Читать книгу Woodsmoke - Francis Brett Young - Страница 13

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That evening, when he was sitting at dinner with the Kilgours, a servant came in with a message. Mrs. Rawley to see him. “Let her wait,” said Mrs. Kilgour. “It’s most inconsiderate. Surely the woman must know that you’re in the middle of a meal like every other civilised person.”

“No, I’ll see her at once,” said Antrim, and left them in a most uncomfortable silence.

He found her in the Kilgours’ formal drawing-room, that seemed to have been transported bodily to Africa from an Irish country house of the last century. She heard him coming and turned to meet him.

“Oh, here you are!” she said.

They were the words in which she might have greeted, a man who was late for an assignation rather than one who had been snatched away from the middle of his dinner to meet her, and they gave Antrim something of a shock. He had been expecting at the least a confession of weakness, at the best an appeal for help. But he got neither. The touching scene, which he had imagined, wouldn’t materialise. Never had Mrs. Rawley appeared more composed than at this moment, nor less dependent on the consolations that he was prepared to offer. She didn’t even seem relieved to see him. He could do nothing more brilliant than ask her to sit down.

“No,” she said. “Let’s stand. Have I dragged you away from your dinner? Of course.... I’m sorry. I wanted to let you know at once that our plans are changed.”

“Changed?” Antrim caught at the word. It meant, he supposed, that for some reason that had its origin in Rawley the trip was off. During the last fortnight he had wished a hundred times that it might be; but when he contemplated the fulfilment of these wishes, he felt as though all purpose had gone out of his life.

“Changed?” he repeated. “I don’t quite know what you mean.”

“No,” she said, “Of course you don’t. It’s rather sudden, I admit. My husband has had another unpleasant experience. He’s very much disturbed. He feels that he can’t stay in this country. We are sorry to upset your plans.”

Sorry, indeed! It was pretty cool to talk like that to a man who had cancelled his passage, changed his plans, let down his friends, and generally made a mess of the leave that he had earned by a couple of years of slogging hard work. For the moment his sense of justice made him angry and anxious to teach these people manners; but in the end his disappointment asserted itself above his anger.

“So the trip’s off?” he said despondently.

“Off? Not at all, if you’re game to go on with it. We can start from another point. As it was we were going to spend most of our time in German territory. Why shouldn’t we start there instead of from Voi?”

The idea bewildered him. His mind was accustomed to processes of routine; it couldn’t adapt itself easily to these dizzy jumps from point to point; and yet, in spite of the bewilderment, it clutched at the least hope of holding to this detestable business.

“But my dear Mrs. Rawley,” he said, “that means scrapping my staff-work and beginning all over again. It will take another week at least, and by that time we shall be out of the country. I’ve got everything settled. I fixed up this morning with a headman, a gunbearer and a cook, and these fellows have been authorised to collect the porters. Probably they’ve done so by now.”

“Yes, that’s a pity,” she admitted. “You’d better stop them collecting porters. The others we can take with us.”

“Where ... when?” He laughed at her. “You’re talking as if by wishing things you could make them happen. You can’t, you know. If you could I should be delighted.”

“You mean that you still want to come?” she asked.

“You needn’t ask me that,” he said, “for you know the answer. Do you think I’m the kind of fellow that backs out of an undertaking?”

“No,” she answered. “But this is your chance. You may not get another.”

He laughed. “Well, you want me to start the job all over again?”

“You must do as you think best. Study your own convenience.”

“Convenience!” That wasn’t exactly the word. “Is this a polite—no, I won’t say that—a convenient way of getting rid of me? I wish you’d tell me that?”

“Of course it isn’t, Captain Antrim.”

“Then, to put it plainly, you still want me to come with you?”

She would not answer. “As a matter of fact,” she said, “it isn’t quite as difficult as you imagine. I’ve been doing a little ‘staff-work’ on my own. There’s a small German steamer lying down at Kilindini. She’s going along the coast: Tanga, Pangani, Bagamoyo, Dar-es-Salaam, and starting to-morrow morning. We have plenty of time to get aboard her. You might collect the people that you’ve engaged as well.”

“But are you sure they’ll take us?”

“I’ve arranged for my husband and myself already. Whether you come with us is entirely your own affair.”

“You’re very anxious to make me responsible?”

“Yes, I am.”

He felt that he could say no more of this. “Your staff-work is a little too rapid for me,” he said. “Where have you decided to disembark?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “and really it doesn’t matter. Anywhere in German East. I’d thought of Pangani. All I want to do is to leave Mombasa. I don’t think the people here would press us to stay, do you? We’re going to leave it in any case.”

For a moment Antrim was silent. It hurt him to think that even now, when she was pushed to an extremity, the woman wouldn’t confide in him. Pride was an admirable thing in its way: but this was not so much pride as secretiveness, and secretiveness in this case amounted to obstruction. It was all very well for her to stand there with her pale, composed face and treat him as if he were a paid servant who had been offered the opportunity of cancelling his contract. These people were under a definite obligation to him, and though he didn’t want to rub it in, he felt that this should be recognised.

“Look here, Mrs. Rawley,” he said, “it’s better that we should understand one another. I don’t pretend to understand your husband; but I think I can understand you if you’ll let me. It’s obvious in any case that we’re in for a difficult time. I’m most awfully anxious to spare your feelings.”

“I know,” she said, “and I appreciate your kindness.”

“Thank you,” he replied. “So far you haven’t shown me that you do.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t show things. I don’t want to. Let it be understood.”

“It shall be,” said Antrim, “and we’ll say no more about it. But I think you owe it to me to tell me why you want to leave Mombasa in such a frantic hurry. Tell me what the trouble is. I don’t ask out of curiosity, but because it will show me how I can help you.”

“It wouldn’t in the least,” she said, “and in any case I can’t. We did not press you to come with us. My husband had made up his mind that you wouldn’t when you came back and said that you would.”

“Yes, that is true,” said Antrim, though he felt that it misrepresented the truth.

“And now,” she said, “if you wish to, you are at liberty to desert us.”

“Desertion? Is it as bad as that?”

“No ... you pick me up so quickly! I mean that you can stay behind. I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep on trying to be intense as if we were mysterious or romantic. We’re not in the least, so it’s no good pretending. Let us leave it at that.”

“But if I refuse to leave it at that?”

“Then you’ll stay behind, I hope. But you won’t refuse.”

“No. You’re quite right. I shan’t,” he said, surveying her seriously, a little hurt by her refusal to accept him in the rôle of knight-errant which had flattered his fancy. He was sore to think that she had misjudged his motives, but shrank from explaining himself for fear of another misjudgment. She had cleverly put him in the wrong, and now, anything that he said would only look like an attempt to establish sentimental relations. That, he told himself, was the last thing he had intended. At this point he caught her eyes. In the dim light of the Kilgours’ drawing-room he couldn’t see the tawny iris. They seemed very large and black, and he felt that they were seeing more than he wished to show of his thoughts.

“Well, what is the arrangement?” he said at last.

“The boat is called the Köln. We shall have to get our things on board this evening. You will have plenty of time to let the men you have engaged know about it. If they won’t come we can find others when we get there.”

“When we get there!” he repeated. “You can say what you like about it, but you are romantic. Safaris aren’t usually arranged like this, you know. If you aren’t romantic, well, you’re capricious.”

“It isn’t caprice,” she told him, “it’s necessity.”

“Very well,” he said, “I’ll meet you on board the Köln. Let me see you to the door.”

“No,” she said, “don’t bother. Go and finish your dinner.”

Without another word she left him.

“Your dinner is cold, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Kilgour when he returned. The reproach was intended not for him but for Mrs. Rawley; but of this wretched woman she couldn’t trust herself to speak. By this time she knew that in any case it was a waste of breath. Antrim could see that she was aflame with curiosity but was too proud to ask him the questions that crowded to her tongue.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” he said, “and I’m afraid I shall have to make a bolt for it when I’ve finished.”

“Oh!” Nothing could have surpassed the expressiveness of this monosyllable.

“We’re leaving to-night.”

“My dear old fellow,” said Kilgour, “don’t talk rot! There’s no train till to-morrow.”

“We’re not going by train,” said Antrim.

“Not going by train!” Mrs. Kilgour exclaimed, as though such a proceeding were a violation of all the laws of God and man. “Then where are you going?”

“God knows,” said Antrim, in perfect honesty.

Mrs. Kilgour stared at him, not wholly convinced that he wasn’t making fun of her. She decided that he was serious.

“Well,” she sighed, “we’ve only one consolation, and that’s the special providence that is supposed to look after fools ... And drunkards,” she added. When she began her sentence she hadn’t suspected that it would present her with such a triumphantly accurate description of the Rawleys’ party. She beamed with satisfaction of having been witty in spite of herself. But Antrim didn’t smile.

“Let’s hope so,” he said, as he hurried on with his dinner.