Blue Aloes Part 38

"He is a good fellow, and I do not care to give him pain--unless you force me to."

He searched her face keenly, but found no trace there of anything except a courteous interest in his conversation. She did not mean him to guess how much Vereker Sarle's happiness meant to her.

"Anything else?" she dared him.

"Well, of course I should like to know where the real Lady Diana is,"

he said carelessly. That gave her a bad moment. Mercifully, the waiter created a diversion by knocking a coffee-cup over as he removed the tray, and Sarle, returning, had some news for Kenna of a mutual friend's success in some political campaign. This gave her a short s.p.a.ce in which to recover. But she was badly shaken, and wondered desperately how she was going to get through the rest of the evening if Kenna clung. They sat talking in a desultory fashion, each restlessly watching the others. There was a clatter of conversation about them, and in the adjoining drawing-room a piano and violins had begun to play. The air was warm and heavy. For some reason April could not fathom the French windows had been closed, and there was a swishing, seething sound outside, as though the sea was rushing in tides through the garden. She felt curiously unstrung. It was not only the nervous effect of having these two men so intent upon her every word and movement, but there was something extraordinarily disturbing in the atmospheric conditions that made the palms of her hands ache and her scalp p.r.i.c.kle as from a thousand tiny thorns.

"I don't think I can bear this place much longer," she said suddenly, even to herself unexpectedly. "Wouldn't it be cooler out where we were sitting this afternoon?"

"I think so," said Sarle briskly. "Besides I want to show you the garden." He rose, but Kenna rose too.

"My dear fellow," he expostulated gently, "don't you realize there is a south-easter blowing? We can't subject Lady Di to the curse of the Cape tonight. It always affects new-comers most disagreeably. In fact, I think she is suffering from it already."

"Is that what is making me p.r.i.c.kle all over and feel as though I want to commit murder?" she inquired, with rather a tremulous smile. "What is this new African horror?"

"Only our Cape 'mistral.'" Sarle looked at her anxiously. "It's blowing a bit hard in the trees outside, but----"

"I thought that was the sea. If it's only the wind I don't mind." She rose, half hesitating. "I love wind."

"I think it would be very unwise of you to go," said Kenna quietly.

Sarle thought him infernally interfering, though he heard nothing in the words but friendly counsel. To April the remark contained a threat, and she gave way with as good a grace as she might, holding out her hand to say good-night to them.

"Perhaps I had better postpone acquaintance with your curse as long as possible." The words were for Kenna, her smile for Sarle.

"I will see you to the lift," the latter said. Kenna could hardly offer to come too, but as it was only just across the lounge to the hall, and within range of his eye, perhaps he thought it did not matter. He could not know that Sarle, sauntering with a careless air beside her, was saying very softly and only for her ear:

"It is quite early. If instead of taking the lift again you came down the main staircase, you would find a door almost opposite, leading into the garden. I think you promised?"

His voice was very pleading. She did not answer, nor even turn his way. But once safely in the lift, out of the range of Kenna's gimlet eyes, over the shoulders of the stunted brown lift-boy she let her glance rest in his, and so told him that he would have his wish.

There must have been some witchery in that south-east wind. She knew it was madness to go, that she was only entangling herself more closely in a mesh which could not be unravelled for many days. Yet within half an hour she was out there in the darkness, with the wind tearing at her hair and flickering her cloak about her like a silken sail. When she closed the door behind her and went forward it was like plunging into an unknown purple pool, full of dark objects swaying and swimming beside her in the fleeting darkness. Tendrils of flowering plants caught at her with twining fingers. A heavily scented waxen flower, pallid as the face of a lost soul, stooped and kissed her from a balcony as she pa.s.sed. The young trees were like slim girls bowing to each other with fantastic grace; the big trees stood together "terrible as an army with banners," raging furiously in an uproar like the banging of a thousand breakers upon a brazen beach. The sky was full of wrack, with a s.n.a.t.c.h of moon flying across it, and a scattering of lost stars.

She felt more alive and vital than ever in her life before. The clamour of the storm seemed to be in her veins as well as in her ears.

She was glad with a wild, exultant happiness of which she had never dreamed, when she found herself s.n.a.t.c.hed by strong arms and held close, close. The maelstrom whirled about her, but she was clasped safe in a sheltered place. Sarle kissed her with long, silent kisses. There was no need for words, their lips told the tale to each other. It seemed to her that her nature expanded into the vastness of the sea and the wind and the stars, and became part with them. . . . But all the while she was conscious of being just a slight, trembling girl held close against a man's heart--the right man, and the right heart! She had come across the sea to find him, and Africa had given them to each other. She lost count of time and place and terror. The burden of her trouble mercifully left her. She remembered only that she and Vereker Sarle loved each other and were here alone together in this wind-wracked wilderness of perfumed darkness and mystery. Her ears and mind were closed to everything but his whispering words:

"My darling, my darling . . . I have waited for you all my life . . .

women have been nothing to me because I knew you were somewhere in the world. I have crossed the veld and the seas a thousand times looking for you, and have found you at last! I will never let you go."

He kissed her throat and her eyes. More than ever her whiteness shone in the gloom with the luminousness of a pearl.

"Your beauty makes me tremble," he whispered in her hair. "Darling, say that you love me and will give yourself to me for ever."

"I love you, Vereker. . . ."

"Call me Kerry."

"I love you, Kerry. I give myself to you."

She rejoiced in her beauty, because it was a precious gift to him.

"You don't know what you mean to me, Diana--a star dropped out of heaven; the pure air of the veld I love; white lilies growing on a mountain top. Thank G.o.d you are all these things without any darkness in you anywhere. It is the crown of a man's life to love a woman like you."

"Let me go, Kerry," she said. "It is late. I must go."

He did not notice that her voice was broken with tears, for the wind swept her words up to the trees and the boiling wrack of clouds beyond.

But he knew that it was time for her to go. That wild pool of love and wind and stars was too sweet and dangerous a place for lovers to linger in. He wrapped her cloak about her and sheltered her back to the door from which she had emerged.

"Tomorrow morning . . . I shall be waiting for you in the lounge. We will settle then how soon you will give yourself to me--it must be very soon, darling. I am forty-four, and can't wait a moment."

The light from the door fell on his face and showed it gay as a boy's.

Her face was hidden, or he must have, recognized the misery stamped upon it.

In the morning light it seemed to her that the finger of snow on her hair had broadened a little. It was five o'clock of an ice-green dawn, with the mountain like an ashen wraith outside, and the wind still raging. South-easters last for three days, Kenna had said, and she shuddered to look at that unseen power whipping the leaves from the trees, beating down the beauty of the garden, tearing the mists from the mountain's side, only to pile them higher upon the summit. It took courage to go out in that wind, but it took greater courage to stay and meet Vereker Sarle. So she was dressed and hatted, with a small suit-case in her hand, and starting on a journey to the Paarl. She did not know what "the Paarl" was, nor where! Her first introduction to that strange name was at midnight, when she found it on one of the letters addressed to Diana. All the other letters were of no consequence, but the Paarl letter seemed to solve for her the pressing and immediate problem of how to escape from the terror of exposure by Kenna before the loved eyes of Sarle. It was from the parson's daughter, that eccentric painter who lived somewhere on the veld, and whose home was to have been Diana's destination. "Clive Connal" she signed herself, and said she hoped Diana would take the morning train, as it was the coolest one to travel by, and arrive at the Paarl by 8.30, where a mule-cart would be waiting to take her to Ho-la-le-la.[1]

So April meant to follow instructions and trust to luck to see her through. Whatever happened, it could not be more terrible than to read disgust and disillusion in Vereker Sarle's eyes.

She stole down the stairs like a shadow, and found a sleepy clerk in the booking-office. It was simple to explain to him that she was going away for a few days, but wished her room kept on, and everything left as it was. She would send a wire to say at what date she would be returning. There was no difficulty about the bill, for, fortunately, Bellew had supplied her with plenty of money, saying it was Diana's, and that she would have wished it to be used. It was too early for a taxi to be got, even by telephoning, but the porter caught a stray rickshaw that chanced to be pa.s.sing, and April had her first experience of flying downhill behind a muscular black man with feathers in his hair and bangles on his feet. Before she reached the station her veil and hair were in streamers, and her scalp was almost torn from her head, but the _serpent jaune_ which had gnawed her vitals all night had ceased from troubling, and joy of living glowed in her once more. She could not help it; there was something in the air and the wind and the blaze of Africa that made for life, and thrust out despair. It swept away misery as the south-easter had swept the skies, leaving them blue and clear as a flawless turquoise.

She caught her train, and in fate's good hour reached the Paarl, which proved to be a town of one long street, decked with stately oaks, and mellowed old Dutch homes. The mule-cart was waiting for her, and on the driver's seat a woman with the austere features and blue, pure, visionary eyes of Galahad, the stainless knight. But she was dressed in breeches and a slouch hat, a cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, and she beckoned April gladsomely with an immense cowthong whip.

"Come on! I was afraid you'd shirk the early train, but I see you're the stuff. Hop in!"

April did her best, but hopping into a Cape cart that has both steps missing takes some practice. The mules did most of the hopping; she scrambled, climbed, sprawled, and sprained herself all over before she reached the vacant seat, already enc.u.mbered with many parcels. With a blithe crack of the whip and a string of strange words flung like a challenge at her mules, Miss Connal got under way.

The farm was six miles off, but ere they had gone two April knew the painter as well as if they had been twin sisters. Clive Connal hadn't a secret or a shilling she would not share with the whole world. She used the vocabulary of a horse-dealer and the slang of a schoolboy, but her mind was as fragrant as a field that the Lord hath blessed, and her heart was the heart of a child. It was shameful to deceive such a creature, and April's nature revolted from the act. Before they reached the farm she had confessed her ident.i.ty--explaining how the change had come about, and why it was important to go on with the deception. Too much explanation was not necessary with a person of Clive's wide understanding. No vagaries of behaviour seemed to shock or astonish her large human soul. She merely, during the relation of Diana's tragedy, muttered once or twice to herself:

"The poor thing! Oh! the poor thing!" and looked at April as though she too were "a poor thing," instead of a fraud and an adventuress to be abjured and cast out. For the first time since her mother's death the girl felt herself sheltering in the warmth of womanly sympathy, and the comfort of it was very sweet.

"Don't worry too much," said Clive cheerfully.

"_Tout s'arrange_: that's my motto. Everything comes straight if you leave it alone."

A cheerful motto indeed, and one seeming to fit well with the picture of the old farmhouse lying in the morning sunshine. Low-roofed and white-walled, it was tucked under the shelter of the Qua-Qua mountains, with apricot orchards stretching away on either side. Six immense oaks spread their untrimmed branches above the high stoep, and before the house, where patches of yellow-green gra.s.s grew ragged as a vagabond's hair, a Kerry cow was pegged out and half a dozen black babies disported themselves amongst the acorns. Dozens of old paraffin tins stained with rust, and sawed-off barrels bulging asunder lined the edge of the stoep, all filled with geraniums, begonias, cacti, red lilies, and feathery bamboos. Every plant had a flower, and every flower was a brilliant, vital thing. Other decorations were a chopping-block, an oak chest, blistered and curled by the sun, several wooden beds with the bedding rolled up on them, and two women, who smiled a welcome.

These were Ghostie, and _belle_ Helene--the only names April ever knew them by.

"Welcome to the home for derelicts, broken china, and old crocks," they said. "You may think you are none of these things, but there must be something the matter with you or you wouldn't be here."

"Too true!" thought April, but smilingly answered, "There doesn't seem much wrong with you!"

"Oh, there is, though. Ghostie is a journalist, recovering from having the soul trampled out of her by Johannesburg Jews. I am a singer with a sore throat and a chronic pain in my right kidney that I am trying to wash away with the juice of Clive's apricots and the milk from Clive's cows."

"Nuff sed," interposed Clive. "Let's think about some grub. I've brought back sausages for breakfast."

Meekie, the mother of the black babies, had fetched in the parcels from the cart, and already there was a fizzling sound in the kitchen. The rest of the household proudly conducted April to the guest-chamber.

There was nothing in it except a packing-case and a bed, but the walls were covered by n.o.ble studies of mountains, Clive pointed out some large holes in the floor, warning April not to get her foot twisted in them.

"I don't think there are any snakes here," she said carelessly. "There is an old cobra under the dining-room floor, and we often hear her hissing to herself, but she never does any harm."