Poppy Part 41

"Bite on that!" added Bramham without any polish of manner.

Cap.r.o.n had certainly succeeded in leaving an atmosphere of irritability behind him. Only Abinger remained impa.s.sive, and suavely demanded a description of the girl. Ferrand, amongst other things, was something of a poet: fire came into his eye.

"She's pale, but she glows like a rose: she has chaste eyes, but there is _diablerie_ in the turn of her lip. She walks like a south wind on the water, and she has a rope of black hair that she can take me in tow with if she likes."

At the end of this monograph the three bad men laughed rudely, but they avoided looking at each other; for each had a curious, half-formed thought in his mind which he wished to conceal.

Bramham thought: "Part of that might fit one woman ... but it literally _couldn't_ be her ... I wonder if I should go round and----"

"If I _could_ be interested in a girl," thought Carson, "I might.... _A rope of black hair!_ ... anyway, I have to go and look up Nickals at the Royal to-morrow."

"Could it possibly be that devil Poppy?" was Abinger's thought. "I shall go round and see." What he said was:

"She must be a boneless wonder!" and the others derisively agreed. They further advised Ferrand to go and lie in Hyde Park with a sheet of brown paper over him, like all the other poets out of work.

Subsequently other subjects arose. When the clock struck eleven, Ferrand departed, remembering suddenly that his long-suffering man was waiting round the corner to drive him home.

Abinger was the next to make a move. His house on the Berea was still open, and in charge of Kykie, but it knew him no more. When he chanced to come to Durban from Johannesburg, where he now chiefly resided, he slept at the club. As he was making himself a last drink, Bramham said:

"Isandhlwana nineteen years ago to-day, Luce!"

The two men looked at each other with friendly eyes. They were not greatly sympathetic, but brave memories shared make a close bond between man and man. Silently both their gla.s.ses went upwards in a wordless toast. In a moment and silently, too, Carson was on his feet. They drank to the men who died on Isandhlwana Day. Afterwards, Bramham and Abinger fell into talk about that year. They had both fought in the Zulu war.

Carson listened with glinting eyes, the weariness swept from his face for the first time that night. Bramham's face became like a boy's.

Abinger's looks changed, too. His sneers were wiped out, and his scar took on the appearance of one that might have been honourably gained.

Once he laughed like a rollicking boy.

"That day we lay above Inyezan, Bram ... do you remember? When you potted the big fellow in the _umpas_ tree!... after he had sniped about ten of our men ... by G.o.d! the cheek of that brute to perch himself up there within a hundred yards of us!... and no one knew where the shots were coming from ... it was a miracle you spotted him in that thick foliage ... he came down like a fat, black partridge ... and lay still under the tree ... we went and looked at him after the fight was all over, Carson ... he was an enormous chap ... the biggest Zulu I ever saw ... our natives recognised him--chief _Gaarons_, one of their best leaders ... a sure shot ... he got ten of our men ... but Bram got _him_ all right."

They sat for two solid hours reminiscing.

"You and Luce have had some times together, Charlie!" said Carson, after Abinger had gone.

"Yes ... it makes one feel old--I suppose we _are_ getting on, Karri, but we were in our early twenties those days ... Abinger rather younger than I was, perhaps ... he was a different fellow then, too--of course, it was years before he met that Spanish devil who slashed his face open.... Do you know, Eve, that when I was in London last I saw her dancing in the old, sweet way at the Alhambra?"

"I thought she was dead?"

"So did I--but she wasn't. She is, _now_, however ... dropped down one night behind the scenes and pa.s.sed out in half an hour."

"_Tant mieux!_" said Carson serenely. "She didn't play according to rules. Well, I suppose, we must turn in, Bram--I've a ton of things to do to-morrow ... those cases of guns and ammunition and stuff are due, aren't they?"

"Yes: I got the advice about them: they'll be in dock to-morrow. We'll go down and look everything over during the week if you like. How long are you going to give yourself before you go back?"

"Well, my leave is six months, you know--one of them gone already, by Jove! I shall be about another three or four weeks fixing up my private affairs on the Rand and getting things sent off from here. Then I propose to give myself a few months at 'home' before I go into exile for five years."

"Five years of solitude and natives and pioneers!" commented Bramham.

"Pretty tough on you!"

"Oh, you needn't pity me. I don't mind the solitude. There'll be plenty to do turning that little sixty thousand square miles into a civilised centre, now that we've got the roads open. In five years' time we shall have the rails laid right to the capital, and the mines in full swing.

That's the time I shall make tracks for newer scenes. But in the meanwhile it's fine, Bram. The fellows that make pioneers are the right stuff--_you_ know that. It's the people who come up after the work is done who stick in my gizzard."

"I daresay it's all right," said Bramham. "There are bright bits, no doubt. And, of course, you'll get more ribbons to tie your stockings up with and lockets to hang on your breast when you come back. But it seems to me to be a precious lonely life in the meantime, and I'm glad it isn't mine. Why don't you take your wife up with you, Karri?" He spoke with an idle smile, not looking at Carson, but at his hands on the bale before him arranging cigars in a box. Carson gave him a quick glance, but he laughed carelessly.

"Even if I possessed such a luxury I couldn't very well ask her to come up to a wild place like that--for wild it will be for many a year yet, thank the G.o.ds! Do you suppose any woman would care about it?"

"I know half a dozen who'd jump at the chance, and I expect you do, too. Women are fearfully keen on adventure nowadays. And then you're an attraction in yourself, Karri."

"Thanks, old chap! You're easily pleased, I'm afraid." Carson's smile was affectionate, but frankly sleepy. He began to yawn. Bramham, caring nothing for hints of weariness, pursued the subject.

"Joking apart--you ought to marry. Why don't you, Karri?"

"For one thing, I can't afford it. You forget that I'm not a bloated millionaire like you. My little excursions into different parts of the interior were never cheap, and the original expedition into Borapota cost me privately as much as it did the Government, and since I've been Administrator I've found it a mighty expensive business, and you know, I've never been a money-hugger, Bram. I suppose I am a thousand or two to the good now, apart from my shares and concerns on the Rand, which wouldn't fetch much with the market in its present condition. But how far would that go towards setting up a _menage-a-deux_ in the desert?

Even supposing that I knew someone anxious to share it----"

"You have your salary--two thousand a year," argued Bramham. He did not know what a _menage-a-deux_ was, but he could guess.

"So I have, by Jove! and I need it. If you think I play John the Baptist when I take to the wilderness, Bram, you're mistaken. I do myself remarkably well to make up for the lack of society. If the soul is neglected, the carcase isn't. You come up and visit me some time, old man. You'll find all the blessings of civilisation with me, except woman."

"You're a nice sort of pioneer!" Bramham said; but he knew what Carson meant. The best kit, the best guns, and saddlery, and horses, cost money everywhere, and when it comes to transporting them over a few thousand miles of unbroken roads--why, of course, it is expensive!

"I know all about that, Carson--all the same, I think it would be a good thing if----"

Carson interrupted him. "You're beginning to be a nuisance, Bram. But I'll be patient with you, and tell you the truth. I don't want _a_ wife, but _the_ wife, and I haven't met her yet--the woman who could stand the test of five years of _wattle-and-daub_, and boot-and-saddle, and sleeping under the stars for a change when one gets tired of the _wattle-and-daub_; with nothing much to contemplate by day but the unlimited horizon and nothing much to hear by night but the dirge of the jackals, and the sound of the wind in forest trees, or the rush of a river. _We_ know that these things are fine, Bram--the best you can get in a pa.s.sable world. But would they be fine with the wrong woman?--with any woman but the one who----"

He stopped abruptly, got up, and began to walk about the room. In the doorway he stood for a moment looking seawards through the black night.

A cool wind was stirring every paper and drapery in the room now, for the tide was full, swirling and rustling on the sands not a hundred yards away with nothing to be seen in the blackness but a skirl of white foam.

"--Who--what?" asked Bramham stolidly in the room behind him. Carson came back and sat on the table with his hands in his pockets. The old discontent was on his face.

"Who can never materialise because she's mostly made up of dreams."

Bramham laughed. "Mrs. Portal once said to me, 'The most wonderful woman in the world could not pa.s.s the standard of a romantic Irishman: or come near the perfection of the dream-woman whom every Irishman has secretly enshrined in his heart.' It appears that she was right."

Carson laughed, too: but his face softened.

"Mrs. Portal knows most things about Irish and every other kind of men, I fancy. The wonder is that she can continue to be charming to us in spite of it. She's the most delightful woman in the world."

Bramham gave him a shrewd glance. He would have given half he possessed to say at that moment:

"What about a lovely girl who is drudging away in England to support your child?" But it was not an ordinary promise that same girl had wrung out of him, never to reveal by word or look that he knew her secret. She had bound him by every oath she could think of that had any sanct.i.ty for a man.

Something of scorn presently mingled with the shrewdness of the look he cast at Carson. He searched the dark face that had so much in it that was fine and lovable, and yet was marked with sins. But whatever Carson's sins were they did not give him peace. He did not grow sleek on them. He had the weary mouth and haggard eyes of the man with the dual nature, a finer self perpetually at war with a baser, sometimes winning, sometimes losing--but always striving. Scorn left Bramham's look and affectionate loyalty came back.

"You can't hate a fellow like that," he thought.

He presently found a further thing to say in which he was far from imagining himself disloyal to Rosalind Chard, or even prompted by curiosity.

"Carson ... since we've tumbled on to the subject of women, I'd like to know what you think about something I've rather advanced opinions upon ... girls ... girls who've gone over the hard-and-fast line ... not the ordinary demi-semi-quaver, of course ... nor the kind that are bound to slip off the rails even with gold fastenings ... I mean the sort of girl one would be glad and proud to marry, but who, given 'the time, the place, and the loved one altogether,' as some poet fellow says, cuts loose the painter for dear love and sheer love. What do you think of a girl like that, Karri?"