The Claw Part 28

"Besides," said Judy, "if you stay out here all day and come crawling in by waggon to-night there will still be the journey to make from Salisbury to our place, nearly twelve miles, and I should not be able to borrow Mr Courtfield's cart again, as he is going away in it to-night to Umtali. You look a perfect wreck, and ought to get to the end of your journey and rest. Don't you think so, Mrs Shand?"

"Yes, of course she is tired. We've been _trekking_ all night, and the waggon is not a very springy one. Mr Mackenzie hoped to get into Salisbury by the end of this morning's _trek_, but there is no gra.s.s, and the oxen are poor."

I was obliged to go and tidy myself up in the waggon tent, and thereafter climb into the Cape cart with Judy and sit behind the short, fat, soft man with the pointed golden beard and confidential eyes, to whom I had taken an unreasonable but nevertheless poignant dislike. I hated to get into the cart Mr Courtfield had so kindly placed at my service, and glanced longingly instead at Maurice Stair's horse as he slowly mounted and prepared to ride beside us. He looked his best in riding-kit and sat his horse well, swaying in the rather slouchy, graceful way that men who have done stock-riding in Australia affect.

I had long ago learned from him that he had spent several years in Australia before coming to Africa. But it appeared that Mr Courtfield was the real thing from that country--an Australian born and bred, not just a man who had learned to ride there. Judy told me this in a low voice, perhaps to account for the extraordinary accent and bad manners of the man in front of us. I was not very interested. I only wondered vaguely how she could reconcile herself to accept favours from a man who was so obviously not a gentleman. d.i.c.k used to say there were some women who had no discrimination about men, and absolutely didn't know the difference between a gentleman and a cad, even when they had the advantage of knowing and living with gentlemen all their lives.

Opportunity had never discovered this trait in Judy; and I vaguely hoped she was not going to develop it now. Life is difficult enough spent among nice men: I could not tolerate the thought of what it might be with a few Mr Courtfields about. Under cover of his talk to Maurice Stair, riding beside us, Judy now addressed me:

"Dearest girl, how awful that you are not in mourning. I suppose you could not get any black in Fort George."

"I did not try," said I, looking down carelessly at my grey velveteen coat and skirt, which had certainly seen hard wear and tear in the seven months I had spent in Mashonaland. "I never thought about it, to tell the truth, Judy. Besides, d.i.c.k always hated to see people dressed in black."

"Surely that has nothing to do with it, dear," said my sister-in-law gently. "One must respect the conventions."

"I daresay there are some black frocks in my packing cases. They arrived just as we were leaving, so I brought them on."

"How fortunate!" said Judy, looking cross for the first time, but quickly recovering herself after a searching glance at me. "Still, I don't suppose you will look well in black, Deirdre. It is such a trying colour for any one but the very blond, and you are so very brown, aren't you? What a pity you didn't take more care of your skin on this journey. I never knew anything like a waggon journey to turn one's complexion to leather!"

"What place is that on the right, opposite the the hill?" I asked. "It seems to be all dotted with white things."

"That is the cemetery, dear. Poor darling d.i.c.k is buried there."

A grey veil seemed to come down before my face at that, and presently through blurred eyes I saw that the white things were indeed little crosses and headstones.

"I should like to get down," I said in a low voice, as we reached a wide path that showed the way to the cemetery gate. "But don't let this man come."

"Oh, no, he won't. He buried his wife here a few months ago," was Judy's strange answer.

I hoped she would let me go alone, but she expressed a wish to accompany me, so we stood together by my brother's grave. There were no trees anywhere, and very few flowers, just one or two st.u.r.dy scarlet geraniums and some green runners clambering carelessly over the wooden fence.

Lines of dusty graves lying in the brilliant light, coa.r.s.e veldt gra.s.s growing about them, and above them the little white crosses, with the oft-repeated phrase, "Died of fever!"

There they lay, sleeping in the sunshine: Cecil Rhodes's "boys!" The men who had helped to open up the country, light the first fires, and turn the first sods to let the malaria out of the ground for others to build towns on. Of such as these was written:

"Where are the brave, the strong, the fleet!

Where is our English chivalry?

Wild gra.s.ses are their burial sheet, And sobbing waves their threnody."

"Let us go quickly," said Judy. "There is a funeral coming."

So we went back to the cart, and drove slowly so as not to smother with dust a little _cortege_ that pa.s.sed us, taking a short cut over the gra.s.s. If Judy had not said it was a funeral I should not have recognised one, though I had seen many since I came to Mashonaland. The coffin was placed on a Scotch-cart drawn by two bullocks, and had a black cloth flung over it. But some kind hand had redeemed the sordid loneliness by putting a little bunch of wild flowers and a green branch on the black cloth. Three men followed behind, and a woman on horseback.

"Isn't it awful?" said Judy. "That is the way they buried my poor d.i.c.k too. A Scotch-cart with bullocks! But Dr Jim and every one came to d.i.c.k's funeral. He was one of the 'old crowd.' This must be some stranger."

"Fellow from Lomagundis', died of the jim-jams last night," said Mr Courtfield pleasantly. "Anderson's barmaid was sweet on him. That's her behind, hanging on to Browne's grey. The horse will have a raw back before it gets back to Police quarters." He finished his informing remarks with a cheerful sn.i.g.g.e.r, seeming to take some _kudos_ unto himself for discovering that the bunched-up, red-eyed woman could not ride.

Having at last got round the brown hill we came suddenly upon the town.

In a moment we were in the main street, which was called Pioneer Street, and the shops of galvanised iron were blinking and winking at us from either side. There were a few brick buildings, and many thatched roofs.

All had the conventional verandah, which at the sound of our cart rapidly filled with the usual brown-faced, shirt-sleeved men. Judy dispensed a number of queenly bows and one or two charming smiles, all gratefully received. I smiled too, sometimes, when I saw a face I knew, for many old Fort Georgians were in Salisbury; but my heart was aching, aching, as the sight of brown-faced, shirt-sleeved men now always made it ache.

It was explained to me that this was the business part of the town, known as the Kopje; the residential quarter was on the other side of a large green swamp, and was called the Causeway. A number of squat-looking houses were scattered far and wide over the veldt.

"How I wish," said Judy, "that d.i.c.k had bought a place in town instead of going so far out. Kentucky Hills is still twelve miles away, on the Mazoe Road."

Mr Courtfield agreed with her that it was very annoying she should have to ride twelve miles for society, or society for her. My head and heart ached dully. I was thankful when at last Maurice Stair rode up to tell me that Kentucky Hills, my brother's place, was just round the next kopje.

It looked very homelike as we suddenly came upon it, lying in a wide green kloof with low hills winging away from it on either side--a big square bungalow house, painted green, with verandahs all round, and the beginnings of a charming garden about it. At one side of the house a tennis-court had been laid out, and a summer-house put up. It was certainly far ahead of most of the Mashonaland houses, but d.i.c.k had begun to build it as soon as he came up, and having the advantage of a little capital had been able to do more than most people.

The verandahs were blinded and full of ferns growing in native pots, and the inside of the house was charmingly comfortable: big airy rooms and windows looking out on the ever-changing changelessness of the red-brown veldt and the far-off hills. The furniture consisted chiefly of deep, comfortable lounge chairs, and tables of polished brown wood that I took for oak, but was really teak, a wood of the country. Judy had her English things scattered about, and photographs of d.i.c.k and home-scenes that brought blinding tears to my eyes. There was also a piano, the first that had come into the country, Judy told me; a hotel-keeper had brought it up to make his bar more alluring, but d.i.c.k offered him a hundred and fifty pounds for it, though it was only a simple instrument of no particular make. Since the war plenty of pianos have come into the country, but in those days one in hand was worth ten _en route_.

Judy had asked the men to stay to lunch, and while they were in the dining-room and we were taking off our veils in her room, a boy brought in little d.i.c.kie, a darling wee man of five with his father's eyes and his mother's blond colouring.

"This is your Auntie Deirdre," said Judy, and he lifted a shy face to be kissed. At the touch of his innocent cherubic lips the great loneliness that filled me dispersed a little. My world was not so empty after all.

Here was d.i.c.k's son for kinsman!

Later in the day when the men were gone and we were resting in the cool, pretty drawing-room, I broached the subject of the future to. Judy.

"What is there I can do?" I asked. "I want to stay in this country.

What can I do to earn my living here?"

"Earn your living, Deirdre? My dear girl, what on earth are you talking about? If you really wish to stay in this country you must live with me, of course. d.i.c.k especially wished it. But I can't think why you should want to stay here. I certainly shall not, if I can strike a good bargain with some one for the property here, and sell d.i.c.k's farms and claims in Matabeleland."

"Oh, Judy! you surely wouldn't sell the Matabeleland property that d.i.c.k practically paid for with his life?"

She stood looking at me in surprise so plainly mingled with resentment that I swallowed indignation and addressed her with all the gentleness I could at the moment command.

"You know d.i.c.k had set his heart on that country. He was full of plans for turning his property there into a beautiful heritage for d.i.c.kie and at the same time helping on Mr Rhodes's great scheme of Empire by developing the land to the utmost. Dear Judy, I implore you to keep that for the boy."

She turned away from me, answering peevishly:

"That is all very well, Deirdre. But what kind of life is this for a woman? I have, with what d.i.c.k settled on me and his insurance, four hundred a year. With that and what the property realises I could be quite snug and comfy in London; but here it is nothing at all; one is poor on it. Besides, what is there to keep one in a place like this?"

Strange that the remembrance of that peaceful dusty grave in the sunlight was not enough to keep her! That any one would rather be snug and comfy in London than live in this wide, open land where you had but to go to your window to see plain and sky touching on the horizon! Ah!

well, what was the use of trying to make her feel what she could never feel? I returned drearily to the subject of my own future.

"But what is there _I_ can do, Judy? I can not and will not live on you. How can I earn a living?"

"The only women who earn their living up here are barmaids and domestics, my dear," she answered dryly. "I don't know if you contemplate doing anything of that sort. All the rest are busy minding their husbands and their homes. I advise you, if you are really bent on staying here, to do the same as soon as possible."

"What do you mean, Judy?"

"You must marry, of course. When you have once lived down that scandal about Anthony Kinsella I dare say you will have plenty of offers."

I did not speak, but perhaps something in my face answered for me, for she flushed a little and when she spoke again it was somewhat apologetically, though her words were of much the same tenor.

"I'm afraid you don't realise how much you have been talked of, Deirdre.

Mrs Valetta and Anna. Cleeve both have terrible tongues, and Mrs Skeffington-Smythe simply doesn't mind what she says about anybody.

Every one is outraged at the story of your infatuation."

"That will do, Judy," I interrupted violently. "I refuse to hear another word, and do not ever speak to me on this matter again. Don't you understand that it is sacred; that the memory of that man is the only thing I have left? Haven't you eyes to see and ears to hear anything else but gossip? Don't you realise yet that I have never for one moment believed those lies about Anthony, that nothing can shake my belief in his honour? d.i.c.k believed in him too. Thank G.o.d d.i.c.k believed in him too. I have _that_ at least."