Blue Aloes Part 27

Sophia Ozanne looked at her little, fair daughter with tender eyes, remembering the heartless way Rosanne had spoken of her sister's grief only two nights before.

"How different you are, my Rosalie--forgetting your own sorrow to think of others!"

The girl's eyes filled with tears, but she did not shed them.

"I'm afraid it's only another form of selfishness, mummie dear. I want to be kind and loving to all the world, just so that G.o.d will be good to me and give d.i.c.k another chance."

"My poor, poor child!" The mother's arms were round her in a moment, ready for comfort, but Rosalie pushed her gently away, smiling with quivering lips.

"Don't pity me, mother. I'm determined to be brave, whatever comes.

But tell me, where are you going, all prinked out in your walking-things?"

"I--I don't know yet, dear." Mrs. Ozanne looked startled and embarra.s.sed. "I have various things to do."

"It's a frightful morning. Do you think you ought to go out?"

"I must," was the elder woman's firm answer, and she bustled away before there was time for further questioning. Not for anything did she mean to be deterred from the pressing desire in her to go out.

Rosalie had been perfectly right about the weather. It was that arid time of year when the air swirls in gusts of hot wind, laden with gritty blue sand from the debris-heaps, and the finer red dust of the streets. Kimberley dust is notoriously the worst of its kind in a land plagued with dust. Buluwayo runs it pretty close, and Johannesburg, in the spring months, has special sand-devils of its own, but nothing in Africa has ever quite come up to Kimberley at its worst. This was not one of its worst, however; merely a day on which all who had wisdom sat at home within closed doors and sealed windows, awaiting a cessation of the penetrating abomination of filth.

Often, during the morning, Mrs. Ozanne found herself wondering what she was doing wandering about the town on such a day. Desultorily, and with an odd feeling that this was not what she should be about, she let herself be blown along the street and in and out of shops, face bent down, eyes half closed, b.u.mping blindly into people, her skirts swirling and flacking, her hat striving its utmost to escape and take the hair of her head with it. There were no necessary errands to do.

The servants did the shopping, and she rarely went out except to drive in the afternoons. Vaguely she wondered why she had not used the carriage this morning.

Lunch-time came, but she could not bring herself to return home. It seemed to her that there was still something she must do, though she could not remember what.

In the end, she went into a clean, respectable little restaurant and lunched off a lamb chop and boiled potatoes, regardless of the excellent lunch that awaited her at home. Then, like a restless and unclean spirit, out she blew once more into the howling maelstrom of wind and dust.

She began to feel, at last, as if it were a nightmare, this necessity that urged her on, she knew not whither. Dimly, her eyes still blinded by dust, she was aware that she had left the main thoroughfares and was now in a poorer part of the town. With the gait of a sleep-walker, she continued on her way, until suddenly a voice addressing her jerked her broad-awake.

"You come see me, missis?"

A woman had opened the door of a mean tin house and stood there waiting in the doorway, almost as if she had been expecting Sophia Ozanne. The latter stood stone-still, but her mind went racing back to a winter afternoon seventeen years before, when she had sat in her bedroom with the little dying form of Rosanne upon her knees, and a voice speaking from the shadow of her bedroom had said, "Missis sell baby to me for a farthing; baby not die." The same voice addressed her now, and the same woman stood in the doorway of the mean house gazing at her with large, mournful eyes. It was Rachel Bangat, the Malay cook.

"You come see me die, missis?" she questioned, in her soft, languorous voice.

"Die! Are you sick, Rachel?" said Mrs. Ozanne.

"Yes, missis; Rachel very sick. Going die in three days."

Sophia Ozanne searched the dark, high-boned face with horror-stricken eyes, but could see no sign of death on it, or any great change after seventeen years, except a more unearthly mournfulness in the mysterious eyes.

But she had often heard it said that Malays possess a prophetic knowledge of the hour and place of their death, and she could well credit Rachel Bangat with this strange faculty.

"How my baby getting along, missis?"

Such yearning tenderness was in the question that Mrs. Ozanne, spite of a deep repugnance to discuss Rosanne with this woman, found herself answering:

"She is grown up now, Rachel."

"She very pretty?"

"Yes."

"And very rich?"

"We are well-off."

"But she? I give her two good gifts that make her rich all by herself.

She no use them?"

"What gifts were those, Rachel?" The mother drew nearer and peered with haggard eyes at the Malay.

"I tell you, missis. Because I love my baby so much and want her be very rich and happy, I give her two good things--_the gift of bright stones_ and _the gift of hate well_."

Sophia Ozanne drew nearer still, staring like a fascinated rabbit into the mournfully sinister dark eyes, while the soft voice rippled on.

"She no use those gifts I give her? I think so. I think she say, 'I hate that man,' and he die, sometimes quick, sometimes slow. Or she not hate too much, and he only get little sick. Or she wish him bad in his business, and he get bad. That not so?"

Sophia Ozanne thought of the black list she had kept for years of all the people whom Rosanne disliked and who had come to ill. In swift procession they pa.s.sed through her mind, and d.i.c.k Gardner, with his anguished throat, walked at the end of the procession.

"Yes." Her dry lips ejected the word in spite of her wish to be silent.

"Ah!" said the Malay, softly satisfied. "And the bright stones? She not get all she want without buy?"

This time, Mrs. Ozanne did not answer; only her blanched face grew a shade whiter. The woman leaned forward and spoke to her earnestly, imploringly.

"You tell her get rich quick with the bright stones before too late.

Her power going soon. Rachel die in three days, and then gifts go away from Rachel's baby. No more power hate or get bright stones. Tell her quick, missis. I make you come here today so you can go back tell her.

All night and all morning I stand here make you come to me. Now, go back quick, tell my baby. Three days! Eight o'clock on third night, Rachel die."

As strangely as she had appeared, the Malay withdrew into her wretched shanty and closed the door.

Sophia Ozanne never knew by what means and in what manner she reached her home that day, but at about five o'clock she came into the hall of Tiptree House, and was met by her daughter Rosalie with the news that Rosanne had got up from her bed and left the house, taking a suitcase with her.

"And, oh, mother, I could see that she was in a high fever, her cheeks were so flushed and her eyes like fire! What shall we do?"

Her mother sat down and wiped great beads of moisture from her pallid face.

"I think we will pray, Rosalie," she said slowly.

It was still broad afternoon when Rosanne walked openly into Syke Ravenal's shop, bag in hand. The benevolent-faced old man, occupied in cleaning the works of a watch, looked up with the bland inquiring glance of a tradesman to a customer. But his face changed when he saw her eyes.

"You have news?" he asked, in a low tone.

"Take me to the inner room," she ordered curtly. Without demur, he led the way. The moment the door closed on them she flung the heavy leather bag on to the table.

"Take them," she cried wildly; "take them back! They are all there.

Not one is missing."