this man is that he has so far shown no
signs of mental aberration."
She meant it all. For one so plenteously, so dangerously, dowered as
far as the other sex was concerned, Nidia Commerell was strangely
unromantic. In her allusion to the rapidity with which the average male
succumbed to her charms there was no exaggeration. She seemed to
possess the art of conquest sudden and complete, yet, in reality, art it
was not, for she had not a shadow of the flirt in her composition. The
very artlessness of her frank unstudied demeanour constituted, in fact,
her most formidable armament. But she refused to see why she should
avoid the other sex simply because a large percentage of its members
were weak enough to fall in love with her upon no sort of warranty or
provocation. There was no affectation, either, in her declaration that
the unanimity wherewith they did so candidly bored her.
"Just as I begin to like a man," she would plaintively declare, "and
find him of some use, he gets serious, gloomy, and spoils everything."
And for all her airiness on the subject, she was not entirely without a
qualm lest John Ames should follow suit, and him she had more than begun
to like very much indeed. The roar of a truly demoniacal gong cut short
further discussion of the subject, by warning them that it was time to
go down and join the object of it at table. Him they found in an amused
state.
"Rather fun," he said. "Some fellow has been going for that most
cherished and firmly rooted institution, the great Cape fish-horn, in a
letter to the evening _Argus_. He doesn't see how a civilised community
at the end of the nineteenth century can tolerate their day and night
alike being made hideous by an unending procession of dirty Malays
blaring weirdly, wildly, deafeningly through a `yard of tin;' and, for
the matter of that, no more do I. Look, here it is"--handing the paper
across to Mrs Bateman.
The latter, like most high-featured people, was of censorious habit.
"Yes; it's amusing," she said. "But there are some people who are never
happy unless they are finding fault. I suppose even these poor Malays
must earn their living."
"No fear of their not doing that," rejoined Ames. "Why, they are the
most well-to-do crowd on this peninsula. I take it the writer's point
is they could earn it without making life intolerable to the world at
large."
At which remark, ever so faint a droop of the mouth-corners changed the
visage of a silent, middle-aged individual seated at an adjacent table;
but his back was towards them, and they couldn't see it. "Oh,
nonsense," retorted Mrs Bateman, breezily. "People who can't stand a
little noise ought to go and live by themselves on a desert island."
Here the droop on the lips of the silent one became a very pronounced
sneer. "A fool of a woman, answering according to her folly," he
thought.
"Let me see it," cried Nidia. "Yes; it is a good joke, and perfectly
true, too. I know I've wished that same hideous noise anywhere times
out of number. I quite agree--it is amazing how they tolerate it. I
wonder who the writer is. Positively I'd like to send him an anonymous
letter of cordial thanks."
This time the silent one laughed to himself, heartily and undisguisedly.
"Write it to the _Argus_ instead and agree with him; that'll do just as
well," said John Ames. "The fact of the matter is that the Malay vote
is a power just here, and it would be about as easy to uproot Table
Mountain itself as the diabolical snoek trumpet under discussion."
"No, I don't agree with you in the least, Susie," declared Nidia. "I
think unnecessary racket ought to be put down with a stern hand. Don't
you remember all that abominable cannon nuisance when we were in the
Bernese Oberland? You didn't like that any more than I did. Just
fancy, Mr Ames. Some of the most picturesque turnings of the road,
almost wherever we went, were tenanted by a miscreant volunteering to
let off a horrid cannon for half a franc--to raise an echo."
"I should have felt like offering him a whole one not to raise it," was
the reply. "But the noble Switzer was shrewd enough to appraise his
clients at their correct value. The English are never quite happy
unless they are making a noise, unless it is when they are listening to
one."
"Yes; aren't they?" cried Nidia. "You see it in their fondness for
banging doors and talking at the top of their voices on every landing at
all hours of the day and night, and throwing their boots about and
pounding up and down for hours over somebody else's head, in a house
full of other people."
The silent one hearkened approvingly. "That's no fool of a girl," he
was saying to himself.
"I know," replied John Ames. "And, talking about that stumping overhead
trick, if you were wantonly to knock a cripple off his crutch you would
be voted the greatest brute on earth. Yet that same cripple will go
into the room above yours, and, as you say, pound up and down for hours,
or perhaps let fall that same crutch with a mighty bang upon the floor,
totally callous to the possibility of there being some unfortunate wight
underneath with shattered nerves, and generally seedy, and who would
give his soul for a square night's rest. No; if you expect from other
people any of the consideration they expect from you, you are simply
laughed at for a fool, and a selfish one at that."
"Oh, well, in life we have to give and take, I suppose," remarked the
censorious one, with striking originality.
John Ames smiled. He had an idea as to the sort of giving and taking
this masterful person would be likely to practise, save in one quarter,
that is; for he had not spent the time he had in the society of the two
without detecting that she had at any rate one soft place, and that was
Nidia Commerell. So he agreed easily, and the talk drifted on to other
matters.
It was pleasant out in the moonlight. The elder of the two ladies had
pronounced herself tired when Nidia, whose freshness nothing seemed to
impair, suggested strolling. John Ames was rather inclined to be silent
as they wandered on, the light of the southern moon flooding down
through the overshadowing firs, the balmy stillness of the night broken
by distant snatches of shrill laughter and the chatter of voices from
squalid coloured loafers on the main road. He was realising with a sort
of pang at the heart how all this time would soon be behind him, as in a
flash, only as an episode to look back to. The girl, noting his
silence, was wondering whether it was a prelude to what she had airily
termed "hoisting the signals," and, thus conjecturing, was surprised at
herself and her lack of the usual eagerness to avoid them.
"You are feeling much better than when you came down, are you not, Mr
Ames?" she said softly.
"Ever so much. I shall go back quite set up."
Her practised ear detected the slightest suspicion of melancholy in the
tone, while admiring the strength which controlled it.
"What a strange life you must have to lead up there!" she went on; for
he had told her a good deal about himself during the time of their
acquaintanceship.
"Oh yes. It gets monotonous at times. But then, I take it, everything
does."
"But it is such a useful life. And you have helped to open up the
country, too."
"Not I. That is left to other people."
"But you were with the first expedition, and so of course you helped. I
don't wonder you pioneers are proud of the part you took in extending
the Empire. Isn't that the correct newspaper phrase? At any rate, it
sounds something big."
John Ames smiled queerly. He was not especially proud of the extension
of the Empire; he had seen a few things incidental to that process which
had killed within him any such incipient inflation.
"Oh yes; there's a good deal of sound about most of the doings of `the
Empire,' but there--I must not get cynical on that head, because the
said extension is finding me in bread and cheese just now, and I must
endeavour to be `proud of' that."
"You must have great responsibilities holding the position you do. Tell
me, are you able to throw them off while you are away, or do you lie
awake sometimes at night wondering if things are going right?"
"Oh, I try not to bother my head about them. It's of no use taking a
holiday and thinking about `shop' all the while. Besides, the man who
is in my place is all there. He has been at it as long as I have; and
if there is one thing I may say without conceit I do know--in fact, both
of us know--it is the wily native and his little ways."
Ah, John Ames, so you thought, and so thought many others in those
boding days! But at this moment the man who is in your place is
drinking whisky and water and smoking pipes with the Police
sub-inspector in a circular hut on the Sikumbutana, and you are dallying
beneath a radiant moon upon a fir-shaded road at Wynberg, with more than
one lingering glance into the eyes of the sweet-faced, soft-voiced girl
beside you. But one could almost read a leering derisive grin into the
face of the cold moon, for that moon is now looking down upon that which
would give both yourself and `the man in your place' something very
serious to think about and to do. It is looking down upon--let us see
what.