Читать книгу The Claw - Stockley Cynthia - Страница 8

“Originality, like beauty, is a fatal gift.”

Once more I was alone in the coach with my driver, moving onwards towards my destination—Fort Salisbury. In an hour or two I should reach Fort George, which was only a day or so from my journey’s end. My new driver, also a Cape boy, was a big, honest-looking fellow named Hendricks, one of the most trusted men in the coach service, and possessing no traits in common with the last man, except a vocabulary and an affection for “cold tea.” This man had been waiting at the other side of the river with fresh mules and another cart the morning after my adventurous night on the banks of the Umzingwani. The river had been still too full to cross by cart, so a wire apparatus for slinging mails and passengers from one bank to another had been brought into requisition. My new friend and the driver (grown curiously meek and submissive after I know not what threats and imprecations flung at him in an unknown tongue when he emerged from his fastness into the light of day) then engaged together in furthering a nerve-racking business of which I was to be the chief victim. First the mails were taken out and divided into lots weighing about 130 pounds, then each lot was placed in a sort of canvas bucket and slung across the broad sweeping stream on a piece of wire about the thickness of a clothes-line. When all the mails were over, and my luggage, I thought my turn had come and advanced with what I hoped was a nonchalant air (though my knees were trembling under me) to my fate. But the blue-eyed man was already in the bucket and whizzing across the stream. Half-way over the wire sagged hideously, and the sack touched the water. I closed my eyes with a sick feeling, and when I opened them again it was to see him just starting to recross. As he jumped from the bucket on my side of the river once more, I realised that he had been trying the wire for me. Then my nonchalance was not all assumed, as I took my turn in the horrible contrivance, for what had carried him would surely bear me safely. All the same, it was sickening to feel the slither of the bag on the wire, to see the grey-yellow water shining beneath me smooth and waveless as a mighty torrent of cod-liver oil, to experience the sag in midstream and the extra jerk of the wire to overcome it. I confess that at that moment I was not captain of my soul. I was not captain of anything, even the canvas bag! I should have given up the ghost if I had not known that a strong brown hand was on the wire, and blue keen eyes watching every movement. I think it was the most effarouchant of all my experiences, and I was still rather limp when he, having crossed once more, came to me standing by the new post-cart. He held out his hand.

“But what are you going to do?” I asked in surprise.

“Going back across the river,” said he. “I have just come over to say good-bye.”

“Are you not coming on too?”

“Not just yet. First I have a little business to transact on the other side. Later, I shall take my horse and swim a drift I know of about three miles lower down.”

I stared at him in astonishment. What business could he possibly have on the other side of the river, unless it was to skin the lion? Then I suddenly remembered his threatening words about the driver the night before, and the man’s meek mien that morning.

“I hope you are not going to beat the driver,” I said quickly.

“Good-bye,” said he, still holding out his hand.

It naturally annoyed me to have my remarks ignored in that way. I looked at him coldly.

“You will please not hurt the man on my account,” I said stiffly.

“Then I must hurt him on my own,” he calmly replied. “These men have to be taught their duty to white ladies.”

It vexed me curiously to think that he should so resent having been left alone with me all night that he must needs punish the driver for it.

“I hate brutality,” I said. “The thought of one man hitting another makes me feel sick. I think you are very vindictive.”

“I am sorry,” said he, but there was not the faintest trace of sorrow anywhere about him; in fact, he was smiling me hardily in the eyes and I saw that he had every intention of beating the man in spite of my wishes. I turned away from him to hide the vexation that surged through me, and began to arrange my rugs in the cart, but when I had finished he was still there, and with something further to remark.

“Miss Saurin, I hope you will pardon me for saying that it would be unwise of you to let any one know that your last night’s vigil included my society.”

That was really too much! I stared at him haughtily, utterly taken aback by such a remark and its inference. But he met my eyes quite unabashed. It occurred to me at the moment that he had probably never been abashed in his life, and the idea did not please me.

“I’m afraid I do not quite understand you,” I said at last in a frozen voice, “but if it is that you do not wish me to boast of having made your acquaintance—I can assure you that you need have no fear.”

Even his hardened pelt was pierced at last, though he tried to hide the fact under a sardonic grin that did not become him in the least. He threw back his rag of black hair—a sign of battle I was beginning to recognise.

“Hardly that. I was merely proffering a little friendly advice, but I remember now that you do not take kindly to advice—or you would not be here.” He grinned again, and I flushed with anger. After the terrors of the past night to fling the advice of people like Elizabet von Stohl into my teeth!

“I believe myself perfectly capable of minding my own affairs,” I said. “Further, I very much resent your inference that people would dare to talk scandal about me.”

“Evidently you do not know people as well as I do.” I merely looked over his head. “Certainly you will allow that I know my own reputation better.”

There was an opening for a dart, and I flung one with all my might.

“That is a matter that does not interest me. I do not even know your name, and probably never shall.”

But do you think that crushed him? No! “Oh, you will hear it,” he said with his careless smile, “‘blown back upon the breeze of fame,’ perhaps—of a kind. In any case we are bound to meet again.”

“Oh, will it be necessary?” I said, driven to open rudeness by his imperturbability, which I considered very much like insolence. “Will it really be necessary if I thank you now for—for the services you have been so extremely kind as to render me?” His withers remained unwrung. “You cannot escape meeting even your open enemies in this country. And it will indeed be necessary to me, even if I thank you now for the most wonderful night of my life.”

Without waiting for any newly-barbed darts I might or might not have had ready, he swiftly departed, leaving one last hardy blue smile in my eyes. A moment later he was slithering across the river on the screeching, wriggling wire.

We had left the bare, bleak kops and tall strange trees of Bechuanaland far behind now, and had crossed the last of its wild and fearful rivers. Everywhere about us stretched level country, which gave a curious impression of the sea, for the thick, hay-like grass, bleached almost to whiteness and as high as a man’s waist, swayed perpetually like pale waves. Even when the land seems a heated brazen bowl and the upper air is faint and heavy with breathlessness the veldt grass has some hidden air, some “wind from a lost country,” flitting amongst it making it sway and gently whisper.

Patches of trees grew against the horizon, but they were short and scrubby and in the nature of “bush,” though occasionally one was to be seen by itself, sprayed like an ostrich feather upon the skyline. Others, of a singularly gnarled squat type, sent all their branches up to a certain height and then flattened them out and wove them together so that the top of the tree presented the appearance of a strong, but rather stubbly, spring-mattress.

Far away on the edge of the landscape, never seeming to come nearer or recede farther, was the usual line of amethyst hills. Nearer hills were saffron coloured, and some turning pale pink in the evening light. Everywhere the eye was feasted with colour. Sard-green bushes stretched branches like candelabra high above the pale grass, and from each branch sprouted forth flowers that were like leaping scarlet and yellow flames. Creepers that had great black-pupilled crimson eyes hung from trees; and purple clematis, tangled with “old man’s beard” and some waxen white flower that gave forth an odour like opopanax, dripped and clung from huge rocks that, standing alone, looked as though they had jerked themselves loose from some mighty mountain of the moon, and dropped abruptly into the silence and solitude of this wild place. Sometimes an enormous boulder with a massive flat top would be balanced on a single narrow point, showing like a miniature Table Mountain set amongst seas of swaying grass. I imagined it would be very pleasant to sit on one of them, high above the dust and the unfragrant odour of the mules, but the rocky sides looked steep and inaccessible; and my fate was still to swaggle wearily across the landscape.

I was so tired that even the glorious hues of sunset could not comfort my soul. I drank them in, it is true, but I would rather at that time have had a cup of tea. My skin was parched with heat and dust, and I was wearied to death of being bumped and banged and sitting crumpled up in a ball.

The driver had put back the hood of the cart so that we might get what air was going, but when suddenly some large, drops of rain began to fall on me I felt, like Job, that my sorrows were too many.

“Driver!” I cried, “you don’t mean to tell me that it is now going to rain!”

“Ach! That’s nixney,” he replied. “We’ll be in Fort George before ten minutes. See the lights? Vacht till I wake them up.”

He produced the post-horn, and I hastily stopped my ears, but that did not prevent me from hearing the series of frightful blares that he gave forth. The noise cheered the mules, and they took heart of grace and threw themselves into a last desperate run. The road became smoother and the barking of dogs could be heard. I slipped on my coat and tied the ends of my veil under my chin into a big enough bow to hide behind, for I had learnt with diminishing enthusiasm what it meant to be an occupant of the mail-coach, arriving in a small township in the African wilds. I well knew that every man, woman, and dog in the place would be there to meet and examine me with curiosity. I rather liked it at first, when I could still contrive to be fresh and uncrumpled after a day amongst the mail-bags. But after a fortnight in one gown, my face decorated with tan and mosquito bites, and absolutely a crack in my best lip (the top one, of course, though the other one is charming, too) I naturally did not feel ardent about meeting a lot of people. I held a hasty consultation with the driver between his yells at the mules.

“You say there is a good hotel here, Hendricks?”

“Yah, Miss... there’s the Queen’s... and Swears’s Hotel... Mr Swears is a very good Baas... keeps a very nice bar, and a good brand of dop.”

Upon this warm recommendation of the man with the profane name I instantly decided to go to the Queen’s, and ordered him to drive me there as soon as we got into the town. But he argued that he must go to the post-office and discharge the mails, so then I knew there was no hope for me. The only thing to do was to bless Heaven for such small mercies as chiffon-veiling, darkness, and a drizzle of hot rain that might keep the curious away. But, regardless of such trifles, there was the expectant crowd arranged before the post-office. Dimly I descried about fifty people, most of them men, as usual, but I could hear women’s voices and laughter. I tried to hide behind the mail-bags, but Hendricks began to seize them and fling them forth with a splendid sang-froid into the road. Suddenly I heard my name spoken in a woman’s voice—a very languid, weary voice.

“Where is your passenger, Hendricks—Miss Saurin? Didn’t she come?”

I knew then it was no use hiding any longer. Dick had evidently been kind enough to ask some one to meet me. Bother his kindness! I leaned out, swathed in chiffon, and said more sweetly than I felt:

“I am Miss Saurin.”

A woman mounted on the cart step and peered in at me, and to my astonishment I recognised my sister-in-law.

“Judy!” I cried in astonishment.

“Oh Deirdre! how could you come? Dick has been almost out of his mind with worry about you, wiring to me all day long for news. What makes you think you will be amused up here?”

This was not the kind of welcome I had expected after travelling five or six thousand miles to make a visit!

“I thought you lived in Salisbury,” I said rather flatly.

“So we do. But several of us came down here for a change of air, and now the Company won’t let us go back because of the threatened trouble with Lobengula.”

“Is Dick all right?”

“Oh, quite; but he couldn’t get away. I’ll tell you all about it presently. Are you going to get down here, or let Hendricks drive you to my hut?”

“Oh, do you live in a hut, Judy? How delightful! I’m longing to live in one. No, I’d rather not get down here. You direct the driver where to go.”

She dropped from the step, and I heard her talking in her languid voice to the people all round and giving directions to the driver, who was still slinging mail-bags and handing out packages to people who all peered in and tried to get glimpses of me. There was an enormous amount of chatter and laughing, and a man, presumably the postmaster, was making a terrible scene with Hendricks because a mail-bag was missing. But Hendricks was impervious to insult. He merely replied:

“I drive Zeederberg’s mules, don’t I? Well! What you asking me about the scarlet mail-bag for? Allemagte!”

A stream of wicked words flowed eloquently from his lips, English and Dutch all mixed up together and sounding like successive explosions of bombshells. However, there was some one in the crowd who did not approve of Hendricks’s vocabulary at all:

“Stop that, Hendricks. What do you mean?” a voice demanded.

Hendricks was instantly silent, and having at last emptied his cart of all but me and my luggage, he grabbed the reins sullenly and drove off muttering to himself:

“I drive Zeederberg’s mules, don’t I?” with some phrases appended which startled even the mules. Judy had told him to drive straight to her hut, but he pulled up first at Swears’s and got a drink of soup in a glass; at least he called it a “soopie,” though the aroma that reached me was not of soup at all, but the same old black-bottle, cold-tea aroma that I had known all the way up, and that would for ever be associated in my mind with South African scenery.

Judy’s hut was made of mud and thatch, like the rest of those I had seen in all the other townships, only to my disappointment it was not round like a beehive, but low and long—rather like a thatched barn with a verandah to it. But the front door stood open and I could see into a sitting-room that looked homelike and cosy under the rays of a rose-red lamp.

Judy came out at once, and three natives appeared behind her, eyeing me curiously and shyly.

“The boys will bring in your things, dear. How tired you must be! Do come in. I have ordered something for you to eat at once, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and Mrs Brand and Miss Cleeve and Mrs Valetta have all come to welcome you, too. They’re all Salisburyites.”

“How sweet of them,” I said crossly. I thought they might very well have postponed their welcome until the next day. Neither did they look particularly ardent as Judy introduced them. They touched hands languorously and sank back into their chairs, fanning themselves with palm-leaf fans and gazing piercingly at me. I blessed the god of chiffons once more and retired into the dimmest corner I could find. It was quite a big room, pretty and odd, and had been furnished and arranged (as I afterwards learned) by the Native Commissioner for his wife who was coming from England very shortly. He had lent it in the meanwhile to Judy and the lady I had last been introduced to—Mrs Valetta. All the panoply of native warfare was displayed upon the walls: shields, knives, assegais, head-plumes, and bracelets; besides much-coloured bead-work, snuff-boxes, and curious gourds. The chairs were covered with beautiful fur rugs, called karrosses, and lion and wild-cat skins lay upon the floor.

I longed and prayed that Judy would take me away at once to bed, or, failing that, would let me at least go and remove one of my many coats of dust, but she pushed me into a chair, saying:

“Here is your tray, dear. Now do take off your veil and eat something.”

I was obliged to do as she asked with as much grace as I could summon: but the dormant cat which is in every woman began to wake up in me and sharpen its claws; for all round about me in the room I began to hear the soft and gentle purring of other felines, and in eyes that raked my sun-flushed face and disarranged hair (grey eyes and brown, Persian blue and an odd shade of green) I recognised the same expression I had often seen in the eyes of our big tortoise-shell cat, Elaine, when she was stalking a bird in the garden.

There was antagonism in the air. As I sat amongst the kaffir curios before an amazing tea-tray I felt it. For some reason these women who had come to welcome me resented my advent and were maliciously inclined towards me. I am peculiarly sensitive to the mental atmosphere and I felt it. Even Judy was not really friendly. She had changed very much since I had last seen her. A peevish look hovered round her mouth and all her brightness and dash seemed to have been swallowed up in a great languor.

Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, a little, soft kitten of a woman with striped grey eyes and the softest, whitest paws in the world, peached out and gave me the first scratch.

“Your complexion is spoiled for ever, Miss Saurin. When any one with your peculiar shade of mahogany-coloured hair gets so badly sunburnt as that the skin never recovers. I am awfully sorry for you.” She looked perfectly delighted.

“And your nose will always be subject to sun-blisters after this. Wretched, isn’t it?” Miss Cleeve said this.

I stared at them both, in surprise and indignation. My hair is not mahogany-coloured at all, but exactly like a mass of crushed wallflowers, and I am extremely fond of my nose, which is small and pale and distinguished. It may at that time have been faintly sunburnt, but certainly there was no slightest sign of a blister on it. Miss Cleeve herself had one of those wide-nostrilled noses that are called by their owners artistic, but which I consider degenerate.

“Oh, every one loses their good looks in this desolate place,” said Judy. “It is a truly awful country, isn’t it, Constance?”

Constance was Mrs Brand, a plump, tan-coloured woman with a silent manner and a leathery skin. She had so far given no sign of life, but she now made a graceful though brief contribution to the conversation.

“Rotten!”

She then beat a spot of dust off her skirt with a riding-crop she held in her hand, stuck out her boots and stared at them. I observed that they were riding-boots of the kind that finish somewhere near the throat, and I thought how very hot and uncomfortable they must be for evening wear. She was evidently eccentric, for my eye mechanically travelling upwards made the further discovery that she was dressed in a riding-habit. Certainly it fitted her as though it had been painted on her. But what an odd garment in which to make an evening call!

It is quite simple for plump women to have well-fitting clothes. All that is necessary is to have the things made tight enough—the plumpness does the rest. But I have noticed that a silent manner nearly always accompanies that kind of good figure. Women who have it do not seem to have any desire to talk, and when they do it is rather crossly—almost as if they had indigestion. They are also very fond of sitting down.

It is the graceful, curvy woman who has a bad time at her dressmaker’s, being fitted and fitted and fitted. Personally, I did not own a rag that hadn’t cost me hours of weary standing and having pins stuck in me before a mirror.

The behabited lady had transformed the glances of her sulky eyes from her boots to me with such a disagreeable expression in them that I couldn’t help thinking how pleasant it would be to tell her these things. In the meantime, Miss Cleeve was speaking again.

“I can’t think what anyone wants up here,” she said, with an air of the utmost ennui. I looked at her keenly, for I had heard her name on my journey up. At that time girls were not plentiful in Mashonaland; in fact, Miss Cleeve had so far enjoyed the distinction of being the only one in the country. People had hinted to me that she would not regard my arrival with ardour, and I couldn’t imagine why. Personally, I am fond of other girls, and think them ever so much nicer than married women, who get most frightfully tiresome with their stupid airs of mystery and superiority. Just as though any one couldn’t be married if they wanted to! I think it requires far more cleverness in a charming girl to keep unmarried.

Annabel Cleeve had been described to me as “not exactly pretty but extremely fascinating”; and it was further said of her that she could marry almost any man in the country if she wanted to. But as I said before I didn’t think that so wonderfully clever.

Her complexion appeared to be pale, dusky, mysterious, everything that is romantic; but she had her back, quite by accident of course, to the rose-red lamp, so it was rather difficult to tell. Only I have known those romantic lamplight complexions to bear in the daylight an extraordinary resemblance to Indian curry. I couldn’t see her eyes very well, but I afterwards discovered that they were a pretty though rather cold grey. It was a pity that she always kept them half closed, for it gave her a rather blasé air. Like so many chic girls she hadn’t any girlishness at all about her; it seemed to have all been swallowed up in chic. Certainly her hat was very clever.

Mrs Valetta was the only one in the room who had not yet tried her claws on me, the reason evidently being that she was too tired.

She was a wicked-looking woman with weary manners. Even her coat and skirt hung on her as though it was worn out with fatigue, although it was really quite smart. After saying “De do?” to me she had sunk with a Mrs-Pat-Campbellish air into a low chair, and closed her eyes as though hoping it was the last act she need perform on earth. It was she who had the Persian-blue eyes; and die wore a felt hat slouched over them and fastened up at the side with a B.B. Police badge.

Quant-à-moi, I was not at this time at all smart. It is true that my Panama hat had come from Scotts, my grey velvet-corduroy coat and skirt had Lucile: rue de Rivoli in gold letters on its waist belt, and my shoes and stockings bore the stamp of the good Peter Yap. Nevertheless, I was not smart. Africa’s sunshine, dust, mail-bags, winds, rains, grass-ticks, mosquitoes, and mules had done evilly unto me and my clothes, and my appearance had not the original charm and freshness peculiar to it. Wherefore I felt very much out of tune with the world in general, and most particularly with these ladies who scrutinised me with such curiosity and penetration.

If they had shown the smallest scrap of enthusiasm or pleasure it would have been different. But no: there they sat, watchful and grim as man-eaters. With the exception of the leathery-faced one, of whom I afterwards heard that she ate, drank, slept and had her being on horseback, and never wore anything but riding-kit, they were all imperturbably cool and fresh in light dresses, though I thought it curious that no one wore a dinner gown. Perhaps it was because they had not dined, but only “partaken of a meal” like the remarkable one which stood before me on a tray. Judy had begged me to excuse it, saying that dinner had been over for some two hours and the boys had been obliged to scratch up a meal from the ends of the earth for me. It had that appearance. There was a very hard-boiled egg, a box of sardines, a dish of terribly déclassé potatoes, and a cup of tea. Accidentally, there was also a plate of tomatoes, freshly plucked, with a bloom on them like a mist on a ripe plum, and for these I was truly grateful. I cut them into slices and with my bread-and-butter made little sandwiches which assuaged my hunger and thirst at the same time.

The grey-eyed kitten again addressed me:

“Dear Miss Saurin, have you brought any poudre de riz with you? No one here has any thing but Fuller’s Earth, and you know how greasy that makes your nose.”

I had no such knowledge. However, I answered civilly:

“Yes, I have poudre de riz and every kind of thing made by Rimmel and Piver and Guerlain. My sister-in-law wrote me that these things were hard to get here, so I brought bags full.”

An electric wave of enthusiasm passed round the room, and for a moment Judy looked almost rapturous, until I added, “They are all with my luggage, which is coming up by waggon.”

“What!” cried Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. Miss Cleeve bit her lips, and Mrs Valetta, looking wickeder than ever, closed her eyes apparently for ever. Mrs Brand was the only one who remained unmoved, but it was clear that her tanned face and a powder-puff had never made acquaintance. Judy gave a little cold laugh.

“It might have been just as well to stuff a box of poudre de riz in your pocket.”

“Dear Judy, my pockets were stuffed with the necessaries of life—tea, sugar, soap, sometimes even bits of meat; they called it biltong, but it was really nothing more or less than dried meat.”

“Disgusting!” murmured Miss Cleeve. Evidently she had never suffered the exigencies of a coach journey. She must have arrived by balloon. They glanced coldly at my battered dress-cases and hat-boxes which stood piled by the door.

“All packed to the brim with absolute necessities,” I said. “The post-cart regulations allowed one to carry exactly sixty-four pounds. Of course I carried far more, but they charged me eight pounds, six shillings, and fourpence excess. The transport-waggon people promised to have my trunks in Salisbury in four weeks’ time, and I thought if I stayed about six weeks that would give me some fresh gowns to wear here, and an outfit to return in.”

In the smile which greeted my words as I explained this to them I could not but recognise grimness as well as malice. The horsewoman proffered some gloomy information.

“Your things will take six months to get up here—if they ever arrive at all.”

“Why, what is likely to happen to them?”

She shrugged, and spoke in jerks.

“Wet season coming on. Transport drivers take ten times longer than in dry season. Get stuck in mud-holes. Sit for weeks on river banks waiting for floods to go down. Roads sometimes so bad they abandon their loads. Leave them piled up by the roadside for next waggons to bring. Next waggons usually open them and help themselves to what they like best. Kaffirs also come and help themselves. Once when I was travelling with my husband amongst the kaffir kraals in Bechuanaland I came across a native girl wearing a pink satin ball-gown that I had last seen at my dressmaker’s in Kimberley and which had been dispatched by waggon with a lot of other things.”

I could not help wondering who would have looked funnier in the pink satin ball-gown—Mrs Brand or the black girl.

“Yes, and then there is the sad tale of Mrs Marriott,” chimed in Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, gazing at me with her striped eyes. “She came up here to be married, bringing her wedding-gown and a few things with her in the coach, while her trousseau and the other things for the house were sent by waggon in three enormous cases. Well, the coach had an accident crossing a river, and she lost everything she had with her, and arrived here in a grey skirt and a pink print shirt which she was married in. That was six months ago—but if you get up early-enough in the morning you will meet Mrs Marriott doing her shopping before any one is about, still wearing her grey skirt and pink print blouse.”

“Impossible!” I cried, petrified. “Well, there you are! Her three packing cases never arrived, that’s all.”

“But how frightful! Surely she could have been helped out with some kind of wardrobe. Surely you—” I looked from one to another of them.

“Oh, she’s not one of us,” said Judy carelessly. “She’s a Port George woman. We couldn’t very well offer to do anything. Besides, they say she is quite unapproachable. I believe the women here were ready to be friendly, but she rebuffed all advances.”

“She has other troubles, besides lack of a wardrobe,” said Miss Cleeve dryly.

“No one has ever been inside her house even,” said Mrs Skeffington-Smythe. “Very silly of her, I think. In my opinion it always does one good to tell one’s troubles to some one else.”

At this Mrs Valetta gave a dry laugh that drew my attention to her, but she still had her eyes closed.

“Ah, Porkie,” said Miss Cleeve, “we haven’t all your simple, confiding nature.” Porkie, otherwise Mrs Skeffington-Smythe, threw her a glance that was neither simple nor confiding.

“Dear Anna, thank Heaven I am exceptional in having nothing to confide,” she retorted with a sort of perky significance.

How tired I felt of them all, and how disappointed! They were full of petty malice and empty bitterness and were making me just the same. I already felt a blight on the joy that Africa had waked in me. As day by day I had sped across the wide, rolling plains and rivers, in the generous sunshine, I had seemed to feel my soul expand and be set free from the littlenesses of life. Now here, right up in the heart of the wide continent where I had dreamed of finding simple-hearted people living happy, sincere lives—here were the petty things of life once more—empty malice, small talk, and aching hearts caused by a lack of poudre de riz! And not a sign of Lobengula and his six wives!

I finished my tomato sandwiches and sighed for my disillusionment. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe spoke me kindly:

“My poor child! you must be terribly warm in your heavy coat. Why don’t you take it off?”

“Yes, I think I really must,” I said, glad of a reason to rise and depart. “I am so very tired, Judy. I hope you will forgive me if I ask to go to bed at once.”

“Oh, of course,” she said, and they all chorused “Of course,” and began to put on their wraps to go. “It was horrid of us to come in so soon,” they said, “but we simply had to welcome you. It is sweet having some one new; it is so sinfully dull up here. Of course, knowing that you had arrived so recently from home, we couldn’t resist coming straight away. Do forgive us. Goodnight. Do rest. You look positively haggard with fatigue.”

That was the last poisoned arrow they flung at me. But I received it heroically, for I observed that Judy and Mrs Valetta, who still remained seated, had discarded their languor and weariness for a moment and were sharing a malicious smile. I should have liked to take down one of the assegais from the wall to them, but I had to content myself with saying dryly:

“It is really too charming of you all to welcome me so warmly!”

Mrs Valetta continued to smile in her sleep, but Judy resumed her languor like a wrap as the door closed on the others.

“Ah! we all live in each others’ houses up here—and know each others’ secrets. You will get used to this happy state of things if you mean to stay long, Deirdre.”

This last somewhat enquiringly, I thought; but I had no intention of issuing a statement at that stage. I made no response, only nodded good-night to Mrs Valetta and followed Judy to my room.

While she was lighting candles on the dressing-table she said:

“Nina Skeffington-Smythe was simply dying for you to take off your coat, so that she might see what kind of figure you have, and was dreadfully disappointed when you didn’t respond to her invitation.”

I stared at my sister-in-law reflectively, thinking how she had changed, and what bad luck it was to have to stay here amongst all these unfriendly women instead of being able to go right into the wild, deep heart of Africa. For the first time in my life I regretted not being a man. I even regretted my lions that were hyenas!

“Are we likely to be here long?” I asked abruptly.

“Heaven knows! I have begged Colonel Blow, the Magistrate, to let you and me go on to Salisbury to-morrow in the coach, but he won’t. He says that low we are here we must stay until the trouble with Lobengula is all over. You know, of course, that they are sending an expedition against him. Two columns are starting as soon as they have all the horses they want, and all the men from here are going to join them. I feel sure that Dick will go with the Salisbury Column if I don’t get back in time to stop him.”

“But you surely won’t try to stop him, Judy? Poor old boy! Fighting is his profession, after all, and how he will love to get back to it. Just imagine how you would if you were a man. I know I should.”

“That’s all very well, Deirdre, but Dick might get killed. And it’s so uncomfortable here, too,” she continued. “Mrs Valetta, and I, and now you, all stuffed together in this tiny house not big enough for one.” Her tone was frankly resentful.

“I’m awfully sorry, Judy. Of course, if I had known how uncomfortable I should make you I would not have come. But I had no idea until I was nearly here that this war business was so far advanced.”

“Oh, they have been making preparations for some time, but very quietly, so as not to give the Matabele the advantage of knowing our plans. But the time is close at hand now. Mr Rhodes is up in Salisbury, and Dr Jim is backwards and forwards all the time between here and Victoria and Charter, and the men everywhere are as excited as they can be over the chance of war. They are only waiting for a last consignment of horses, then they’ll go, and we wretched women will be left behind to be shut up in what they call a laager.”

“Even that might be interesting if there were not such a lot of cross, catty women about,” I thought, and was indiscreet enough to say something of the kind. Judy immediately fell upon me with a dagger.

“I always think it such a pity when girls don’t like other women,” she said, in a stuffy little voice. “It seems to me there is something lacking in a nature like that.”

“I do like other women, Judy, but I don’t think those who were here to-night liked me much. They made me feel like a newly arrived favourite in a harem.”

It was rather a rude thing to say, but really they had been very annoying, and Judy as much as any of them. She answered me in an extremely bored voice.

“You mustn’t fall into the mistake that women are jealous of you simply because they take an interest in your appearance, dear.”

“Oh, I don’t,” I said wearily. “I am quite used to having an interest taken in my appearance.”

This annoyed her very much, so she pretended not to hear, and continued:

“It would be rather absurd if you did, here, for all the Salisbury women are by way of being good looking, and really, dear, you are not looking your best. Of course, I know you must be very tired.”

Tired! After a journey of fourteen days and nights and adventures enough to turn my hair white! After being nearly drowned in rivers and nearly eaten by lions, and getting blisters on my heels and mosquito bites on my hands, and grass-ticks all over me, and being left alone on the veldt all night with tigers and hyenas! Tired!

I thought of all my sufferings and my weariness, my ruined complexion, the sunburn on my nose and the blister on my heel, and I could openly and frankly have howled aloud. But I saw that the expression on Judy’s face was neither of sympathy nor of sorrow. By an effort I controlled myself, and began to take my coat and hat and veil and things off. As I could see no pegs anywhere I hung them up on the floor, and as calmly as possible but very firmly I said:

“Do, please, let me go to bed.”

“Certainly, dear.”

How I wished she wouldn’t “dear” me in that insincere and meaningless way.