Wild Honey Part 21

No similar accusation could be levelled at Eustace, commonly known as Useless Randal, and Bettington was about to intimate as much when something caused him to sit to attention. A woman had quietly entered the shop, and from a sheet of paper in her hand began to read out a list of her requirements to Hallam. It transpired that she stood in need of a tin kettle, a water bag, six tins of bully beef, six ditto of sardines, a box of biscuits, matches, sugar, tea, coffee, and plenty of condensed milk. All were to be packed in an open packing-case ready for use on a journey. Bettington listened to these instructions because he liked the sound of her voice, but he considered it out of place in Randal to sit with mouth open and ears c.o.c.ked like a terrier at point.

She had pretty dark bronzy hair pushed up under a sunburnt Panama; worn but well-shaped brown leather shoes; ditto gloves; and a good line to her grey linen coat. When she turned away from Hallam to look speculatively at the provisions on the shelves, Bettington caught sight of a pale haughty little profile, a small ear, and a curving cheek. It was a long while indeed since a profile had impressed him so agreeably.

A slight sound, made no doubt inadvertently, with his crop, caused her to turn her head quickly in the direction of the two men, revealing for a moment a face that would more than have fulfilled the promise of its outline but for the look of weariness and disdain stamped upon it. At her glance, Randal rose upon his poisoned foot, clutched the b.u.t.tonless shirt across his bosom, and bowed with grace. Bettington, whose hat had been jammed on his forehead concealing all but one arrogant eye, removed it abruptly and placed it on the counter, thus affording to anyone sufficiently interested an uninterrupted view of the sanguine complexion and well-shaped head of Africa's most brilliant journalist.

It was not quite apparent whether or not the lady availed herself of this priceless opportunity--while nodding recognition to Randal, but a faint colour showed in her cheek as she turned back to Hallam.

"Please don't forget the condensed milk," she murmured. "And would you try and pick out the freshest looking tins, Mr Hallam? My little child lives on it, and it is very important to have it good. You know the last you had was dreadfully yellow and old."

"Yes, it was a bad lot, Mrs Stannard. I am awfully sorry, but, as you know, we couldn't help it. We never meant to sell that consignment when we found it was bad. But Colonel Monk commandeered it for the children's use as there was nothing better in the town."

"I know. I'm not complaining," she said gently. "The children would have starved without it. Only I do hope you've got some fresher tins in now?"

"Why, certainly," Hallam waved his hand at the well-filled shelves behind him. "We've got plenty of everything since the troops came up.

And I can vouch for the milk--it's a first-cla.s.s brand, and fresh as paint. Where are these things to be sent, Mrs Stannard? Out to your camp?"

"No," she said in a low voice; "keep them here until that convoy of waggons arrives from Salisbury--they are expected to-night, I believe-- then send the box out to be put on the waggon in which I have engaged accommodation for myself and child." Hallam looked up as if something had hit him, but she stared at him so haughtily that he dropped his eyes and applied himself to the business of adding up the bill. She paid, and with a cold nod and no further glance at the other men left the shop. Bettington, having occasion to go to the door to examine some whip thongs that hung in a bunch before the entry, saw her walking in light fleet fashion towards the Police Camp.

"_She_ won't hurt the daisies," he murmured pleasantly to himself, as he sauntered back into the shop where the two other men were neck deep in what sounded perilously like village scandal.

"What do you think of that?" Hallam was inquiring with a stunned air.

He had come over to Randal's side of the shop. "She's had enough!

Going to take the baby and scoot!"

"And I don't blame her a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton. The only wonder is she didn't do it long ago!" Randal wore a judicial manner.

"Her sister kept her from it, I guess, and lack of funds. Stannard is tight with the sinews of war. Needs them all to square his whiskey bills."

Bettington made no attempt to take part in this interesting dialogue, but listened to it very carefully and pensively.

"What will Miss van Rimmel do?" Randal wondered. "Go with her?"

"Not she. She's always been dead against her sister leaving Stannard.

Thinks that while there's life there's hope of reformation, even in such a double-dyed sheep as he is. I bet if Mrs Stannard does go, _she'll_ stay behind and nurse Stan through--and the Doc says he's got 'em bad this time--rats and cats and purple elephants."

"I don't care what colour the menagerie is as long as it keeps Miss van Rimmel here."

"Me neither," averred Hallam elegantly.

They became aware of Bettington's sardonic presence, and dropped the subject as if it burnt.

"As I was saying," remarked Randal briskly, "we had better take fifty pounds of that dried buck off that Boer. It's the best biltong I've struck since I dunno when."

"Right you are!" Hallam began to write in his note book. Randal turned his attention to the thoughtful journalist.

"What about your lions, Bet? Still think of going out to look for them?"

Bet regarded him pensively.

"So I am to have the society of a pretty lady between here and Beira?"

he remarked.

"You? Who said so?" Randal's voice sounded slightly aggressive. "I suppose there are other people besides you on those waggons, Bettington?"

"Yes, but no one so good-looking," said Bettington, wrinkling his rocky nose and gazing at them with bland eyes. "Besides the only empty tent is the one on the waggon where my kit is."

The other two studied his red complexion discontentedly.

"Well, you ought to be very nice to that lady," quoth Hallam at last.

"I'll try to be," promised Bettington earnestly. The American may or may not have been rea.s.sured, but Randal stirred uneasily.

"She drew a blank in the marriage lottery, all right," continued Hallam.

"But she has a nice little kid, and a sister that could take any man in this country in tow if she cared to, but she don't."

"Wise sister!" thought Bettington, "but I'm glad it's not _she_ who's going to Beira." What he said was:

"I should regard Stannard as more in the nature of a surprise packet with a live bomb inside it than a blank. I used to know him years ago, before drink and gambling debts drove him out of the army. How came a pretty woman like that to tie up with him?"

"You can search me. I guess she hadn't seen many other fellows."

"That was just it," proffered Randal. "They belong to an old Huguenot family, and these girls were brought up as innocent as lambs on a farm near Worcester, and I suppose thought everything that had worn a British uniform was an angel, and every man that came from England a gentleman."

"Well, they know better now, no doubt," remarked Bettington pleasantly, and looked at his watch. "I think I'll go round to the Bank and see if I can decoy Johnson out to Penhalonga to-night. Sure you won't come, Hallam?"

"Can't! Randal's poisoned foot has me tied up here."

After the journalist had gone, Randal spoke to his partner gloomily.

"d.a.m.n bad luck his going on the same trek with Mrs Stannard. She's just rottenly unhappy enough not to care what she does, and he's just the fellow women throw their bonnets over the mill for."

"Why, he is as ugly as Halifax!" exclaimed Hallam.

"That makes nix. He's got brains behind that lovely complexion, and women like brains."

"More likely that insolent, don't-care-a-tinker's-curse air of his that gets 'em," mused the American.

"He doesn't care a tinker's curse either. He'd walk over anybody to get his own way. He threw down the editorship of the biggest paper at the Cape because he wouldn't take orders from the owners, and the same thing up at Salisbury. He hadn't run the _Journal_ a month before he bust up with Max the proprietor. Refused to air Max's politics because they weren't his own, and went off and fought the n.i.g.g.e.rs instead. Now he's got another big job in Johannesburg. Everybody wants him till they get him. There's no doubt he can put it all over every other journalist in South Africa."

Later, the subject of this monograph returned to the shop with a demand for .303 cartridges, and the announcement that he had got Johnson, a horse, and some boys. Remained only to get the lion, and he seemed c.o.c.ksure of that.

His parting injunction to Randal was to have his box of provisions put on McKinnon's waggon if the convoy pa.s.sed through before he got back, and to send out a messenger to let him know where the waggons were so that he could go straight after them without returning to Umtali.

As it happened, he did not get back, and the waggons pa.s.sed through that night whilst he and Johnson were lying behind a roughly constructed scherm between the Penhalonga hills. Smokeless, drinkless, oppressed by a deep and nameless silence, ears straining and guns at the c.o.c.k, they were in a state of discomfort only to be suffered in the quest for glory. But the lion came at the pitch-black hour of two, and his doom was dight.

They breakfasted in the grey dawn, and while the boys skinned the trophy, Johnson, who besides being a bank manager, was a gossip and something of a wit, regaled the journalist with amusing biographies of the Umtali residents. Incidentally the Stannards came before the board, and Bettington learned, among other things, that the ex-army man had been running a farm out beyond the Police Camp, that the farm was a failure, and all his wife's money had gone in it, likewise the money of his sister-in-law; that the latter was very pretty, and Randal and Hallam only two of a dozen men who were in love with her; but that she would have none of them, preferring to devote all her time to the business of minding the Stannard baby and keeping the peace in the Stannard household. In fact, there was very little about this unpropitious menage that Bettington did not learn, and the more he heard the more he felicitated himself upon the fact that with the oxen and veld in the state they were it would take ten good days to reach Beira.

Those ten days looked good to him. Next to shooting, and fighting, and writing, he held that life had nothing more piquant to offer than the society of a pretty, disillusioned married woman. It was not so much because he was a scoundrel that he preferred them married, as because he knew himself fonder of adventure and travel and a careless life than he could ever be of a wife. Wherefore he had long ago decided that marriage was not for him. It did not follow, according to _his_ code, that flirtation was not for him; only that he must eschew the society of pretty girls and devote himself to the pretty women who were safely tied up. Certainly, even in this there was a risk of finding himself laid by the heels for life; but it was less of a risk than flirtation with girls entailed.

For the rest, he held with Gordon that--