Blue Aloes Part 35

"Oh, here, I think, stewardess. It will be much more convenient."

"Of course it will," agreed the good woman. "But, there! how the baggage men do grumble at having to lug up big trunks like yours and Mr. Bellew's!"

"I am very sorry," said April "but I'm afraid I can't help it." She had reflected swiftly that as she and Diana had so many possessions to exchange before packing, it could only be done in the privacy of he cabin. She was very tired after a "white night" all too crowded with the black b.u.t.terflies of unhappy thought, and when she looked at the superscription on the envelope and saw that it was in Diana's writing she sighed. All the worries of the coming day rose up before her like a menacing wall with broken gla.s.s on the top.

"Blow Diana! I wish she were at the bottom of the sea," she said to herself, with the irritability born of a bad night.

Leaning on her elbow, she sipped at the fragrant tea and reflected sorrowfully on what a happy creature she would have been that morning if she had never met Diana Vernilands and entered into the mad plan of exchanging ident.i.ties! What a clear and straight road would have lain before her! . . . with the man whose kiss still burnt the palm of her hand waiting for her at the end of it! But instead--what? She sighed again and tears came into her eyes as she lay back on the pillows and tore open the envelope. Then suddenly her body lying there so soft and delicate in the luxurious berth stiffened with horror. The tears froze in her eyes. The letter at which she was staring was composed of two loose and separate pages, on the first of which was scrawled a couple of brief sentences signed by a name:

"_I cannot bear it any longer. I am going to end my troubles in the sea._

"APRIL POOLE."

Mechanically her clutch relaxed on this terrible first page, and she turned to the second. It was headed: "_absolutely private and confidential, to be destroyed immediately after reading,_" and the words heavily underscored; then came wild phrases meant for April's private eyes alone.

"I am leaving you to face it all. For G.o.d's sake forgive me and keep your promise. Never let any one on the ship or in Africa know the truth. Spare my poor father the agony of having his name dragged in the dust as well as losing his daughter. Do not do anything except under the counsel of _the other person_ on this ship who knows the truth and who will advise you the exact course to take. But do not approach him in any way or speak of this to him until all the misery and excitement of my suicide is over. I have written to him, too, and he will advise you at the right time, but to drag him into this would only ruin his career, and earn my curse for ever. I trust you utterly in all this. Oh, April, do not betray my trust! Do not fail me! I beg and implore you with my last breath to do as I ask. Go on using my name, and money, and everything belonging to me until the moment that _he_ advises you to either write my father the truth or return to England and break it to him personally. If he hears it in any other way it will kill him, and his blood be on your soul as well as mine. I pray, I beseech, I implore you, be faithful to your unhappy friend,

"DIANA."

It took a long time for April's stricken mind to absorb the meaning of it all. Over and over she read the blurred tear-blistered sentences, sometimes weeping, sometimes painfully muttering them aloud to herself.

When she had finished at last, her course was set, her mind made up.

She knew the letter by heart, and sitting up in bed, white as a ghost, she slowly destroyed it into minutest atoms, putting them into a little purse that lay in the rack beside her. Then she rang the bell. To the stewardess who came she said calmly, but with pallid lips:

"If Miss Poole is in her cabin, ask her to come to me."

Then she whipped out of bed, flung on a wrapper, and arranged her hair.

When the woman returned, she knew the answer before it was spoken.

"Miss Poole is not in her cabin. Her bed has not been slept in."

"Ask the Captain to come here."

In a few moments it was all over. The Captain had come and gone again, with the first page of Diana's letter in his hand. The procedure after that was much the same as it had been two nights before, except that the Captain went alone on his search, and the result, with the evidence he held in his hand, was a foregone conclusion from the first. All inquiry terminated in the same answer. No one had set eyes on "Miss Poole" since the previous evening. The last person to speak with her was the stewardess, who, on finding she did not intend going to dinner, had offered to bring her some, but had been refused. The rest was conjecture--a riddle that only the sea, lying as blue and flat and still as the sea in a gaudy oleograph, could answer. The story had flown round the ship like wildfire, and hardly a soul but felt as if he or she had taken part in a murder. Women reproached each other and themselves, and men went sombre-eyed to the smoke-room and ordered drinks that left them still dry-mouthed. The blue and golden day with the perfumes of Africa spicing its breath took on a brazen and arid look. It was as if old Mother Africa had already reached out her brazen hand and dealt a blow, just to remind everyone on the boat that she was there waiting for them, perhaps with a tragedy for each in her Pandora box. The Captain had not let it be known where and with whom Diana's last note had been found. With the remembrance of April's ashen face as she had handed it to him, he wished to spare the girl as much as possible.

As for her, the one clear thought in her mind was that she must obey Diana's last behest and keep silence. It was not hard to do that, for she had no words. Throughout the day, in a kind of mental torpor, she helped the stewardess sort and pack all the costly clothes and possessions which were really Diana's, putting them into the trunks already labelled for a hotel in Cape Town; her own things were locked and sealed up in the abandoned cabin on the lower deck, and she would probably never see them again. She did not attempt to speak to Bellew, though she knew that an interview with him awaited her, for there could be no mistake about his being that _other person_ referred to in Diana's letter. Neither did she see Vereker Sarle. He sent a note during the afternoon, a very sweet and friendly note, hoping that she was not ill, and begging her not to be too upset by the tragedy. And between the lines she read as he meant her to do.

"Why are you hiding from me? Come on deck. I want you."

She wanted him, too. She longed for the comfort of his presence, but did not dare meet him. A greater barrier than ever existed between them. The dead girl stood there with her finger on her lips. The truth could not now be told to Sarle, until, at any rate, it was known to that unhappy old man in England whose head must be bowed in sorrow to the grave. After that, who could tell?

Somehow she felt that all hope of personal happiness with Vereker Sarle was over. It was unfit that so clean-souled and upright a man should be involved in the tangle of lies and deceit and tragedy that she and Diana had between them encompa.s.sed. He would shrink from her when he knew all, of that she felt certain, and it made her shrink in turn to think of it. So she sent only a little formal line in answer to his note, making no reference to the likelihood of seeing him on deck or anywhere else. It looked cold and cruel enough to her, that note, like a little knife she was sending him; but it was a two-edged knife, with which she also wounded herself.

The stewardess brought her tea and toast, and she stayed in her room all day. Only in the cool of the evening, when everyone else was dining, she crept out for a few moments, and leaned upon the ship's rail, drinking in the air and staring at the moody line of land ahead that meant fresh experiences and trouble on the morrow! She was afraid to look at the sea!

No farewell concert took place that night. People whispered together in little groups for a while after dinner, but all the merriment of the last night at sea was lost in the sense of tragedy that hung about the ship. Almost everyone was oppressed by a feeling of guilty responsibility for what had happened. The inherent decency of human nature a.s.serted itself, and each one thought:

"Why did I not give the poor girl a helping hand instead of driving her to desperation?" It was remembered that "Lady Diana" had stood by her, and everyone yearned to absolve their souls by explanation to the person who (to her great regret) bore that rank and t.i.tle. But she had put a barricade of stewardesses between her and them, and was invisible to callers. Some few of the younger and more resilient pa.s.sengers, in an effort to shake off what seemed to them useless gloom, went and asked the Captain to allow the band to play on deck. He consented, stipulating only that there should be no dancing. Of course, no one wanted to dance, but as ships' bands specialize in dance music, the musicians struck at once into a tango, and it happened to be the one Diana had made her own by singing her little French rhyme to it:

"Tout le monde Au salon On y tan-gue, on y tan-gue."

It only needed that. Every mind instantly conjured up the picture of a vivid figure in a frock that gleamed blue as sulphurous flames. A hysterical woman sprang up screaming shrilly, and had to be taken away; a solitary sea gull, its plumage shining with a weird blueness in the electric light, chose this moment to fly low along the deck, crying its wailing cry. That was enough. Another woman began to scream; the music stopped, and there was almost a panic to get away from a spot that seemed haunted. In a little while the first-cla.s.s deck was as deserted as the deck of a derelict, and the ship was wrapped in silence. The personality of the April Fool seemed more imposing in death than it had been in life!

By morning the _Clarendon Castle_ had reached her destined port, and lay snugly berthed in Cape Town docks. April, venturing out at the tip of dawn to get a first glimpse of Africa, found that a great mountain wrapped in a mantle of mist stood in the way. It seemed almost as if by reaching out a hand she could touch the dark sides of it, so close it reared, and so bleak it brooded above her. Yet she knew this to be an illusion of the atmosphere, for between her and the mountain's base lay the streets and little white houses and gardens of Cape Town. It might have been some southern town on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean except for that mountain, which made it unlike any other place in the world. The "Table of the Ma.s.s," the Portuguese named it, and when, as now, silver mists unrolled themselves upon the flat top and streamed in veils down the gaunt sides, they said that the cloth was spread for the Sacred Feast.

April thought of all the great wanderers whose first sight of Africa must inevitably have been the same as hers--this mysterious mountain standing like a grey witch across the path! Drake sighted it from afar in 1580; Diaz was obliged to turn back from it by his mutinying sailors; Livingstone, Stanley, Cecil Rhodes, "Doctor Jim," all the great adventurers, and thousands of lesser ones, had looked upon it, and gone past it, to their sorrow. For if history be true, none can ever come out from behind that brooding witch untouched by sorrow.

They may grow great, they may reap gold or laurels, or their heart's desire; but in the reaping and the gaining their souls will know grey sorrow. A rhyme of her childhood came unsolicited into April's mind:

How many miles to Banbury?

Three score and ten.

Will I be there by candlelight?

Yes, and back again: Only--_mind the old witch by the way_!

She shivered, but the sun burst like a sudden glorious warrior upon the world, dispersing fear, and making her feel as though, after all, everything and everyone was young, and all life decked out in spring array. If only the burden of deceit had not been upon her, how blithe and strong in hope could she have set foot in this new land.

As she turned to go back to her cabin she found Geoffrey Bellew by her side. He appeared a little haggard, and some of his habitual self-a.s.surance was missing. No doubt he had seen Table Mountain on former visits to Africa, yet he looked at it rather than into the eyes of the girl he addressed.

"Will you go to the Mount Nelson Hotel?" he said in a low tone. "I can meet you there, and we will talk matters over."

"When?" she said. Spring went out of her. "Where is the hotel?"

He reflected for a moment.

"Well, perhaps you had better give yourself into my charge. I will see you through the Customs, and drive you up afterwards, and make all arrangements--shall I?"

She consented. It seemed as good a plan as any for avoiding bother, and had the recommendation that it would keep off Vereker Sarle. So, later, when crowds began to surge and heave upon the ship, everyone mad with excitement at meeting their friends, and mountains of luggage barging in every direction, she stayed close by the side of this man she disliked intensely, yet whose smooth ability to deal with men and matters she could not but admire. Obstacles fell down like ninepins before him; stewards ran after him; officials waited upon him; his baggage, the heaviest and most c.u.mbersome on the ship, was the first to go down the gangway, and April's with it. A few hurried farewells, and she found herself seated beside him in an open landau, driving behind a conveyance full of trunks towards the Customs House. A dull pain burned within her at the remembrance of Sarle's face. He had looked from her to Bellew with those steady eyes that saw so much and betrayed so little, merely remarking, as he took the hand she tendered lightly in farewell:

"One doesn't say good-bye in Africa, Lady Diana, only 'So long'--meaning that we may meet again tomorrow, perhaps even today."

He had not even looked after them as they left the ship. Yet April, because she loved him, was aware of his astonishment at this strange and sudden intimacy of hers with Bellew. Still, what was the use of caring? There were worse hurts in store for him, if, indeed, they met again as he predicted. She bit on the bullet and ignored the pain at her heart. Bellew did not waste any small talk on her; that was one comfort. He seemed to be more concerned about his luggage than about her, shouting out to the coloured men to be careful and to remove nothing from the van without his direction. At the Customs House, in fact, all his stuff was left a.s.siduously alone. April's was opened and gone through rapidly by the officials; but the production of his papers and credentials as an attache to the Governor of Zambeke, or some such outlandish place, gave Bellew instant immunity, and no single article of his belongings was unlocked. Within a few moments they were again _en route_ for their hotel.

Their way took them by the main thoroughfare of the town, and April was astonished at the numbers of people flocking on the pavements, filling trams and rickshaws, drinking tea on the overhanging balconies and restaurants. The air was sunny, yet with the fresh bite of the sea in it, and everyone seemed gay and careless. The whole of one side of the wide street was lined by Malays and natives offering flowers for sale.

In front of the Bank a sort of floral bazaar was established, the bright head "dookies," silver bangles, and glowing dark eyes of the vendors making a brave show above the ma.s.sed glory of colour in their baskets. Huge bunches of pink proteas, spiked lilies of every hue, bales of heather and waxen white chinckerichees filled the air with heavy perfume. The sellers came pressing to the pa.s.sing carriages, soliciting custom in the soft clipped speech of the Cape native.

Bellew, for all he was so distrait, had the graceful inspiration to stop and take on a load of colour and perfume, and April for a moment lost count of her troubles in sheer joy of the senses.

"But where do they come from?" she cried. "I have never seen such flowers in the world."

"There _are_ no flowers in the world like those from Table Mountain,"

he said.

"That old bleak beast?" She gazed in astonishment at the grey ma.s.s still hovering above and about them. "She looks as though nothing would grow on her gaunt sides except sharp flints."

Bellew laughed.