Blue Aloes Part 22

Kitty Drummund was that other close friend of whom mention has already been made. A young married woman, her husband was manager of one of the big compounds belonging to the De Beers Company. A compound is an enormous yard fenced with corrugated iron, inside which dwell several hundreds of natives employed down in the mines. These natives are kept inside the compounds for spells of three to six months, according to contract, and during that time are not allowed to stir out for any purpose whatsoever, except to go underground, the shaft-head being in the enclosure. At the end of their contracts, they are allowed to return to their kraals, after having been rigorously searched to make certain that they have no diamonds on them. Scores of white men are employed in the business of guarding, watching, and searching the natives, and it was over these men and, indirectly, over the natives, also, that Leonard Drummund was manager, his job obliging him and his wife to live far from the fashionable quarter of Kimberley.

Their house, in fact, though outside the compound, was close beside it and within the grounds of the company, being fenced off from the town by a high wire fence. The only entrance into this enclosure was an enormous iron gate through which all friends of the Drummunds or visitors to the compound had to pa.s.s, under the scrutinizing stare of the man on guard, who had also the right to challenge persons as to what business took them into the company's grounds. It was thus that De Beers guarded, and still do guard to this day, the diamond industry from thieves and pirates, and would-be members of the illicit diamond-buying trade.

Through this big gate, on the afternoon after the club ball, Rosanne pa.s.sed unchallenged, as she was in the habit of doing four or five times a week, being well known to all the guards as a friend of Mrs.

Drummund's. Many of the guards were acquaintances of hers, also, for, when they were not in the act of guarding, they were young men about town, qualifying for bigger positions in the company's employ. The young fellow on guard that day had danced with Rosanne the night before, and when she went through she gave him a smile and a friendly nod. He thought what a lovely, proud little face she had, and that that fellow Harlenden would be a lucky man to get her, even if he were a baronet.

Kitty Drummund, among cushions and flowers, behind the green blinds of her veranda, was waiting in a hammock for her friend. For a very happy reason she had been obliged to forego gaieties for a time; but her interest in them remained, and she was dying to hear all about the ball. Rosanne, however, seemed far from being in her usual vein of quips and quirks and bright, ironical sayings about the world in general. Indeed, her conversation was of the most desultory description, and Kitty gleaned little more news of her than she had already found in the morning newspaper. Between detached s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk, the girl fell into long moments of moody silence, and even tea and cigarettes did not unknit her brow or loose her tongue. Kitty, who not only expected to be entertained about the dance but had also excellent reasons for supposing she should hear something very exciting and important about Rosanne herself, was vaguely troubled and disappointed. At last she ventured a gentle feeler.

"What about Sir Denis, Nan?"

Rosanne turned a thoughtful gaze on her, and this time a little of her old mockery glimmered in it.

"He still survives."

"Don't be silly, darling. Len heard this morning at the club--what everyone is saying--_you_ know--how much he is in love with you, and that he's sure to propose soon."

"He proposed last night, Kit. We are engaged."

Kitty sat up with dancing eyes.

"And you've been keeping it back all this time! Oh, Rosanne, how could you? Such a darling man! You are lucky. What a lovely bride you'll make! You must put it off until I can come. Shall you be married in bright colours, as you always said you would? And you'll be Lady Harlenden!"

Kitty was not a sn.o.b, but t.i.tles didn't often come her way and she couldn't help taking a whole-hearted delight in the fact that Rosanne would have one.

"I shall never be Lady Harlenden. I don't mean to marry him, Kit."

"Don't mean to marry him!" Kitty Drummund's lips fell apart and all the dancing excitement went out of her eyes. She sat and stared. At last she said wonderingly but with conviction:

"But you care for him, Rosanne!"

"I know," said the other sombrely. "I love him. I love him, and I can't resist letting him know and taking his love for a little while.

It is so wonderful. Oh, Kit, it is so wonderful! But I can never marry him. I am too wicked."

"Wicked!"

Kitty stared at her. The lovely dark face had become extraordinarily distorted and anguished, and seemed actually to age under Kitty's eyes.

The girl put up her hands and pressed them to her temples.

"Oh, I am so unhappy," she muttered, "and I can't tell any one! Mother and Rosalie don't understand----"

Kitty Drummund was only frivolous on the surface. At core she was sound, a good woman and a loyal friend. She took the girl's hands.

"Tell _me_, dear," she said gravely; "I'll try and help."

But Rosanne shook her head. The agonized, tortured look pa.s.sed slowly from her features, and her face became once more composed, though white as ashes. Her eyes were dull as burnt-out fires.

"I can't," she said heavily. "I can't tell any one; I don't even understand it myself."

She fell into silence again, but presently turned to Kit with a stern look, half commanding, half imploring.

"Swear you'll never tell any one what I've said, Kit--about the engagement or anything else."

Kitty promised solemnly.

"Not even Len," insisted Rosanne.

"Not even Len. But, oh, Nan, I shall pray that it will all come right!"

"Prayers are no good," said Rosanne, with abrupt bitterness. "G.o.d knows I've given them a fair chance!"

"Darling, one never knows when a prayer may be answered, but it _will_ be--sometime."

Rosanne began suddenly to talk of something else, and the strange incident ended; for when Rosanne wished to drop a subject she dropped it, and put her foot on it in such a way that it could not be picked up again. Besides, this was scarcely one on which Kitty, however much she desired to help, could press her friend. So she did the wisest thing she could think of under the circ.u.mstances--made the girl go indoors to the piano and play to her. She knew that Rosanne gave, and was given to, by music in a way that is only possible to deep, inarticulate natures such as possess the musician's gift. One had only to listen to her music, thought Kitty, to know that there were depths in her that no woman would ever fathom, though a man might, some day. Denis Harlenden might--if she would let him.

Listening, as she lay in her hammock, to the wild, strange chords flung from under Rosanne's fingers, and again the plaintive, tender notes that stole out like wounded birds and fluttered away on broken wings to the sunlight, Kitty realized that she was an ear-witness to the interpretation of a soul's pain. Though she had never heard of Jean Paul Richter's plaint to music--"_Thou speakest to me of those things which in all my endless days I have found not, nor shall find_"--something of the torment embodied in those exquisitely bitter words came to her through Rosanne's music, and she was able to realize some t.i.the of what the girl was suffering.

Yet, in the end, Rosanne came out of the drawing-room with the shadows gone from her face and all the old mocking, glancing life back in it.

If she had given of her torment to music, music, whether for good or ill, had restored to her the vivid and delicate power which made up her strangely forceful personality. She was hurriedly drawing on her gloves.

"I've just remembered the Chilvers' dinner-party tonight and must fly.

You know how Molly Chilvers nags if one is late for her dull old banquets."

She kissed Kitty, tucked a rug round her, for the cool of evening was beginning to fall, and went her ways. But as she followed the path that led through the blue-ground heaps, past the iron compound, and down to the big gate, she was thinking that if Molly Chilvers' banquets were dull, the banquet of life was not, and it was the banquet of life she had put her lips to since she knew and loved Denis Harlenden. She was to meet him tonight! That thought had power enough to drive out the little snakes of despair and desolation that had been eating her heart all day. Let the morrows, with their pain of parting, take care of themselves! Today, it was good to be alive! That was her philosophy as she went, light-foot, through the blue-ground heaps.

There was no one about in the big outer enclosure. The monotonous chanting of Kafir songs came over the iron walls of the compound, the murmuring of many voices, clank of pot and pan, smell of fires, and the soft, regular beat of some drumlike native instrument. The day-shift boys had come up from the mines and were preparing their evening meal.

Pa.s.sers-by were never supposed to go near to the walls of the compound, but in one place the path wound within a yard or two of it, and, as it happened, this spot was just out of eye-reach of the towers which stood at the four corners of the compound (unless the guards popped their heads out of the window, which they rarely did). True, the guard at the gate commanded a full view of the spot, but if he had been looking when Rosanne reached it, he would only have seen her stooping to tie up her shoe. He was not looking, however. It was not his custom, even though it might be his duty, to spy on Mrs. Drummund's visitors, especially such a visitor as Miss Ozanne. Therefore, no one saw that, when she had finished tying up her shoe, she leaned forward from the path and slid out her hand to a tiny mound of earth that lay near the compound wall--a little mound that might very well have been pushed up by a mole on the other side--dived her fingers into the earth, and withdrew a small package wrapped in a dirty rag. Then, swiftly she thrust something back into the earth, smoothed the little heap level, rose from tying her shoe, and lightly sauntered on her way. The next time she had occasion to use her handkerchief she slipped the little package into her pocket, and so, empty-handed except for her sunshade, she pa.s.sed through the big gate.

At seven o'clock that evening, the carriage stood before the door of Tiptree House, waiting to convey the Ozanne family to the Chilvers'

dinner-party, and Mrs. Ozanne, in black velvet and old lace, waited in the hall for her two daughters. She sat tapping with her fan upon a little Benares table before her, turning over in her mind, as she had been doing all the afternoon, two sentences from a letter Richard Gardner had sent her. It was an honourable and manly letter, putting forward his feelings for Rosalie and the fact that he had already asked her to be his wife. He had meant, he wrote, to call that afternoon on Mrs. Ozanne and ask verbally for her consent to the engagement, but something had happened to prevent his coming. However, he hoped, all being well, to call instead on the following day and put his position before Mrs. Ozanne.

"_Something has happened!_" "_All being well!_"--those were the phrases that repeated themselves in Sophia Ozanne's mind over and over again, rattling like two peas in an empty drum. It was on account of them that she had refrained from showing Rosalie the note; but her precaution was wasted, for the girl had also received a letter from her lover, and, curiously enough, it contained the two sentences which were so vividly present in Mrs. Ozanne's consciousness. Rosalie had repeated them to her mother at tea-time, and in the quiet drawing-room, as the two women sat looking at each other with apprehensive eyes across the teacups, the seemingly innocent words sounded strangely pregnant of trouble.

Perhaps that was why Rosalie looked less pretty than usual as she came in and joined her mother. Her white satin gown gave her a ghostly air, and the forget-me-not eyes had faint pink rims to them that were unbecoming. The mother had barely time to make these mental observations when Rosanne entered. To their surprise, she was still in her afternoon gown and hat.

"I'm not going to the Chilvers' tonight," she said rapidly. "I've already sent Molly a message, but please make her my further excuses, mother."

"But, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Ozanne reproachfully, "you'll spoil her party! I think you ought to make an effort, even if you are late."

"Oh, no, mother; I can't. Besides, it was silly of her to give a party the night after a ball, when everyone is f.a.gged out." She looked the picture of glowing health as she said it--more like some bright wild mountain-flower than a girl.

"I'm quite sure you are not so tired as either Rosalie or myself,"

pursued her mother warmly, "and I think that at least you might have let me know of your decision earlier."

"Yes, mother; I suppose I might, though I don't quite know what difference it would have made. I beg your pardon, anyway. But I don't see why you go, either, if you are tired. Rosalie looks dead beat."

She was looking at her sister in an oddly tender way.

"Nothing wrong, I hope, Rosie?" she asked, in a voice so soft and appealing that Mrs. Ozanne would not have been astonished if the gentle and easily moved Rosalie had responded by pouring out her heart. But, instead, she turned away, biting a trembling lip, and put on her wraps without speaking. Rosanne shrugged her shoulders and went out of the room in her rapid, silent way.