Blue Aloes Part 15

"I have not even told you everything about tonight. When you hear what has happened, you won't want to speak to me again." She suddenly took out a little lace handkerchief and began to cry. He stared at her with haggard eyes. "Do you know that I have killed a man tonight?" he said sombrely.

That gave her pause. Her nerves went taut and her face rigid behind the sc.r.a.p of lace. Even _her_ cold soul balked at murder, and her plans of mingled revenge and self-advancement rocked a little. She looked at him direct now, with eyes full of horrified enquiry.

"I did not mean to distress you with the story," he said. "But I struck a man over the card-table, and they say he is dead."

It seemed to her that she caught a sound of relief, even triumph in the statement--almost as though he was glad to have such a reason for stemming the tide of her words, and not taking the clinging hands she put out to him. Her keen mind was on the alert instantly. What was at the bottom of it all? Perhaps the man was not dead. Perhaps this was just a little trick of Druro's to slip the toils he felt closing round his liberty--her toils! Being a trickster herself, she easily suspected trickery in others. Rapidly she turned the thing over in her mind. She had no intention of involving herself with a man who had got to pay the penalty for committing a crime--but nothing simpler for her than to repudiate him if anything so unpleasant should really arise.

On the other hand, in case he was juggling with the truth, she must establish a hold, a bond that, being a man of honour, he would not be able to repudiate. The situation called for the exercise of all the finesse of which she was mistress. She put away her handkerchief and looked at him gravely.

"There must be some dreadful mistake."

He shrugged his shoulders rather wearily.

"I don't think so." His manner inferred, "And I don't much care, either."

"But you must care," she said urgently. "You must fight it, Lundi. If you won't do it for your own sake"--she came a step nearer to him--"I ask you to do it for mine." He was staring moodily into the gloom of the night and the deeper gloom of his own soul. "To make up to me for the humiliation you have put upon me tonight," she said, almost in a whisper, "I think I have a right to claim so much."

That jerked him from his dreams. He looked her straight in the eyes.

"If anything I can say or do will make up to you for that, you will have no need to claim it," he said firmly, and, bowing over her hand, took his leave. People who saw him go thought he looked more haggard than when he came. But this was accounted for when, within the hour, news of the happenings at Glendora sped like wildfire through the town.

Before morning, however, there were certain hopeful tidings to mingle with the bad, and Marice Hading had cause to congratulate herself on her foresight in establishing her bond. Capperne was not dead. And there was hope of saving him. Half his teeth were knocked down his throat; in falling he had struck his head and cut it open; his heart, weakened by dissipation, had all but reached its last beat, and lung complication had set in. But the chances were that, being a worthless, useless life, precious to no one but himself, he would pull through and live to "sharp" another day. The doctors, at any rate, worked like tigers to insure this end. For there was no doubt that, if he died, the consequences must be extremely unpleasant for Druro. It was highly improbable that the latter would pay the penalty with his life, but a verdict of manslaughter against him could scarcely be avoided. He had struck Capperne down after a violent dispute in which the Australian, accused of sharping, had given him the lie, and Capperne's friends, the only witnesses of the fracas, were prepared, if Capperne died, to swear away Druro's life and liberty. As it was, they moved heaven and earth to have him put under arrest--"in case of accidents"--but their efforts were crowned with neither appreciation nor success, and Druro went about much as usual, careless, amusing, and apparently not unduly depressed. Still, it was a dark and doubtful period, and that his future hung precariously in the balance, he was very well aware, and so were his friends.

The only thing noticeably unusual in his habits was a certain avoidance of the Falcon Hotel and the society of womankind; and this, of course, was very well understood. It was natural that a man under a storm-cloud that might burst any moment and blot him out should wish to keep out of the range of women's emotional sympathy. Men's sympathy is of a different calibre. Even when it is a practical, living thing that can be felt and built on, it is often almost cold-bloodedly inarticulate and undemonstrative, which is the only kind of sympathy acceptable to a man in trouble, especially a man of Druro's type, who did not want to discuss the thing at all, but just to take what was coming to him with a stiff lip.

One good result of it all was that now, at last, his mine was getting a little attention. Once more he donned blue overalls and a black face and embroidered his pants with cyanide burns. And Emma Guthrie was content, or as content as Emma Guthrie could be. Rumour now said that crushing would be commenced on the mine in two months' time, and that ten stamps were to be added to the milling-plant already existing.

This looked good for Druro's financial prospects, however gloomy his social ones might be. But he never talked. Emma Guthrie was the man who did all the bucking about the mine and its future. Rumour did the rest handsomely, and it was unanimously accorded that fate would be playing a shady trick indeed on Lundi Druro if, just when his future was painting itself in scarlet and gold with purple splashes, he was to be put out of the game by the death of a waster like Capperne.

On the day, then, that Capperne was at last p.r.o.nounced to be out of the wood, there was almost general rejoicing in w.a.n.kelo. The little township threw its hat up into the air, and everyone burst into bubbles of relief and gaiety. In the club and hotels men valiantly "breasted the bar," vying with each other in the liquid celebration of Druro's triumph and the defeat of the enemy at Glendora, and all the women rushed to tea at the "Falcon" to discuss the news and, incidentally, to see how Mrs. Hading took it, and whether any further developments would now arise with regard to herself and Druro.

As soon as Mrs. Hading realized that Druro meant to absent himself from the felicity of her society during his period of uncertainty, she had thought out a pose for herself and a.s.sumed it like a glove. It was the pose of a woman who withdraws a little from the world to face her sorrows alone--or almost alone. A few admiring friends were admitted into her semi-devotional retreat. Mrs. Hallett was allowed to read to her awhile every day, and Berlie to arrange her flowers. Major Maturin brought her the English papers and any news that was going. A quiet game of bridge was sometimes indulged in, but Marice spent much of her time reading and writing, and a straight-backed chair with a cushion before it and a beautifully bound book of devotions lying on it hinted at deeper things. A certain drooping trick of the eyelids lent her an air of subdued sadness and courage that was attractive. A pose was always dearer to Marice Hading than bread, and this one gave her special pleasure--first, because it was becoming; secondly, because it was a restful way of getting through the hot weather, and, thirdly, because it conveyed to people the idea to which she wished to accustom them--that she and Druro were something to each other. She was no longer to be seen in the lounge. Having successfully impressed Mrs.

Hallett with her sorrowful mien, that lady had placed her sitting-room, the only private one in the hotel, at Marice's disposal, and it was there, surrounded by flowers and books of verse, that she received the few friends she allowed to see her and wrote a daily letter of great charm and veiled tenderness to Druro. He nearly always responded with about three lines, making one note answer three letters, sometimes more. Druro was no fancy letter-writer. He could tell a woman he loved her, fervently enough, no doubt, either on or off paper, if the spirit moved him. But he never told Marice anything except that he was all right, and chirpy, and pretty busy at the mine, and hoped to see her one of these days when the horizon looked a little clearer. Brief and frank as were these missives, she studied them as closely as if they had been written in the hieroglyphics of some unknown language, and had often nearly bitten her underlip through by the time she reached the end of them.

With the growing conviction that Capperne would recover, her letters to Druro grew more intimate and perhaps a shade insistent on his over-sensitiveness in absenting himself for so long from the society of his best friends. It was natural that, when the good news was definitely confirmed, she should expect him to present himself, and perhaps that was why she came down to the lounge that day for tea, instead of having it served in the private sitting-room as usual.

She was looking radiant. The systematic rest-cure, combined with the services of her maid, a finished _ma.s.seuse_, had done wonders for her, and a gown of chiffon shaded like a bunch of pansies and so transparent that most of her could be seen through it successfully crowned her efforts.

Druro felt the old charm of lamp-posts stealing like a delicate, narcotizing perfume over his senses as he took her hand and listened to her soft murmurs of congratulation. After all, it is true that almost any woman can marry any man if she has a few looks, a few brains, and the quality of persistence. Besides, Marice had him safely bonded.

The shrouded figure at the back of his mind that was waiting for some quiet hour in which to discuss the mess he was making of his life would have to be narcotized, too, or denied and driven forth.

Gay Liscannon came in with a riding party of noisy people, who clattered over, clamouring for tea and clapping Druro on the shoulder with blithe smiles. She gave him a friendly hand-clasp and said:

"Glad to see you're all right again, Lundi."

That was the spirit of all their welcomes. No one said openly: "Hooray! You're out of the jaws of the law." But they welcomed him like a long-lost brother turned up from the dead, and immediately began to talk about getting up some kind of "jolly" for him. It must be admitted that Rhodesians are always on the look-out for an excuse for a jolly, but this really seemed a reasonable occasion. They told him he looked gloomy and needed a jolly to cheer him up.

"A picnic is the thing for you," said Berlie Hallett, who loved this form of diversion better, even, than flirting. "Let us give him a picnic in his own district, Selukine."

A thoughtful look crossed Marice Hading's face.

"What about his own mine?" she said. "Can't we come and picnic there, Lundi? I have never seen the Leopard."

The idea was ardently welcomed.

"Yes--the Leopard mine! We'll take our own champagne and baptize the new reef and Lundi's future fortunes. It shall be the great Leopard picnic--the greatest ever!"

It was furthermore suggested that, as there was a moon, it should be a moonlight picnic with a midnight supper at the mine.

Lundi was fain to submit, whether he liked, it or not. He wondered a little what Emma Guthrie would say at having the mine invaded, but personally he did not care a toss. The narcotizing spell had fallen suddenly from him again, and life and his future fortunes looked uninterestingly grey. He became aware of the shrouded figure tapping for attention at the back of his brain. Gay was the cause of it, somehow. He abruptly got up to go, saying he must get back to the mine.

"Emma will want some talking over before he will allow any picnicking around there," he said. "I think I had better go and start on him right away."

"Oh, don't go yet!" they cried, and Marice Hading looked at him chidingly. But he had no heart for their gay arrangements, and took himself off after finally hearing that the date was fixed for two nights later, all cars to be at the "Falcon" at eight o'clock in the evening and the start to be made from there.

Only a legitimate reason would have kept Gay away from a jolly given in Druro's honour. But she expected to have that reason in the indisposition of her father, who had been ailing for some time. She was not sorry, for she felt a shrinking from what the picnic might bring forth, just as she had felt on the night of Mrs. Hading's dance.

However, fate was not inclined to spare her anything that was due to her. Colonel Liscannon was so much better that he could easily be left, and, moreover, an old crony had come in from the country to spend a couple of days with him. So there was no chance of Gay's evasion without a seeming rudeness to Druro. But she was very late in arriving at the "Falcon," where she was to be a pa.s.senger in Tryon's car.

At the last, it was a matter of ordering something at the chemist's for her father and sending off a telegram that detained her, and she did not reach the hotel until nearly a quarter to nine. Long before she got there, she saw that all the cars were gone except one which she easily recognized as Tryon's.

"Dear old d.i.c.k! He is always to be relied on," she said, and had a half-finished thought that she would rather be with him that night than any one, except----

Then she went quickly into the lounge, where, no doubt, he would be waiting, and found him indeed, but sitting around a little table with coffee and liqueurs in the company of Druro and Mrs. Hading, the latter looking none too pleased.

"Ah," said she, with acerbity, as Gay came in, "at last! We were beginning to think you were never coming."

"But why did you wait for me?" inquired Gay, politely bewildered. "I thought d.i.c.k----"

"Some idiot has walked off with my car," explained Druro. "So Tryon is taking us all."

"And we are waiting for petrol as well as you," smiled Tryon; "so sit down." He put a chair for her next to Mrs. Hading, but that lady, after a swift glance into a mirror on the wall, skilfully manoeuvred her seat until she was opposite instead of next to the girl. Gay, in a little white frock of soft mull, with a cascade of lace falling below her long, young throat, resembled a freshly-gathered rose with all the fragrance and dewiness of the garden of Youth upon her. When Marice looked at her, she felt like a Borgia. She would have liked to press a cup of poison to the girl's curved red lips and force her to drink. In that glimpse in the mirror, she had seen that her own face, above a delicate shroudy scarf with long flying ends, rose like some tired hothouse orchid, beautiful still, but fading, paling, pa.s.sing; and she hated Gay's youth and freshness with a poignant hatred that was like the piercing of a stiletto. She wondered why she had been such a fool as to wear that gown of purplish amethystine tulle tonight. It was a colour that made her face look hard and artificially tinted. True, her bare neck and shoulders, which were of a perfection rarely seen outside of an art gallery, showed at their best through the mazy shroudings, and her throat looked as if it had been modelled by some cunning Italian hand and sculptured in creamy alabaster. Her throat, indeed, was Marice Hading's great beauty, and her pride in it the most sinful of all her prides. She spent hours in her locked room ma.s.saging it and smoothing it with soft palms, working snowy creams into it, modelling it with her fine fingers, as though it were of some plastic material other than flesh and blood. She watched for the traces of time on it and fought them with the art and skill of a creature fighting for its life. Indeed, when a woman makes a G.o.d of her beauty, it is her life for which she is fighting in the unequal battle with time.

Night was naturally the time at which this reverenced beauty of hers shone most effectively to the dazzlement of women and the undoing of men. Day was not so kind. The South African sun is ruthless to exposed complexions, and has an unhappy way of showing up the presence of thick pastes and creams which have been worked into contours in danger of becoming salients. So, although Marice never wore a collar, but always had her gowns cut into a deep V both back and front, she invariably shrouded herself with filmy laces and chiffons. She drew these about her now and rose wearily. It seemed to her she had noticed Druro looking at Gay with some strange quality in his glance.

"If we don't make a move, we shall never get there at all," she said sharply.

Everything was going wrong tonight. Here she was stuck with two people whom she detested, after specially planning to make the drive alone with Druro!

"Come along; I expect the car is fixed up by now," said Tryon, and they all moved out. A black porter was patrolling the stoep.

"Has my boy been here with petrol for the car?" asked Tryon.

"Yas, sar."

"And filled it?"

"Yas, sar."

They approached to get in, and a fresh annoyance for Mrs. Hading arose.