The Claw Part 18

Later I became aware that I was standing alone. The women I had come with had disappeared, and the few men left were looking at me curiously.

None of them were men I knew. Suddenly I heard a woman laugh in a strange fashion. It was one of the sullen Dutch women Anthony had brought back from Linkwater. She stood amongst her Dutch friends and made a remark, speaking coa.r.s.ely and p.r.o.nouncing her words in a strangely raucous way:

"_Yah vot_!... he's very faskinating, darie Kinsella... Too bad he's married already!"

Again she laughed that coa.r.s.e, rankling laugh, and this time one or two of her men friends joined her. I stood perfectly still as though I had heard nothing, as though I had been turned to stone. I was realising with a terrible coldness at my heart that the look of truth and honour I had read in Anthony Kinsella's eyes had not been so plain to others. A message had come to me from his very soul; but it was to me only. I knew that all was well between us, that the way was open and fair before us, that I could believe and trust him to the death. But these others did not. They thought I had been kissed by some other woman's husband!

Well! It had to be so. They only thought--I knew. And I could afford to wait and prove my faith. He would be back soon. At that thought colour came back into my cheeks and blood to my heart. I lifted my head proudly and walked from them all.

One of the Dutchmen made a remark in a loud, astonished voice:

"_Maar! ek ser for yoh_! these _Engelsch_ women have a d.a.m.ned cheek."

Before the next hour was out I was face to face with the fact that all the women I knew in the place meant to cut me. Mrs Valetta did not leave me long in doubt as to her intentions. On my return to the house, to collect my things for the night in _laager_, she came to the door with a tempestuous face and over her head the eyes of Annabel Cleeve, with the gleam of a knife in them, met mine.

"As your most unwilling chaperon," Mrs Valetta burst out, "I have some right to ask you, Miss Saurin, for an explanation of your scandalous behaviour."

Tempest began to rage in me also, but I answered her civilly.

"I do not for a moment admit that I have behaved scandalously, Mrs Valetta, but as you say that you have a right to an explanation will you kindly tell me what it is you want explained?"

"Explained!" she cried violently. "You can never explain away your infamous conduct of the last half-hour--not if you live to be a hundred.

Kissing a married man in that open and shameless manner! Your reputation is gone for ever."

"You think it would have been more pardonable if I had done it secretly?" I was driven to saying. She glared at me with the utmost fury.

"You can't jest it away, so don't mislead yourself. You are done for forever in Mashonaland."

"I'm frightfully sorry for your poor sister-in-law," Mrs Skeffington-Smythe chimed in pleasantly from her seat on the sofa. "She is so peculiarly sensitive about scandal."

Annabel Cleeve now contributed her little d.a.m.natory verse to the commination service.

"It must be admitted that we live in a free and easy fashion up here: but neither the manners or morals of the _Quartier Latin_ are ever likely to become popular."

I surveyed them with such calmness as I could for the moment command, this three-cornered attack being quite unexpected.

"You are all exceedingly kind and charitable," I said, "and your solicitude for my reputation is quite touching--"

"Don't talk of what you have not," broke in Mrs Valetta vindictively.

"If you ever had a reputation it is gone. You can't kiss Tony Kinsella with impunity."

"I never do anything with impunity," I said with burning cheeks but making a great effort to control my anger. "I kissed Anthony Kinsella as any girl may kiss the man she is going to many."

Anna Cleeve gasped as though she had received a blow, then she laughed and Mrs Valetta joined her, but their laughter made a jarring and unlovely jangle.

"A man may not have two wives--even in the _Quartier Latin_, I believe,"

sneered Miss Cleeve with her mouth awry, and Mrs Valetta broke in harshly:

"It is ridiculous to pretend to be unenlightened on that point. I warned you that he was married and I shall let every one know that you were not in ignorance of the fact."

"I do not believe what you told me. It is not true," I said, my anger breaking out at last. "And I refuse to discuss the matter further.

There is not a grain of generosity amongst the three of you. You prefer to believe the worst; do so." As I turned to leave the room and the house I stopped for an instant and faced them. My pa.s.sionate words seemed to have stricken them dumb. "But do not believe that I do not know what my real crime is."

Nonie Valetta sat down suddenly on a chair and pa.s.sed her handkerchief across her dry mouth. She looked like a haunted thing, and I was sorry for her. But Anna Cleeve faced me with sneering lips. Malice and some other bitter pa.s.sion stared from her eyes, and she half whispered, half hissed, a word at me across the darkening room.

"What?"

"That Anthony Kinsella loves me." The words had formed on my lips and I was ready to fling them at her: but I did not. I left the words unsaid and anger died down within me, for I could recognise despair when I saw it. It was not hard for me to imagine the torment of a woman who loved Anthony Kinsella and was pa.s.sed by. I could afford to be generous: generosity was demanded of me.

"Let it all pa.s.s," I said gently, and turning from them opened the door and went out of the house.

CHAPTER NINE.

DESPAIR CALLS.

"It is not the perfect but the imperfect that have need of love."

As I followed the little pathway which led from the house to the post-office buildings, where we were all to be shut in for the night, some one came running towards me and I presently recognised Mr Maurice Stair.

"Where are the other ladies?" he cried. "Is that you, Miss Saurin?

Colonel Blow is fearfully annoyed that you aren't all in long ago.

There has been a warning sent in from the patrol and it's quite on the cards that we may be attacked to-night."

As he reached me I saw that there was another man behind him. The light was not good but I was able to distinguish a short, thick figure, and a puffy, fiery face. Upon the evening air I also recognised that faint sickening aroma of spirits I had already learned to a.s.sociate with complexions of such radiant hue.

"This is Mr Skeffington-Smythe. He was so anxious about his wife that he left the column at Charter and has come down here to stay in _laager_ and look after her." Mr Stair was at no pains to conceal the note of irony in his voice, but it appeared to be quite lost upon his companion.

So this was the gallant dare-devil Monty!

"Where is the poor little woman?" he confidentially enquired, lurching towards me. But I withdrew hastily beyond his radius, and moved on, waving my hand towards the house I had just left.

"You'll find them all there--and Mr Stair, bring my dressing-case will you? I've come without it."

I had indeed come without anything, and without an idea of where I was to sleep or spend the night. It is true that I had seen Adriana piling up rugs and mattresses, mine amongst them, and carrying them out, but I could not suppose that Mrs Valetta had given any special directions for my comfort.

The post-office was humming like a beehive. Men were hastily finishing the barricades, and Colonel Blow was shouting instructions with a sandwich in one hand and a sand-bag in the other. Evidently he had had no time to dine. Lanterns flickered everywhere, and a group of men were getting a Hotchkiss into position on top of a piece of raised ground.

One man was hopping about, groaning and swearing because the wheel of the carriage had gone over his toe. Others were struggling with barbed wire of which an entanglement was being made for an outer defence.

I pa.s.sed through the doors of the building, and going along a wide pa.s.sage came out into a verandah which gave on to a large court-yard.

This was the prison yard, and away at the other end of it were the cells--a line of strong doors and barred windows. A fire near by had a three-legged pot upon it which gave up a smell of stew; and another fire had a large kettle boiling over it from a tripod.

All round the inside of the walls ran a wooden balcony. This had been roughly erected during the past week, but it was sufficiently strong to support the men who would have to stand to the walls, and fire over them in case of an attack at close quarters.

In the centre of the yard tents had been pegged out. Mrs Skeffington-Smythe's, a red-and-white-striped affair dominated the situation, and struck a gay sort of sea-side note; several children were frolicking in and out of it, diving under the flaps and showering laughter. The Dutch women had slung all their things against the wall and were sitting on the heap, one of them nursing a baby, the other feeding a small child with bits cut off a strip of _biltong_. Many piles of rugs and blankets were lying about on the gravelled ground, and by the dim light of several paraffin lamps suspended from the verandah I recognised Mrs Marriott turning over pile after pile, evidently in search of her own. Near me in the verandah a little group of Fort George women were standing. They had the quiet air of sensible, self-possessed women, prepared for any emergency, and there was no fuss or excitement about them at all. They behaved as though sleeping in _laager_ was an everyday affair. I heard Mrs Grant say that Colonel Blow had just told her that the alarm had been a false one occasioned by some stray oxen which had approached the outlying picket; and Mrs Burney said casually that she had felt sure it was something of the kind and that there was no likelihood of an attack until the main _impis_ had been engaged with some of our men. They dismissed the subject carelessly. Another woman said:

"My Cliffie and your boy d.i.c.k are rather big to put in among the little ones, so I've fixed them up in a little dormitory by themselves behind the prisoners' dock."