Blue Aloes Part 20

"How do you feel, old man?"

"That you, d.i.c.k?" Druro stooped down and felt for Toby once more. "I feel inclined to run out into the street and throw my hat into the air, and yell out that I'll fight any one, play poker against any one, and match my girl and my dog against all comers."

"Indeed! Then I'll leave you, for you're certainly suffering from a dangerous swagger in the blood."

Tryon's smile had more than a tinge of sadness in it as he turned to go. This action of his was one of those that smell sweet and blossom in the dust, but, as yet, he was too near it to savour much more than its bitterness. The path is narrow and the gate is straight for those who serve faithfully at Love's high altar. As he went from the room, he looked with tender eyes at the flower-like girl who had come in with him and stood now with smiling lips and eyes full of tears looking at the man and the dog.

"You ought to give him a lecture, Gay. It isn't good for a man to be so puffed up with pride."

"Gay!" said Druro, standing up and letting Toby down with a rush.

"Yes, Lundi. d.i.c.k fetched me. I had to come and tell you how glad----"

She slid a hand into his, and he drew her into his arms and began to kiss her with those slow, still-lipped kisses that have all the meaning of life and love behind them.

Toby, having trotted out into the garden, now returned with a large stone which he had culled as one might gather a bouquet of flowers to present upon a triumphant occasion.

Rosanne Ozanne

PART I

Although the Ozannes kept an hotel in Kimberley, they were not of the cla.s.s usually a.s.sociated with hotel-running in rough mining-towns. It was merely that, on their arrival in the diamond fields, they had accepted such work as came to their hands, in a place where people like Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit were washing blue ground for diamonds in their own claims, and other men, afterward to become world-famous millionaires, were standing behind counters bartering with natives or serving drinks to miners.

John Ozanne, the honest but not brilliant son of an English clergyman, did not disdain to serve behind his own bar, either, when his barman was sick, and his wife, in servantless days, turned to in the hotel kitchen and cooked the meals, though such work was far from her taste and had not been included in her upbringing as a country doctor's daughter. In fact, the pair of them were of the stuff from which good colonials are made, and they deserved the luck that gradually came to them.

In time, the little hotel grew into a large and flourishing concern.

John Ozanne was seen no more in his bar, and his wife retired into the privacy of her own wing of the building, though her capable hand was still felt in the hotel management. It was at this period that the little twin daughters were born to them, adding a fresh note of sweetness to the harmony that existed between the devoted and prosperous couple.

They were bonny, healthy children, and very pretty, though not at all alike--little Rosanne being very dusky, while Rosalie was fair as a lily. All went well with them until about a year after their birth, when Rosanne fell ill of a wasting sickness as inexplicable as it was deadly. Without rhyme or reason that doctors or mother could lay finger on, the little mite just grew thinner and more peevish day by day, and visibly faded under their eyes. Every imaginable thing was tried without result, and, at last, the doctors grown glum and the mother despairing were obliged to admit themselves beaten by the mysterious sickness.

Late one afternoon, Mrs. Ozanne, sitting in her bedroom, realized that the end was near. The child lay on her lap, a mere bundle of skin and bone, green in colour and scarcely breathing. The doctor had just left with a sad shake of his head and the conclusive words:

"Only a matter of an hour or so, Mrs. Ozanne. Try and bear up. You have the other little one left."

But what mother's heart could ever comfort its pain for the loss of one loved child by thinking of those that are left? Heavy tears fell down Mrs. Ozanne's cheek on to the small, wasted form. Her trouble seemed the more poignant in that she had to bear it alone, for her husband was away on a trip to the old country. She herself was sick, worn to a shadow from long nursing and watching. But even now there was no effort, physical or mental, that she would not have made to save the little life that had just been condemned. Her painful brooding was broken by the sound of a soft and languorous voice.

"Baby very sick, missis?"

The mother looked up and saw, in the doorway, the new cook who had been with them about a week, and of whom she knew little save that the woman was a Malay and named Rachel Bangat. There was nothing strange in her coming to the mistress's room to offer sympathy. In a South African household the servants take a vivid interest in all that goes on.

"Yes," said the mother, dully. The woman crept nearer and looked down on the little face with its deathly green shadows.

"Baby going to die, missis," she said.

Mrs. Ozanne bowed her head. There was silence then. The mother, blind with tears, thought the woman had gone as quietly as she came, but presently the voice spoke again, almost caressingly.

"Missis sell baby to me for a farthing; baby not die."

The mother gave a jump, then dashed the tears from her eyes and stared at the speaker. In the dusky shadows of the doorway the woman, in her white turban and black-and-gold shawl, seemed suddenly to have a.s.sumed a fateful air. Yet she was an ordinary enough looking Malay, of stout, even course, build, with a broad, high cheek-boned face that wore the grave expression of her race. It was only her dark eyes, full of a sinister melancholy, that differed from any eyes Mrs. Ozanne had ever seen, making her shiver and clutch the baby to her breast.

"Go away out of here!" she said violently, and the woman went, without a word. But within half an hour the languorous voice was whispering once more from the shadow of the doorway.

"Missis sell baby to me for a farthing; baby get well."

The mother, crouching over the baby, straining her ears for its faltering heart-beats, had no words. In a sort of numb terror she waved the woman off. It was no more than fifteen minutes later that the Malay came again; yet it seemed to Mrs. Ozanne that she waited hours with cracking ear-drums to hear once more the terms of the strange bargain. This time, the words differed slightly.

"Missis sell baby to me for two years; baby belong all to me; missis no touch, no speak." In the dark palm she proffered lay a farthing.

"Take it quick, missis; baby dying."

Sophia Ozanne cast one anguished glance at the face of her child, then gave it up, clutched the farthing and fell fainting to the floor.

An hour later, other servants came to relate that the baby was still alive and its breathing more regular. In another hour, they reported it sleeping peacefully. The heart-wrung mother, still weak and quivering from her collapse, crept through the hotel and came faltering to the kitchen threshold, but dared not enter. Near the fire, on a rough bed formed of two chairs and a folded blanket, the child lay sleeping. Even from the door she could see that its colour was better and the green shadows gone. The atmosphere of the kitchen was gently warm. Rachel Bangat, with her back to the door, was busy at the table cutting up vegetables. Without turning round, she softly addressed the mother.

"You keep away from here. If you not remember baby my baby for two years, something happen!"

That was all. But under the languor of the voice lay a dagger-like menace that struck to the mother's heart.

"Oh, I'll keep the bargain," she whispered fervently. "Only--be kind to my child, won't you?"

"Malays always kind to children," said Rachel Bangat impa.s.sively, and continued peeling vegetables.

It was true. All Malay women have a pa.s.sion for children, and consider themselves afflicted if they have never borne a child. Illegitimate and unwanted babies will always find a home open to them in the Malay quarter of any South African town. The mother, comforted in some sort by the knowledge, stole away--and kept away.

Within two weeks the child was sitting up playing with its toes.

Within a month it was toddling about the kitchen, though the little sister did not walk until some weeks later. The story got about Kimberley, much as Mrs. Ozanne tried to keep it secret. For one thing, the child's extraordinary recovery could not be hidden The doctor's amazement was not less than that of the friends who had watched the progress of the child's sickness and awaited its fatal termination.

These, having come to condole, stayed to gape at the news that Rosanne was better and down in the kitchen with the cook. Later, Mrs. Ozanne's nurse appeared regularly in the Public Gardens with only one baby, where once she had perambulated two. Little Rosanne was never seen, and, indeed, never left the back premises of the hotel except on Sunday afternoons, when Rachel Bangat arrayed her in gaudy colours and took her away to the Malay Location. The child's health, instead of suffering, seemed to thrive under this treatment, and she was twice the size of her twin sister. Mrs. Ozanne had means of knowing, too, that, though Rosanne gambolled round in the dust like a little animal all day, she was well washed at night and put to sleep in a clean bed.

That was some comfort to the poor mother in her wretchedness. She knew that Kimberley tongues were wagging busily and that, thanks to the servants, the story had leaked out and was public property. There were not wanting mothers to condemn her for what they variously termed her foolishness, ignorant supersit.i.tion, and heartlessness. But there were others who sympathized, saying that she had done well in a bad situation to trust to the healing gift some Malays are known to possess together with many other strange powers for good and evil. The doctor himself, after seeing little Rosanne with a pink flush in her cheeks, had said to her mother:

"It's a mystery to me--in fact, something very like a miracle. But, as it turns out, you did quite right to let the woman have the child. I should certainly advise you to leave it with her for a time."

Even if he had not so advised and had there been no sympathizers, in the face of all opposition Mrs. Ozanne would have stuck to her bargain.

She knew not what dread fear for her child's safety lay shuddering in the depths of her heart, but this she knew: that nothing could make her defy that fear by breaking bond with Rachel Bangat.

Even her husband's anger, when he returned from England, could not make her contemplate such a step. She had written and told him all about the matter from beginning to end, describing the gamut of emotions through which she had pa.s.sed--anxiety, suffering, terror, and dreadful relief; and he had sympathized and seemed to understand, even applauding her action since the sequel appeared so successful.

But, apparently, he had never fully realized the main fact of the bargain until he returned to find that, while one little daughter was dainty and sweet under a nursemaid's care, the other, dressed in the gaudy bandanas and bangles of a Malay child, gambolled in the back yard or crawled in the kitchen among potato peelings and pumpkin pips.

First aghast, then furious, he brooded over the thing, held back by his terrified wife from making a move. Then, at the end of three days, he broke loose.

"It's an outrage!" he averred, and stamped to the back regions with his wife hanging to his arm trying to stay him. In the kitchen no sign of Rachel Bangat, but the child was sitting in a small, rough-deal sugar-box, which served for waste and sc.r.a.ps, using it as a go-cart.

Amidst the debris of vegetable and fruit peelings, she sat gurgling and banging with a chunk of pumpkin, while the other chubby hand held a half-eaten apple. John Ozanne caught her up.

"Leave her, John; for G.o.d's sake, leave her!" pleaded his wife, white-faced. At her words a sound came from the scullery, and the cook bounded into the doorway and stood looking with a dark eye.

"You take my baby?" she asked. Perhaps it was the gentleness of her tone that made John Ozanne stop to explain that it was not fitting for an Englishman's child to be dragged up in a kitchen, and that the thing could not go on any longer.

"I quite understand that you've been very good, my woman, and I shall see that you are well re----"