The Claw Part 20

Later Mrs Marriott and I returned to our lettery retreat. When we were at last tucked in under our rugs with the candle out I asked her to give me her advice about what I should do next day.

"But I don't understand, quite," she said. "Aren't you staying with the Salisbury ladies?"

"I was," said I. "Mrs Valetta is supposed to be chaperoning me in the absence of my sister-in-law, but she has thrown up the position."

"But--what have--what could you have done to offend her?"

"She has offended _me_."

"But--can't it be patched up? Can't you overlook her offences? I don't see how a young girl like you can live alone here."

"I'm quite willing to patch up," said I. "She and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe and Miss Cleeve were all very rude to me, but-- because of certain circ.u.mstances I can _almost_ forgive them. However, I'm afraid they mean to declare war."

"Well, but--forgive me for asking--what could you have done?"

"Weren't you out seeing the patrol go off to-night?" I ventured.

"No!" she said in an abrupt kind of way, and I remembered then that I had not seen her in the crowd. She had of course said good-bye to her husband at home.

"I hardly know any of the men here," she presently continued, "except Major Kinsella, and he came in during the afternoon to say good-bye. I thought it particularly nice of him to remember me--but then he is always kind."

"It is about Major Kinsella that all the trouble is," I said in a low voice. I thought I had better tell her the real story instead of letting her hear an embroidered version from some one else. She was silent.

"Anthony Kinsella and I love each other," I said. "Before he rode away I kissed him good-bye before every one,"--I could not go on. The thought of that wonderful moment, and then, the sadness and bitterness of losing my lover overwhelmed me; my voice trembled and broke. A thin nervous hand grasped mine and held it tightly under the rugs. Yet her voice sounded doubtful when she spoke.

"He is a splendid fellow--any girl would be proud and happy to get him; but isn't he--? I seem to have heard somewhere that he is--"

"Oh, don't!" I cried. "Don't! I'm sick of hearing it. _That_ is what they all say. _That_ is my offence against the manners and morals of this place--kissing a married man--" My hand was suddenly loosed and I could feel her draw away from me in the darkness. "But I don't believe it for one moment!" I cried almost violently. "And I refuse to let these odious people poison my heart with their lies. I know he is a free man. He is incapable of lying."

"Oh!" she said quickly and warmly, "if he told you he is free it is surely true. I do not believe either that he would lie." She took my hand again and squeezed it.

"He did not tell me in words," I said. "But his eyes could not lie to me. Oh, Mrs Marriott, he has such brave true eyes--"

"I know--" she began, and then fell silent again.

"Ah! you are like the rest," I burst out bitterly, throwing her hand away from me, "ready to believe evil of a man whom you admit you have never known to be anything but kind and generous."

"Don't say that--it is not that I wish to believe evil, but I know men-- a little, and my experience is that the best of them are terribly weak-- and you are a very lovely girl. It is not impossible to think that he may have lost his head--"

"No, no, no!" I cried, "it is not so. I tell you I saw his eyes when he said good-bye to me. I will believe them against all the world."

I felt that I had convinced her, too, even against her will--that was something. She never again chilled me with unbelief in my man.

But as to getting any advice out of her about my immediate course of action--it was simply hopeless. The poor woman's unhappiness seemed to have dimmed her perception of what was going on round her in a place where she had lived for eight months. She knew of no place where I could stay. Did not even know if there were any hotels, or how many! I had to give her up as a guide and preceptor; but I was glad of the nervous pressure of her thin hand again before we slept, and something she said left my heart thrilling with happiness even while it ached for her.

"The men up here are all kind--but Major Kinsella's kindness to me has been so different--there has never been any _pity_ in it--you don't know what that has meant to me--and his way with Rupert! He treats him as though he is still--Oh! perhaps you can understand?"

"As though he is still a man!"--that is what she would have said but her lips would not say it.

Poor soul! hers was the f.a.g-end of a romance indeed!

CHAPTER TEN.

CHARITY CALLS.

"To know anything about one's self one must know all about others."

The big main doors of the post-office were thrown open at an early hour of morning but the inmates of _laager_ did not rise with the lark. They trickled forth at intervals, according to their use in life and the duties to be performed by them. When I came out on the verandah facing the barricades I found it strewn with the sleeping forms of men.

I stood for a moment looking at the landscape glowing and scintillating under the sparkling morning sunlight. Across the veldt a small body of hors.e.m.e.n came cantering towards the town; the men who had been out all night on picket duty.

I had slipped away from Mrs Marriott, for having long ago heard how sensitive she was about her tiny, barely-furnished hut, I did not want to cause her the embarra.s.sment of offering to share it with me. I was looking at the mounting of one of the big guns and pondering the question of which hotel I should try, when Mrs Valetta swept past, her face coldly averted, and just the faintest suspicion of an intention to hold her skirt away from me. I flushed, then smiled disdainfully at the uplifted nose of Anna Cleeve who followed in her wake. Neither of them spoke a word. I had a childish inclination to whistle a time just to show them I didn't care a b.u.t.ton, but I conquered it, and started instead to pick my way through the wet gra.s.sy paths towards the Imperial Hotel--I had suddenly remembered that Hendricks had said the Imperial was kept by a woman.

Half-way across the township I was caught up by the doctor, and when I told him where I was bound for he very agreeably offered to escort me.

But he peered at me curiously as if to know the reason of this odd departure. Arrived at the long, galvanised-iron building which glared and blinked in the morning sun, he left me in the verandah with the a.s.surance that he would send Mrs Baynes out to me. A few minutes later I made the discovery that Mrs Baynes was the dropsical d.u.c.h.ess with whom I had shared a staring acquaintance the night before. She immediately resumed her observations, but she was professionally civil and obsequious until she found that I wished to engage a room; her manner then underwent a series of rapid changes--from curiosity to amazement, to hauteur, to familiarity. She began to "my dear" me! I swallowed my indignation as best I might and a.s.sumed not to notice her impertinence, for I was beginning to fear that she would not take me in and there would be nothing for me but Swears's.

"Aoah!" she said at last. (She had a peculiarly irritating way of p.r.o.nouncing "oh!") "Aoah! I thought you were staying with Mrs Valetta and all that swagger lot."

She examined me intently from my hat to my shoes as though she had not done the same thing thoroughly the night before.

"Have you no rooms to let?" I repeated politely.

"Well--I don't know--it depends." She paused, tapping some dark blue teeth reflectively with her finger-nail whilst apparently counting the number of tucks in my skirt. She then closely inspected the gathers round my waist, and my belt-buckle.

"What does it depend upon?" I asked with deadly calm.

"Aoah! a lot of things." She threw her head sideways revealing a generous splendour of double chin, and shouted over her shoulder in a tremendous voice. "f.a.n.n.y! Come yerea minit."

f.a.n.n.y arriving was revealed as the tall and Junoesque girl with the swishing petticoat and the Wellington nose.

"This lady wants a room. What do _you_ think, Fan?"

f.a.n.n.y gazed at me in a queenly way over her military nose; but when _she_ proceeded to count the tucks in my skirt and examine my belt-buckle I felt fury rising in me like a tidal wave.

"Madam!" I said, freezing the landlady with my eyes. "Will you be good enough to answer my question definitely? Can I or can I not engage a room in this hotel--and have my meals served to me there?"

"Aoah! meals served in bedroom! I never heard of such a thing."

I turned away hot with wrath and met the eyes of Colonel Blow and Maurice Stair who had just come round the corner of the hotel and entered the verandah. They looked amazed at finding me there, so I explained hastily and haughtily to the former whilst Mr Stair and the doctor listened frankly, and the eyes of Mrs Baynes and "f.a.n.n.y" seared the back of my frock and hat. Afterwards Colonel Blow said quietly and emphatically:

"Of course you have a room for this lady, Mrs Baynes--the best in the house. You can put me anywhere you like." He added deliberately, "It would be a good thing to take Miss Saurin to her room at once and give her some breakfast." There was no mistaking the "I-am-the-Commandant-and-mean-to-be-obeyed" tone of his voice.

He was probably Mrs Baynes's best boarder in any case. Without a word she led the way, while "f.a.n.n.y" dwindled from the scene like a bad dream.

We walked through the dining-room, bare of anything but a long table and some dissipated-looking chairs, down a pa.s.sage, and into a back verandah which had a row of doors facing the sunrise. At the third door she stopped and flung it wide:

"There you are!" she snapped. "Four pounds a week with board--_paid in advance_. Take it or leave it--I don't care."

She flounced away and left me. I went in and gazed about me. I had never been in a more hopelessly impossible room in my life.