Wild Honey Part 9

Millionaires in South Africa are not accustomed to such treatment, and if Montague had been followed he might have been heard to mutter in his wrath that she could finish her conversation with de Windt in Hades if she liked. The princ.i.p.al fact, as far as Vivienne was concerned, was that he departed. De Windt too had risen, his haggard face grown very dark.

"Evidently there is nothing further for me to do but apologise, and get out. Your highly interesting conversation with Montague has made that clear, at least."

"Do you mean to be insolent?" she asked slowly.

"I hope not," he said with steady scorn; "only to rea.s.sure myself that your arrangements and speculations never have been and never can be any concern of mine."

"That is not quite correct. The speculation referred to had to do directly with you. The money I borrowed was to buy your farm."

"Indeed! Well, in that matter at least I have reason to congratulate you. It is going to turn out a good spec."

"Ah! and how is that?" she peered at him curiously.

"The land has a rich gold reef running through it. You will in all probability be able to re-sell for several hundred thousand pounds."

"And when did you know this wonderful thing?" she asked in a strange voice.

"After I'd sent word to you by Cornwall that I'd sell. Brain, the first bidder, came and confessed that he and his partner knew about the gold and had meant to 'do' me. His idea, of course, was that I should pay him for the information by going shares and not letting you have the land."

Vivienne's heart stood very still.

"By the way, I was driving back from his place when I met you this morning. We'd been inspecting the specimens his partner had prospected.

Cornwall has instructions to hand them over to you in the morning.

They are unmistakable."

"And in spite of all this you still sold to me?"

"My bond was given," he said curtly.

She had risen too, and they were facing each other--about them all the chirping night things--peace everywhere except in their hearts. Music came faintly stealing from the dancing-room.

"So after all Africa has brought you luck," he said.

She trembled under the contempt his tone betrayed for that luck, but something in her that wished to live would not be daunted by his scorn.

And that something spoke in spite of her, in a gentle, alluring voice.

"Do you think it is such great luck? Can you from your heart wish me no better?"

"The luck I would wish you entails advice you would never take."

"Try me," her voice was very low and sweet, with a broken note in it.

"Try me--Kerry."

He looked at her sombrely. His face seemed to have grown more haggard.

At last he said: "If you lived in the wilds awhile, under happier circ.u.mstances than those you have come through, the real woman in you might have a chance to live... you would come to realise how rotten they are, all these _lucky_ things you set such store by."

"Perhaps I know that"; the strong unfaltering force still had hold of her and used her voice. "Perhaps it is the wilds I am hungering for-- and the strange happiness of a morning on the banks of the Lundi--" Her voice was almost a whisper. He had to draw nearer to hear it, and stayed staring with a fierce moodiness into her eyes.

"Do you mean?--Vivienne?"

"I think you know what I mean." She lifted her lips to him, to take or leave, and knew that if he left them they would go lonely all life long, which was no more than she deserved who had played fast and loose with love. But he did not leave them. Once more she tasted the strange fragrant flavour of wild honey, and knew at last that this fantastic land of strange flowers and heavy scents, of silence and song, cruelty and beauty, was for her, as he was for her. Africa was wild honey. The love of Kerry de Windt was wild honey, and she could never content herself with any other. It was good to be safe in her own place against his heart. Good to have about her the arms that would never let her go back to a world which ate her heart and made her perform acts that besmirched her soul. But there was still that to tell which might loosen his arms and send them empty away. She held them tight, tight about her while she told him the ugly story.

For a moment there had sprung up in her an almost overwhelming temptation to hide the truth from him (he would never know unless she told him, how she had taken advantage of stolen information to plot against and rob him of his land and gold. No one even guessed the truth).

But the next moment she had torn out that temptation, and thrust it away, ashamed.

"How base I must be if even love cannot purify me!" she cried. "But it shall--it _has_. Listen Kerry."

In the end, he kissed the tears from her lips as once before he had kissed them. One more of the little crystal globes of illusion men have about the women they love went smash perhaps, but he hid the pieces from her bravely enough. Only, he held her a little closer, and there were no half measures about his conditions.

"You've got to give it all up and come with me--away up North--anywhere I go--and not care where you're going to--and never look back--nor care if you ever come back. Is that understood? We shall be poor--but by G.o.d! we'll get something out of life that those who live in towns and cities can't buy with all their gold."

"But your farm, Kerry?--the land that is rightly yours?"

"We couldn't touch it after all this buying and selling with borrowed money, Vivienne. Rightly or wrongly it is Montague's if he wants it-- and you bet he will want it--he must get it, together with the ring and that other two hundred pounds."

"I shall have robbed you then after all?" she said sadly.

"No, only paid for our happiness. Everything has to be paid for, dear.

We are lucky if we can pay with anything so cheap as money! Do you care?"

"No, no, if you do not. I care for nothing except to be sure that I can repay you for all I--"

He kissed away the rest with kisses that were as fierce and tender and cruel as Africa herself. "Oh! yes, you can repay me, be very sure of that. But it must be now. _Now_! You must come with me this very night."

"To-night?" she faltered, trembling a little.

"Yes, to-night. I'm never going to let you go again. Brunton has the power to marry us, and I know he will do it after these people are all gone, if I put the case to him. My waggons are lying all ready a few miles from here. They've been ready for days, waiting for me to be well enough to start. Will you come?"

She thought for an instant of what the world would say, the big world across the sea, and this little portion of it in Buluwayo; the mocking smiles and innuendoes of the women, the men's amazement--but only for an instant, then found herself smiling; that side of life was finished with now, a higher, fuller life waiting for her.

"Yes, Kerry," she said simply, "I will follow you to the end of the world and the end of life."

De Windt was no man of half actions. Within half an hour, Brunton had been beguiled into consent and Mrs Brunton let into the secret. A long residence had bestowed upon the latter a taste for romance and a heart prepared for anything in the shape of adventure that came along. She threw herself rapturously into the preparations for an after-midnight marriage, and sent her own maid for enough things from Vivienne's hotel to make up a hasty travelling trousseau; the remaining luggage was to be sent for the next day. One or two very favoured guests being intimate friends of de Windt's were let into the secret and allowed to stay, the rest went home all unsuspecting and never knew the news until next morning.

The amazing thing was that Montague was one of those who stayed.

Vivienne had accomplished a short interview with him, and returned him those things which were his with a brief _resume_ of the situation. To do him justice, he took it like a man, as well he might, when he was like to come out of the affair richer by several hundreds of thousands.

For de Windt would accept no other solution of the money tangle than that Montague take possession of the farm and all its treasures. In return, he accepted the loan of Montague's carriage in which to carry Vivienne away to her new life.

In one of the small, sweet, exquisitely fresh hours before dawn they were set down and left alone on the wide and empty veld. The dusty road along which they had come was beautified by wraith-like rays from a pa.s.sing moon. Purple rocks had put on a silvery sheen. The white radiant stars burned like jewels in the blue veil of heaven. Far hills and shadowy trees rose silent and salient against the sky. The spot where the waggons lay outspanned was close to de Windt's old farm, in the same area of brooding peace Vivienne had visited the day before--but with how different a mood! Then, Life had tasted bitterer between her lips than the aloes of Death. Now, her heart was clean of guile as a white rose, and she was a red and glowing rose whose fragrance intoxicated them both with the divine madness of love. Old Africa took them to her breast and they became part of her.

CHAPTER THREE.

COMMON OR GARDEN EARTH.

There always seems to be more ardour and vitality in blue-eyed people than in others, and Diane Heywood and Maryon Hammond were both blue-eyed--with a difference. His were blue as the inner light of a glacier, with something of the ice's quality in their steady stare--a fighter's eyes, hard as a rock that you cannot break with an axe; the kind of eyes that women forgive anything to. Indeed Hammond had spent most of his thirty-eight years sinning against women, and they forgave him even unto seventy times seven; and that was as far as the Holy Scriptures entered into the matter. Like Napoleon he was a little fellow when it came to measurements, but so alert, high-headed, and graceful that no one would have guessed him to be something under five-foot eight, and he had the swiftest, most silent feet in Africa, whether for dancing, running, leaping, tracking a lion, or kicking a n.i.g.g.e.r. A copper complexion bestowed upon him by the land he loved, and a small tan-coloured moustache above a somewhat traplike mouth made up the rest of his equipment. It may be gathered that he was no beauty; but he was "the captain of his soul," such at it was, and he carried himself as though the G.o.ds had elected him to be one of the eternal captains of the earth.

Diane Heywood's eyes were long and deep and cool with shadows in them like the shadows under far hills on a hot day, and that should have been enough for any woman; but the G.o.ds had been good to her and added a slim little nose that grew straight out of her forehead like a Greek woman's, dragging her upper lip so high that there seemed nothing of it except a red curve above another red curve and a short firm chin with a cleft in it. It was hard to tell what in all these soft curves and dimples should suggest a pride of spirit almost insolent, a scorn of all things that were not high and clear and n.o.ble. It might have been something in the tilt of her head, the turn of her mouth, or the unflickering character of the shadows in her eyes; but whatever or wherever its origin it was there for all men to read, and not the least of her attractions when read; for all men, whether they know it or not, love that quality of pride in women, recognising, dimly or clearly according to their natures, that on it is based all fine and great things in the generation to come.