Poppy Part 17

It's too high. Lord knows, I don't feel any too fit now! I believe I have another go of fever coming on."

Bramham looked at him critically and affectionately. "You _do_ get some doses, but I hope you're not in for another, Karri!" he said. "By Jove!

When South African fever puts her loving arms round a man she clings as only fever and a woman can."

Bramham's face was clouded, but there was no real bite in his words. He had no quarrel with the clinging arms of women, or of fever. But he blamed these things for the look of bitter discontent and cynicism that lay across the beauty of the fine face beside him. Carson wore in his eyes the look, and round the mouth the marks, of one who has "wearied of every temple he has built"; or, as Bramham's thought expressed itself with no great originality, yet not without point--the look of a man who has got to the core of his apple and finds it rotten.

"It's that look," Bramham told himself, "that gives women an instinct to comfort him; while if they had only let him alone from the first, maybe it wouldn't be there at all! And you can't comfort a man for his soul's bitterness, as though he has the stomach-ache. Besides which, Karri takes to comfort badly; he'd rather get a smack in the teeth any day from someone he can hit back!"

Thus Bramham, musing and staring at the sea. In spite of its marred beauty, Carson's face seemed to him finer than that of any man he had ever known--and he knew most men of any consequence in South Africa.

Meanwhile Carson, giving him another glance, wondered what kept him quiet.

"Thinking of some woman, I suppose!"

Presently Bramham did turn his mind to his own affairs.

"I want your advice about something, Karri."

"Fire away, Bram; let's hear all about her."

At this Bramham, for reasons of his own, became slightly annoyed.

"Don't be an a.s.s, Carson."

"Don't be a rake-h.e.l.l, Bram. You know quite well you are always at some ap.r.o.n-string."

Indignation dried up Bramham's eloquence.

Carson mocked him further.

"Why don't you lay the 'deadly doing' down, before it lays you out?"

"Take your own excellent advice, my dear fellow. Or give it to Abinger; perhaps he needs it," said Bramham.

"Poor old Abinger! I don't think it would be of much use to him. He scarcely does much 'roving by the light of the moon' these days."

"Good Lord, no! the less moon the better in his case!" said Bramham grimly. "Where the deuce has he been all these years, Karri?"

Carson shrugged.

"Not much doubt about where he has been! He could give us some vivid inside information about the slow-fires that consume."

They smoked a while in silence. Later, Bramham said:

"Whatever Carmen Braganza found to do, she did it well! She told me that it had only taken her six months to learn to dance as she did--and _you_ know how she danced! And, I suppose, if she had studied her man for a hundred years, instead of three months, she could not have got in a subtler revenge on Abinger--laying waste his looks like that! It's hard to believe what a magnificent specimen he was; and how mad the women were about him! Bah! it was a foreign devil's trick!"

"But she _was_ a foreign devil. That was the point Abinger lost sight of."

"Did you ever hear who the other woman was, Karri?"

"Never. It was an amazing thing that it never leaked out, considering that the whole Rand was nose to trail. But the fact was, I suppose, that no one knew who she was except Abinger and his old housekeeper."

"_And_ Carmencita herself. She swore to me afterwards that she had sprung upon them from behind a curtain in Abinger's room and slashed his face open before the other woman's eyes. Why she kept silence G.o.d only knows! More foreign tricks probably."

"The other woman must have felt mighty uncomfortable all the months after, while Carmen stayed on dancing, and everyone was hot to find Abinger and get to the bottom of the mystery. There is no doubt that if he hadn't disappeared so neatly afterwards the police would have found some ground for rooting out the whole scandal for the public benefit, and the other woman's name would have been thrown to the beasts!"

"Perhaps that was what Carmen was waiting for!"

Carson got up to get another cigar and the subject dropped. When he came back Bramham reverted to his own troubles.

"Colonial girls don't interest me at any time," he proclaimed aggrievedly; "especially the adventuress brand. I didn't think that even I was such an idiot as to get tangled up with one."

Carson stared straight before him with a smile at the sea.

"This girl is Brookfield's typewriter--confound him!"

Carson's satirical eyebrows moved, but he said nothing.

Bramham continued:

"A tall girl, with a fine figure and a high colour--but what has that got to do with me?"

"What, indeed?" an ironical echo from the canvas chair.

This irritated Bramham.

"If you think you're going to hear a tale of love you'll be disappointed. Nothing of the sort. It's a matter of highway robbery, if it's anything."

Karri began to laugh.

"Oh, come, Bram! This is not like you!"

Neither was it. If Bramham made alms and oblations on strange altars, he was the last man to talk about it afterwards, or sigh over the stub-end of his cheque-book even with his closest friend. At this time, however, he was too much taken up with his grievances to defend his principles to Carson.

"I don't say the girl isn't good looking," he now interpolated, as one who wishes to be quite fair and square; "and she _may_ be a good girl, for all I know," he added doubtfully.

Carson grinned.

"Any way, I'm quite sure the other girl is straight."

"Great G.o.d of War! Are there two?"

"What a fellow you are, Carson!" said Bramham peevishly. "Of course there are two, but the other one is quite different--English, I think; anyway, she's no Colonial. I don't know what to make of it, to tell you the truth, Karri. She's a friend of that Cornell girl and _that's_ against her; yet she looks good----"

"Do you mean that she is unlovely?" asked Carson with a wry smile.

"No, I don't!" emphatically. "But the odd thing is that she didn't strike me at all at first; except as being bright and alive-looking--not like some of the dead ducks you see around these parts sometimes--then suddenly right under my eyes she blossomed out. You never saw anything like it--eyes, hair, feet, hands, everything--perfect; and her voice a melody."

This was the most astonishing tale of highway robbery Carson had ever heard.