A Veldt Official Part 4

"Ah! You are not very long back from England?"

"About a year. But--how on earth did you know that! Did Charlie tell you?"

"Not a word. I deduced it. There was a discontented ring about your tone, and colonial girls always take on discontent after a visit to England, whereas men are glad to get back."

"Now, what can you possibly know about colonial girls, Mr Musgrave, you, who are only just out from England yourself?"

He smiles slightly, and does not attempt to answer this question.

"How old are you?" he says at length.

Mona favours him with an astonished stare, and colours a little. She does not know whether to laugh or to be angry, to answer or to snub him; and in fact, such a question from a perfect stranger would amply justify the latter course. But she only says--

"Guess."

"Twenty-four."

"Oh, Charlie told you, or somebody did."

"Upon my honour they didn't. Am I right?"

"Yes."

"H'm! A discontented age. Everybody is discontented at twenty-four.

But you--well, at whatever age, you always will be."

"You are not a flattering prophet, I doubt if you are a true one."

"Time will show."

"You seem great at drawing deductions and wonderfully confident in their accuracy."

"Perhaps. Human beings are like books; some are made to be read, while others are made apparently to serve no purpose whatever. But all _can_ be read."

"And I?"

"A very open page. As, for instance, at this moment, the subject of your thoughts is my unworthy self. You are speculating how at my time of life I come to take up a berth usually occupied by raw youngsters, and mystifying yourself over my record in general; though, womanlike, you are going to deny it."

"No I am not. There! Womanlike, I am going to do the unexpected, and prove you no true prophet as to the latter statement. That is exactly what I was thinking."

"Hallo, Musgrave! Is Mona beginning to give you beans already?" says Suffield, who re-enters, having returned from his farm duties. "Grace, where are you?" he proceeds to shout. "Hurry up! It's feeding time."

And then they all adjourn to another room, where the table is laid, and the party is augmented by a brace of tow-headed youngsters, of eleven and twelve respectively, who devote their energies to making themselves a nuisance all round, as is the manner of their kind if allowed to run wild, finishing up with a bear-fight among themselves on the floor, after which they are packed off to bed--a process effected, like the traditional Scotch editor's grasp of the joke, with difficulty.

"And now, Mr Musgrave," says the latter's hostess, when quiet is restored, "you haven't told me yet. How do you like--"

"Stop there, Grace," cries Mona. "Mr Musgrave has just been bewailing his fate, in that he is condemned to answer that question the same number of times there are inhabitants of Doppersdorp, that is to say, about four hundred. And now you are the four hundred and first. In fact, he now answers before the question is asked, from sheer force of habit."

"Ha, ha!" laughs Suffield. "Now you mention it, the thing must become a first-cla.s.s bore, especially as you're expected to answer every time that you think it a paradise, on pain of making a lifelong enemy. Now, for my part, I'd rather hang myself than have to live in Doppersdorp.

As a deadly lively, utterly insignificant hole, there can be few to beat it among our most one-horse townships. And the best of the joke is that its inhabitants think it about as important as London."

"Your verdict is refreshing, Suffield; nor does it inspire me with wild surprise, unless by reason of its complete novelty," rejoins Roden.

"But, however true, I don't find its adoption for public use warranted upon any ground of expediency."

"Where are you staying, Mr Musgrave?" asks Mona.

"At the Barkly, for the present. I went to it because it was the first I came to, and I felt convinced there was no choice."

"Do they make you comfortable there?"

"H'm! Comfort, like most things in this world, is relative. Some people might discover a high degree of comfort in being stabled in a three-bedded room with a travelling showman, the proud proprietor of a snore which is a cross between a prolonged railway whistle and the discharge of a Gatling; and farther, who is given to anointing a profuse endowment of ruddy locks with cosmetics, nauseous in odour and of sticky consistency, and is not careful to distinguish between his own hair brash and that of his neighbours. Some people, I repeat, might find this state of things fairly comfortable. I can only say that my philosophy does not attain to such heights."

"Rather not," says Suffield. "Jones is a decent fellow in his way, but he's no more fit to run an hotel than I am to repair a church organ.

How do you find his table, Musgrave?"

"I find it simply deplorable. A medley of ancient bones, painted yellow, and aqueous rice, may be _called_ curry, but it const.i.tutes too great an inroad upon one's stock of faith to accept it as such. Again, that delectable dish, termed at The Barkly 'head and feet,' seems to me to consist of the refuse portions of a goat slain the week before last, and when it appears through one door I have to battle with a powerful yearning to disappear through the other. No--I am not more particular than most people, nor do I bear any ill-will towards Jones, but really the catering in a _posada_, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees is sumptuous in comparison with his."

"Yes, it's beastly bad," a.s.sents Suffield. "Every one growls, but then there's no compet.i.tion. The other shop's no better. Why don't you get some quarters of your own, Musgrave--even if you do go on feeding at Jones'? You'd be far more comfortable."

"I have that in contemplation. Is there a moon to-night, by the way, Suffield? I don't want to ride into any _sluits_ or to get 'turned round' in the veldt."

"Moon! You've no use for any moon to-night. You've got to wait till to-morrow for that ride back. You'll be in ample time for court at ten, or earlier if you like. It's only eight miles."

A chorus of protest arising on all hands, Roden allows himself to be persuaded, and they promptly adjourn to pipes, and re-try the case of Gonjana, and agree that that bold robber obtained no more than his full deserts. Then the eventful post-cart journey is brought up, and Grace Suffield says--

"I should never have believed you were only a newly arrived Englishman, Mr Musgrave. Why, you seemed to know your way about on that awful night better than the other man who was with us, and he has never been outside the Colony."

"A 'raw' Englishman is the approved way of putting it, I believe," is the unconcerned reply. "Well, Mrs Suffield, you will hardly find such a thing now. Most of us have done some knocking about the world--I among others."

That is all. No explanation, no experiences volunteered. The natural curiosity of two at least among his hearers is doomed to disappointment.

He does not even say in what part of the said world he has done the knocking about.

Two hours later Mrs Suffield goes to Mona's room for a final gossip.

"Well, dear. You were wondering what he was like! Now, what _is_ he like?" she says.

"Tiresome! Unutterably tiresome!"

"Tiresome!" wonderingly. "Not a bore?"

"Oh no, not that. Only I can't make him out. But--I will. Oh yes, I will."

The speaker has her face half hidden in her splendid hair which she is brushing and otherwise arranging, and consequently does not see a queer look flit swiftly across the face of her friend.

"I told you he wasn't young, and was said to be very reserved," pursues the latter.

"Oh yes. A middle-aged fogey, you said."