The Claw Part 29

I spoke so pa.s.sionately and bitterly that she was abashed for a moment.

"I know that d.i.c.k believed in him," she admitted grudgingly. "But then d.i.c.k was one of those curious people who would believe in a man simply because he could 'stare you clear in the eyes' or 'had a straight look about his mouth.' He would pit those things against the blackest evidence, and expect other people to be similarly impressed--dear, sentimental, ridiculous fellow! But I'm afraid the Saurins are like that."

"Yes, the Saurins _are_ like that," I said, "and thank G.o.d for it."

Later, when anger had been put away and we could speak more calmly and dispa.s.sionately she said:

"Well, if you _must_ stay here and if you are so set on doing something, why not undertake the care of d.i.c.kie for me? He begins to need teaching, and of course it is too far to send him to the little school in Salisbury; then it is very bad for him to be always with the black boys and piccanins; they teach him all sorts of naughtiness; you can't trust them. It would relieve me of a great worry if you would take entire charge of him."

"But why not do it yourself, Judy?" It made me sick to think of d.i.c.k's boy being left to the care of natives, but I wanted to be quite certain that she was not inventing a task out of charity. She looked at me, almost indignant.

"My dear girl! what time have I for teaching a child? You forget that now d.i.c.k is gone I have simply everything to see about for myself: the care of the property, the accounts, the servants, social duties--such as they are--_everything_. I haven't a moment for d.i.c.kie. If you won't undertake him I shall have to send him to Durban again, until I can sell the place. My idea in staying on at all is to improve the property on the lines d.i.c.k intended, with the help of his foreman, Mr Stibbert, and presently sell it at a good price to some one of the people who will come pouring into the country now that the trouble with the natives is over."

After that I consented: but only on the condition that if she sold the Mashonaland property she would at least refrain from parting with d.i.c.k's Matabeleland farms and claims, but keep them for the boy. I had less trouble in persuading her to this on reminding her of the splendid reports that were coming in of the mineral wealth of the country.

Experts said that Matabeleland was full of gold.

So it was settled that I should stay, minding and teaching d.i.c.kie, and I thanked G.o.d for a valid reason to remain in Mashonaland.

The household of Kentucky Hills consisted, I found, of ourselves; Mr Stibbert a clever young German who understood farming on scientific principles and had been engaged to manage d.i.c.k's cattle and land for him; an elderly woman of the same type as Adriana who had brought d.i.c.kie up by the East Coast; and a number of native servants. We were not near enough to Salisbury to expect much social life, for it requires some energy in Africa to mount your horse for a twelve-mile ride to pay an afternoon call. Yet I was astonished to find how many people thought it worth while to come galloping along the Mazoe Road for the sake of a cup of tea and a cuc.u.mber sandwich. These things were much in request by behabited ladies and begaitered men, in Judy's cool drawing-room; and Judy was always ready to dispense them, looking very sad and sweet and appealing in her little white crepe widow's cap. She told me that she had never had so many visitors before, and that what they came for was to see _me_, the contravener of bylaws and conventions from Fort George.

I thanked them much for that! But if it was true, their object was not attained. I forsook the drawing-room on these occasions and was neither seen nor heard. Judy, a skilful little social politician, told them I had not recovered from my serious illness brought on by overwork among the sick in Fort George, and shock at my brother's death. She was much too clever to give them any inkling of the vexing arguments she had with me on the subject; of her tart reminders that I was no longer an heiress, nor even a girl with a few hundreds a year, who could go her own way regardless of the opinions of the world; and of her constant injunction to me to try to get the friendship of these women instead of treating them with indifference.

"If you want to live up here you had better propitiate people and make friends," she advised me, "so that you may at least share such interests as there are in this benighted country."

But her arguments left me cold. I cared nothing for the interests or the friendships of Salisbury, though I did not doubt for a moment that as d.i.c.k had said there were many nice women in the place. All I wanted was to be left alone; to be let roam the veldt; to climb the rocky kopjes with d.i.c.kie, and dream up there in the sunshine of the days that had been all too short, when Anthony Kinsella and I lived our brief sweet hour of happiness. I could not bear to meet people who looked upon that dream of ours as outrageous and illegitimate. And I did not want to talk to people who spoke of Anthony Kinsella as one to whom much should be forgiven because he was of the dead. I had outwardly accepted the fact that he was dead and that a monument had been erected where he died. But yet--but yet, why should he seem so alive to me still in my dreams, and my thoughts? Why had nothing been found to identify him?

No one could swear to the bones that had been found. Ah, G.o.d! what wild hopes and foolish thoughts my heart fed upon. But I wished for converse with none who would rob me of those hopes and I found life easiest to bear with only little gay-hearted d.i.c.kie for my companion.

And so, at the first sound of a horse's hoof d.i.c.kie and I were away, scudding up a hill at the back of the house, there to lie hidden among the rocks and sugar bushes until we heard the hoofs once more departing.

Sometimes we had a little kettle up there and made a fire for our tea, and afterwards d.i.c.kie would climb the rocks pretending they were ship masts while I lay on the short hot gra.s.s and dreamed of the days that were no more, talking out my wild hopes--all that I had left, to ponder upon and brood over.

If I had possessed any money I should have fitted out an expedition into Matabeleland over the ground where Anthony had last been seen: and drag-net the whole country for traces of him, or at least for full details of the tragedy, if tragedy there had been. Some one would have had to tell something. Some one should have been made to pay.

It is true that an official inquiry had been made after Maurice Stair's report, but nothing further had transpired and the matter left for a time had been gradually put aside in a country full of new interests and new men. It is not much use being a dead man, or a missing man, in Rhodesia, or any other country for that matter.

"To us the absent are the dead; The dead to us must absent be."

The living have the best of it. The dead and the missing are soon forgotten, except by the few who loved them personally.

I felt that if I could have gone out into the wild places penetrating the great Somabula Forest and searching all along the thickly bushed banks of the Shangani I should have found some trace, some news, something to break the aching, mysterious silence, and confirm me in my belief that Anthony was still alive somewhere. But across Africa's rolling leagues of bush and rocks and empty, rugged, burning land no one can travel without the accessories that only money can buy. Bitterly I regretted my stolen thousands, and bitterly hated the old solicitor Morton, whom we had so well and so unwisely trusted.

Poor Aunt Betty too had been badly hit over his defalcation, losing not only her private fortune but the money she had made at sculpture in years of hard work. Nevertheless, she had written and urged me to come back to Paris and share with her all she had. But I steadfastly resisted her urgent letters. I could not go if I would. Stronger bonds held me fast in Africa than ever Betty van Alen's love could forge. I had to stay with Judy and d.i.c.k's boy as long as I could be of use to them. They had just claims. But even when the day came that they no longer wanted me I should not leave Africa. The witch had dug her claw in deep. I could not go if I would.

As it was I cost Judy nothing. For clothes and the necessities of life, which since I lost my income had become luxuries, I parted one by one with my jewels, sending them down to Durban to be sold.

And so the months slipped by, until a year had gone since the night I kissed Anthony Kinsella goodbye. Of all the old Fort George friends there was only one left in my life--Maurice Stair. The rest were scattered far and wide in Matabeleland, and the different camps and townships springing up in every part of the country.

That is the way in Africa. People come into your life, live in almost family intimacy with you, learn (very often) the very inmost secrets of your heart, share joys and sorrows with you, then pa.s.s on and are lost to you for ever. Only here and there you grasp a hand that you can hold over hills and seas, though darkness hide you from one another and leagues divide, until the end.

Of the Salisbury women I had known in Fort George: Anna Cleeve had married her rich man and left Africa: Mrs Skeffington-Smythe was still, to the fore in Salisbury and might always be found where scandals were rifest and the battle of the tongues wagged hottest: but she did not much afflict Kentucky Hills with her presence.

Mrs Valetta sometimes came riding out with Maurice Stair to visit Judy, but she and I never met, and within the last few months she had gone away with her husband to some new town in Matabeleland. I did not inquire where. I asked nothing better than to forget Nonie Valetta, and that she and I had ever crossed each other's paths.

Maurice Stair was very kind and gentle and silent always. I often let him come with d.i.c.kie and me to the hill-tops. He was so quiet that I could almost forget that he was there. Apparently he asked nothing better than to be with me as often as his work allowed. His duties as an a.s.sistant N.C., which he cordially detested were not very arduous, and often took him away for long spells. But whenever he was in Salisbury he found his way to Kentucky Hills.

I liked him for several reasons. One was because he talked so little in a country where everyone gossiped perpetually. Also, there was a kind of quiet melancholy about him that suggested acknowledged failure, and there is always a pathetic appeal to a woman in that. Certainly a man of his age and education ought not to have been idling away his life at work he hated and in which there was no probable advancement. I often felt that, and apparently he felt it, too, though he made no effort as far as I knew to change the tenor of his life. But really I knew very little about him except what he told me in rare expansive moments. He was a public school man, and had been prepared for the Army, a profession he had set his heart on but had been prevented from entering by the caprice of his guardian. This guardian was his uncle and only relative, Sir Alexander Stair, a distinguished diplomat I had often heard of at home--a very clever, witty, lonely, and sardonic old man, and not at all a lovable character, people said. I half understood the bitterness with which his nephew always spoke of him. But it seemed to me very sad that two men, the last of their family and alone in the world, should be so apart in sympathy. Yes: there were several pathetic, appealing things about Maurice Stair, his gentle, dark eyes and quiet, restrained manners, were in striking and refreshing contrast with those of John Courtfield who was perpetually about the house. The Australian's common ideas, expressed in common accents, did not offend Judy as they did me. Nor was she outraged by the intimacy of his horrible bulging eyes. I came to look forward to Maurice Stair's presence as a relief from the colonial's obtrusive personality.

Not that John Courtfield came to see me. I did not in fact think he came to see any one in particular, but that he simply made Kentucky Hills a convenient stopping place on the way to a mining camp out Mazoe way in which he was interested. But at last it dawned upon me that Judy was the star in his sky. When I realised this I don't know whether I was more shocked that such an unutterable cad should have the effrontery to aspire to my brother's widow or that Judy should complacently permit such an insolence; the latter I could hardly bring myself to believe with poor d.i.c.k hardly yet part of the brown earth that covered him. But the truth was thrust violently upon me one evening when just after putting d.i.c.kie to bed I came into the drawing-room and found Judy and John Courtfield sitting there in the half-light, holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes like moon-struck sheep. I was so horrified I almost fell upon her then with reproaches, but instead I burst from the room as hastily as I had entered it and going to my own room threw myself on my bed and wept for d.i.c.k.

A few moments later I heard John Courtfield's horse taking him away, and Judy came scurrying to my room. I sat up with the tears streaming down my face, and cried out bitterly to her:

"Oh, Judy! It cannot be true! You cannot have the baseness to think of putting that man in d.i.c.k's place!"

She burst out crying too: called me cruel, heartless, one of those cold-blooded women who do not understand a nature like hers that _must_ have love as a flower the sun--a clinging, helpless nature that must be loved and cared for--that could not live without a man's love.

"I am so lonely," she wept. "I feel so helpless--it is sweet to be minded. Of course my heart is buried in d.i.c.k's grave--darling d.i.c.k!

There can never be any one like him--but I'm sure he would not have wished me to be lonely!"

"He would never have had a cad like that man Courtfield inside his gates," I raged. But a moment later I was pleading with her, beguiling, begging.

"Oh, Judy! if you _must_ marry again choose some one else; there are lots of nice men here; why should you take one who is not even a gentleman? You know it has been more than hinted to us that he is not honourable. He cannot get in at the Club because of some shady thing he did about money, and because he is so insufferably common that other men detest him. Think how men loved d.i.c.k, and how much they think of you as his widow! Do not, for Heaven's sake, make such a frightful _betise_.

You surely cannot _love_ him?"

She looked at me with eyes grown like two little grey stones, and her mouth was a fast-shut trap.

"Haven't I told you that my heart is buried with d.i.c.k? But John Courtfield is clever and rich, though you despise him. He is clever enough to have got very rich. We would never have to worry about money again."

"We!" said I fiercely. "You surely do not include me in your hateful scheme to forget d.i.c.k--to disgrace his memory?"

At that she rose at me white-lipped.

"No, I do not: I am thinking of myself and my boy."

"Don't include d.i.c.k's son, either. His father thought of him and provided for him; bought him a heritage with his life. He does not need to live on the bounty of this horrible Australian. No: you are thinking only of yourself, Judy. Oh! how can you? How _can_ you?"

I suppose I had no right to say these things. I did not mean them cruelly either, only pleadingly; and in a just cause they seemed excusable. I could not bear this thing to happen.

But she was furious at my opposition and said even bitterer things than I did; told me that I was jealous because no one loved me enough to seek me out; flung jibes at me about Tony Kinsella; said that I was talked about all over the country, that women would not speak to me, that the scandal reflected on her also who had never had a breath of scandal attached to her. She would be glad to change a name that had been so brandished she finished at last: and I doubt not in that moment I was as white-lipped as herself. But I was not so eloquent. I was cold and still as a stone. When she burst out crying, in weak reaction, and began to mumble apologies, I did not speak but walked away from her out of the room and out of the house. I had no gold to offer there for her tinsel and dross--for the ashes and mud that had been flung at me.

I walked the ground until I was weary, then sat on a rock on the kopje side, wondering dully what further daggers for my heart Africa had hidden in her mantle. While I sat there I heard another horse at the gates, and Maurice Stair's voice echoing across the garden and up the hill. He stayed some time in the house, but later I saw him coming as I knew he would to look for me. In my white gown I was plainly outlined on the moonlit hill, and he came straight where I sat, but before he reached me I called out abruptly, even rudely, for I was in no mood for companionship:

"Do not come and talk to me to-night."

"I must," he answered, and came and sat at my feet. "Oh, do let me, Miss Saurin. I have been talking to your sister-in-law. She was crying, but would not tell me why. Only--I gathered that you and she are not happy together. Dear girl that I love, why will you not let me try and make you happy? Marry me, Deirdre."

"Do not speak of such a thing," I said gently. "It is impossible. You don't know how sorry you make me. But--I can never marry any one."

"A girl like you cannot live alone, unmarried. By G.o.d! you were not made for such a life!"