Читать книгу Poppy - Stockley Cynthia - Страница 9

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BRAMHAM and Carson sat smoking in the verandah of Sea House. Before them, not two hundred yards away, lay the sea, washing and rippling on the beach under the full of the moon. Behind them, through the open French windows a number of large woolly moths were buzzing in and out, much intrigued by the light that shone through a pink silk lamp-shade, which had been made and presented to the establishment by Mrs. Brookfield, on the occasion of her husband's accession to Bramham's mess for six weeks. The electric-lights had been turned out to keep the room as clear as possible of insects. It was Bramham's house, and they were Bramham's native servants who stepped so gently, removing the dinner-things deftly without clamour, making no sound but the rustle of bare feet on polished boards and an occasional softly-spoken Zulu word.

Bramham's household included no woman, but there was no better-appointed one in Natal. Having laid bare the gleaming oak dining-table, one of the boys solemnly spread down its centre a strip of silver embroidery, while another placed two silver bowls of roses at each end, and removed the lamp with the pink shade to a side table. Afterwards the ice-bucket was replenished and fresh glasses placed near the spirit-tantalus.

Having performed these duties with the greatest decorum and ceremony, they withdrew silently to the back regions of the house, where their solemnity slipped from them as suddenly as water slips from a Kaffir's skin. They disported themselves amongst the pot-washers and dish cleaners, the cooks and stable-boys, with many a merry snicker and laugh, chattering like magpies, clicking and clacking, and crying "Hah!" over the affairs of the Old Baas (the master of natives is always Old whatever his age) and the various other Baases who sat at Bramham's board with regular irregularity.

Ha! ha! where was Shlalaimbona to-night, they inquired among themselves. It is true that he would sleep here in the house of the Old Baas, as he had now done for many nights, but where did he eat to-night? In the house on the hill, where a white star was hidden by day and by night?

No; the information was forthcoming that he dined to-night at the house of Por-tal—he who was gay always with an angry face and had the wife whose hands could smooth away troubles.

And where, the cook particularly desired to know, was Bechaan? He whom the world called Brookfield—who had slept in the house of Umkoomata for the matter of six weeks now? Where was he to-night? Followed the tale of the return of Mrs. Bechaan, with particulars amazing.

Vetta, Carson's personal servant, gave an imitation of the lady, from which might have been gathered that her chief characteristics were a kangaroo-walk and a face which in contour and complacency resembled a camel's.

In the meantime, Umkoomata and Intandugaza smoked in the verandah, which was like the deck of a yacht, broad and white-planked, and lined with a long row of every kind of easy-chair, a Madeira lounge, and a hammock with Union-Jack cushions.

Carson, with his head far back in a canvas chair and his hands behind it, was smoking a cigar at the mosquitoes, sending them in shrieking swarms to roost in the roof. Incidentally, he was trying to persuade Bramham that the fine weather indicated a three-weeks' trip into Zululand, to get some good shooting.

"I have another three weeks to put in, Charlie, and what is the good of loafing here, at a loose end?" He gave a glance at Bramham seated by him, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, the picture of health and well-being. "And you are looking really seedy. A trip would do you good."

Bramham immediately began to think himself precariously ill.

"I know," said he uneasily; "I feel confoundedly slack. I must take a dose of quinine to-night. A trip would be just the thing to set me up, damn it!" He stared at the moonlit night, his eyes full of a wistfulness that was extraordinarily boyish in a man on the wrong side of forty. He thought of a lovely spot he knew up on the Tugela, where the moon would just be rising over a great Kop, and he seemed to smell the wood fires on the night air——

"But I can't get away. I've got a big case coming on next month, you know." His face changed, the boyishness passed and the business-man reappeared. "Those fellows in Buenos Ayres are trying to do me up for five thousand."

They smoked in silence for a moment or so, then Bramham continued:

"My lawyer, of course, wants to see me almost every day on some point or another. I really couldn't get away at present, Carson. Why not take a run up to the Rand? By the time you are back I'll have those fellows on toast, and then we'll go off for a few weeks."

"No," said Carson discontentedly, "everything is confoundedly dull on the Rand. I was sick of the place when I was there last month."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It is not the same as it was, Charlie. The old crowd has all gone away or gone to bits—Webb is in the Colony; Jack Lowther is mostly engaged (I think) in praying that his wife won't be too much for him when she comes out—she is on the water! The Dales are away. Bill Godley is up Inyanga way. McLeod's finances are in bits, and he's too busy keeping a stiff lip to be sociable. Clewer is now Public Prosecutor and has become a saint. Little Oppy has gone home. Solomon says he has met the Queen of Sheba at last, and expects that to account for his never being in evidence anywhere except in the stage box of the Standard Theatre."

"Oh, damn it! disgusting!" commented Bramham.

"And, anyway, the Rand air always chips the edges off my nerves, Bram. It's too high. Lord knows, I don't feel any too fit now! I believe I have another go of fever coming on."

Bramham looked at him critically and affectionately. "You do get some doses, but I hope you're not in for another, Karri!" he said. "By Jove! When South African fever puts her loving arms round a man she clings as only fever and a woman can."

Bramham's face was clouded, but there was no real bite in his words. He had no quarrel with the clinging arms of women, or of fever. But he blamed these things for the look of bitter discontent and cynicism that lay across the beauty of the fine face beside him. Carson wore in his eyes the look, and round the mouth the marks, of one who has "wearied of every temple he has built"; or, as Bramham's thought expressed itself with no great originality, yet not without point—the look of a man who has got to the core of his apple and finds it rotten.

"It's that look," Bramham told himself, "that gives women an instinct to comfort him; while if they had only let him alone from the first, maybe it wouldn't be there at all! And you can't comfort a man for his soul's bitterness, as though he has the stomach-ache. Besides which, Karri takes to comfort badly; he'd rather get a smack in the teeth any day from someone he can hit back!"

Thus Bramham, musing and staring at the sea. In spite of its marred beauty, Carson's face seemed to him finer than that of any man he had ever known—and he knew most men of any consequence in South Africa. Meanwhile Carson, giving him another glance, wondered what kept him quiet.

"Thinking of some woman, I suppose!"

Presently Bramham did turn his mind to his own affairs.

"I want your advice about something, Karri."

"Fire away, Bram; let's hear all about her."

At this Bramham, for reasons of his own, became slightly annoyed.

"Don't be an ass, Carson."

"Don't be a rake-hell, Bram. You know quite well you are always at some apron-string."

Indignation dried up Bramham's eloquence.

Carson mocked him further.

"Why don't you lay the 'deadly doing' down, before it lays you out?"

"Take your own excellent advice, my dear fellow. Or give it to Abinger; perhaps he needs it," said Bramham.

"Poor old Abinger! I don't think it would be of much use to him. He scarcely does much 'roving by the light of the moon' these days."

"Good Lord, no! the less moon the better in his case!" said Bramham grimly. "Where the deuce has he been all these years, Karri?"

Carson shrugged.

"Not much doubt about where he has been! He could give us some vivid inside information about the slow-fires that consume."

They smoked a while in silence. Later, Bramham said:

"Whatever Carmen Braganza found to do, she did it well! She told me that it had only taken her six months to learn to dance as she did—and you know how she danced! And, I suppose, if she had studied her man for a hundred years, instead of three months, she could not have got in a subtler revenge on Abinger—laying waste his looks like that! It's hard to believe what a magnificent specimen he was; and how mad the women were about him! Bah! it was a foreign devil's trick!"

"But she was a foreign devil. That was the point Abinger lost sight of."

"Did you ever hear who the other woman was, Karri?"

"Never. It was an amazing thing that it never leaked out, considering that the whole Rand was nose to trail. But the fact was, I suppose, that no one knew who she was except Abinger and his old housekeeper."

"And Carmencita herself. She swore to me afterwards that she had sprung upon them from behind a curtain in Abinger's room and slashed his face open before the other woman's eyes. Why she kept silence God only knows! More foreign tricks probably."

"The other woman must have felt mighty uncomfortable all the months after, while Carmen stayed on dancing, and everyone was hot to find Abinger and get to the bottom of the mystery. There is no doubt that if he hadn't disappeared so neatly afterwards the police would have found some ground for rooting out the whole scandal for the public benefit, and the other woman's name would have been thrown to the beasts!"

"Perhaps that was what Carmen was waiting for!"

Carson got up to get another cigar and the subject dropped. When he came back Bramham reverted to his own troubles.

"Colonial girls don't interest me at any time," he proclaimed aggrievedly; "especially the adventuress brand. I didn't think that even I was such an idiot as to get tangled up with one."

Carson stared straight before him with a smile at the sea.

"This girl is Brookfield's typewriter—confound him!"

Carson's satirical eyebrows moved, but he said nothing.

Bramham continued:

"A tall girl, with a fine figure and a high colour—but what has that got to do with me?"

"What, indeed?" an ironical echo from the canvas chair.

This irritated Bramham.

"If you think you're going to hear a tale of love you'll be disappointed. Nothing of the sort. It's a matter of highway robbery, if it's anything."

Karri began to laugh.

"Oh, come, Bram! This is not like you!"

Neither was it. If Bramham made alms and oblations on strange altars, he was the last man to talk about it afterwards, or sigh over the stub-end of his cheque-book even with his closest friend. At this time, however, he was too much taken up with his grievances to defend his principles to Carson.

"I don't say the girl isn't good looking," he now interpolated, as one who wishes to be quite fair and square; "and she may be a good girl, for all I know," he added doubtfully.

Carson grinned.

"Any way, I'm quite sure the other girl is straight."

"Great God of War! Are there two?"

"What a fellow you are, Carson!" said Bramham peevishly. "Of course there are two, but the other one is quite different—English, I think; anyway, she's no Colonial. I don't know what to make of it, to tell you the truth, Karri. She's a friend of that Cornell girl and that's against her; yet she looks good——"

"Do you mean that she is unlovely?" asked Carson with a wry smile.

"No, I don't!" emphatically. "But the odd thing is that she didn't strike me at all at first; except as being bright and alive-looking—not like some of the dead ducks you see around these parts sometimes—then suddenly right under my eyes she blossomed out. You never saw anything like it—eyes, hair, feet, hands, everything—perfect; and her voice a melody."

This was the most astonishing tale of highway robbery Carson had ever heard.

"What next?" asked he.

Bramham beat the bowl of his pipe against the balcony rail.

"Cursed if I know what next!" he proclaimed. After a pause he added: "I wish you'd come and help me sift it out, Karri."

Carson shrugged; his face grew a little weary.

"I am not particularly interested in girls, Bram; I'm afraid I couldn't help you much."

Bramham might have made a rude retort, but he didn't. He got up and leaned against a pole of the verandah, facing Carson.

"Well, I should like to have had your opinion, Karri. What with that girl with the saint's eyes, and Brookfield's slippery ways——"

"But where does Brookfield come in?"

Bramham did not answer immediately. He appeared to be turning it over in his mind as to whether he should tell that part of the story at all. Eventually he roused himself to a point of indignation when he had to tell.

"Well, now, look here, Karri—this is the whole thing: About a month ago Brookfield came to my office with a yarn about his typewriter—pretty girl—good girl—knew her business, but fearfully poor, and he hadn't enough work to keep her going—would I give her some of my typing? It meant bread-and-butter to her, etc. Of course, I said 'Right!' But when it came to finding the work for her … well, Milligan, my head man, put it to me that it meant taking away the typewriting from our own man, who can't do anything else, and has a wife and family … and when I thought it over, anyway, I kicked at having a woman about the office. However, as I'd promised Brookfield to do something, I went round to see him about it and met the girl—Miss Cornell. I didn't take to her much; but she's poor, you know, and something had to be done to help her out."

"I don't see what business it was of yours at all."

"Karri, it's everybody's business when a woman's down on her luck—even if she has the shifty eye of Miss Sophie Cornell. All the same, I didn't contemplate having to tip up three hundred pounds, and I feel deuced sore about it."

"Three hundred what?" cried Carson.

"Well, look here, what was I to do?" said Bram sullenly. "Brookie badgered me into promising to do something; then the girl said she had a friend who wanted to come and join her, and if they could only get a little hole of their own they could set up an agency and take in work. Presently Brookie heard that some people called Lumsden were going to leave, and wanting to sell up their cottage—offered to sell the whole bag of tricks as it stood for three hundred, and Brookie said he would stand in for half if I would for the other half. I wasn't prepared to plank down one-fifty by any means, but the Cornell girl got hold of me and pitched me a long story about her friend, an English girl, who had got left in Kimberley by some people she was governessing for … also, she was so full of gratitude about all our plans for them, that before I knew where I was I had promised. Well, Brookie asked me to arrange the thing quietly and take the house over from the Lumsdens in my name, as he didn't want to appear in the matter, because Mrs. Lumsden's sister at the Cape is a great friend of his wife's and he was afraid it might get to her ears. So I paid Lumsden one-fifty down on the nail, and the rest was to be paid in a month, and Miss Cornell settled in and the other girl turned up from Kimberley, and they've made the place all snug and seem as happy as sandboys. In fact, everything was going all right until this afternoon, when Brookie looms up with a face as long as a horse's, and says he's not prepared to pay the other one-fifty."

"The little blackguard!"

"Exactly. Just what I said to him. He said: 'Not at all!' Declared he hadn't let me in for anything. … I could get three hundred pounds any day of the week for Lumsden's place. … Just as if I could, or would, turn those two poor girls out now they're so happy! So, of course, I've just got to tip up the rest of the money and look pleasant … and, after all, you know, Karri, why should I? … They're nice little women, and all that, and I'd gladly have done something, but three hundred! … I've troubles of my own, by Jove! … My wife doesn't live on Quaker Oats and barley water, by any means."

"And then there's the pleasure of knowing you've been rooked. I never heard of such a piece of barefaced roguery in my life."

"Well, what could I do? He said his wife was coming back unexpectedly and he couldn't raise the money."

"You're three hundred different kinds of fool, Bram, if you let him rook you like that."

"He's been too clever for me," grumbled Bramham, and shut his mouth on his pipe.

"H'm! Mind the girl's not too clever for you too."

A plaintive expression came into Bramham's face, mingled with irritation; he took his pipe out again.

"My dear Karri, don't I tell you that I have nothing to do with the girl, or she with me? I was sorry for her and helped her out of a hole, and there the matter ends. I don't really regret the money—because of that other girl—but as you know, I am not a millionaire, and three hundred is three hundred. What annoys me is that I should have been such a fool——"

"Why did you pay? I should have refused."

"Oh no, you wouldn't, because the women would have had to get out. No, that would never have done."

"Well," said Carson, getting up and walking down the long verandah. "It's just as well that Mrs. Brookfield has come back. I wouldn't live in the house with Brookfield after this." He went indoors and began to negotiate a whiskey-and-soda.

"Oh, come, I say, Karri!" Bramham got up and came and leaned in the doorway, one leg in the room and one in the verandah. "This isn't your affair, you know. Don't you get your back up about it. I've really no right to have told you; but you understand that I've been a good deal annoyed, and it's been a relief to speak of it. Of course, if Brookie had been here I should have gone into his room and blazed away at him after dinner and got rid of it that way. As it is, I feel better and there's no harm done. By Jove! what a glorious moon! Let's go for a tramp before we turn in."

"Right!"

They fortified. Later, without hats, they tramped off along the shining sands silvered by the light of a shimmering moon gazing at herself in the sea.

Brookfield's wife having returned, he came no more to Sea House. But he hailed Carson blithely at the Club next day.

"What do you say to a drink, Karri?"

"I don't want a drink," said Carson shortly.

"Why not?"

"Don't ask me why not. I don't want one, that's all."

"O God! look here! Now, damn it, why not?"

Brookfield was as easily infuriated as Carson.

On this occasion Carson stayed cool.

"Because I don't like you—if you must have it."

Brookfield at once became calm; he prepared to argue out the matter.

"Karri," he began plaintively, "I want to tell you one thing. I like you and Charlie Bramham better than anyone in this rotten country, but there's no one who can annoy me more than you can——"

Carson yawned, got up, and walked out of the room.