The Claw Part 6

This last somewhat enquiringly, I thought; but I had no intention of issuing a statement at that stage. I made no response, only nodded good-night to Mrs Valetta and followed Judy to my room.

While she was lighting candles on the dressing-table she said:

"Nina Skeffington-Smythe was simply dying for you to take off your coat, so that she might see what kind of figure you have, and was dreadfully disappointed when you didn't respond to her invitation."

I stared at my sister-in-law reflectively, thinking how she had changed, and what bad luck it was to have to stay here amongst all these unfriendly women instead of being able to go right into the wild, deep heart of Africa. For the first time in my life I regretted not being a man. I even regretted my lions that were hyenas!

"Are we likely to be here long?" I asked abruptly.

"Heaven knows! I have begged Colonel Blow, the Magistrate, to let you and me go on to Salisbury to-morrow in the coach, but he won't. He says that low we are here we must stay until the trouble with Lobengula is all over. You know, of course, that they are sending an expedition against him. Two columns are starting as soon as they have all the horses they want, and all the men from here are going to join them. I feel sure that d.i.c.k will go with the Salisbury Column if I don't get back in time to stop him."

"But you surely won't try to stop him, Judy? Poor old boy! Fighting is his profession, after all, and how he will love to get back to it. Just imagine how you would if you were a man. I know I should."

"That's all very well, Deirdre, but d.i.c.k might get killed. And it's so uncomfortable here, too," she continued. "Mrs Valetta, and I, and now you, all stuffed together in this tiny house not big enough for one."

Her tone was frankly resentful.

"I'm awfully sorry, Judy. Of course, if I had known how uncomfortable I should make you I would not have come. But I had no idea until I was nearly here that this war business was so far advanced."

"Oh, they have been making preparations for some time, but very quietly, so as not to give the Matabele the advantage of knowing our plans. But the time is close at hand now. Mr Rhodes is up in Salisbury, and Dr Jim is backwards and forwards all the time between here and Victoria and Charter, and the men everywhere are as excited as they can be over the chance of war. They are only waiting for a last consignment of horses, then they'll go, and we wretched women will be left behind to be shut up in what they call a _laager_."

"Even that might be interesting if there were not such a lot of cross, catty women about," I thought, and was indiscreet enough to say something of the kind. Judy immediately fell upon me with a dagger.

"I always think it such a pity when girls don't like other women," she said, in a stuffy little voice. "It seems to me there is something lacking in a nature like that."

"I do like other women, Judy, but I don't think those who were here to-night liked me much. They made me feel like a newly arrived favourite in a harem."

It _was_ rather a rude thing to say, but really they had been very annoying, and Judy as much as any of them. She answered me in an extremely bored voice.

"You mustn't fall into the mistake that women are jealous of you simply because they take an interest in your appearance, dear."

"Oh, I don't," I said wearily. "I am quite used to having an interest taken in my appearance."

This annoyed her very much, so she pretended not to hear, and continued:

"It would be rather absurd if you did, here, for all the Salisbury women are by way of being good looking, and really, dear, you are not looking your best. Of course, I _know_ you must be very tired."

Tired! After a journey of fourteen days and nights and adventures enough to turn my hair white! After being nearly drowned in rivers and nearly eaten by lions, and getting blisters on my heels and mosquito bites on my hands, and gra.s.s-ticks all over me, and being left alone on the veldt all night with tigers and hyenas! Tired!

I thought of all my sufferings and my weariness, my ruined complexion, the sunburn on my nose and the blister on my heel, and I could openly and frankly have howled aloud. But I saw that the expression on Judy's face was neither of sympathy nor of sorrow. By an effort I controlled myself, and began to take my coat and hat and veil and things off. As I could see no pegs anywhere I hung them up on the floor, and as calmly as possible but very firmly I said:

"Do, please, let me go to bed."

"Certainly, dear."

How I wished she wouldn't "dear" me in that insincere and meaningless way.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE SUN CALLS.

"I know not where the white road runs, Nor what the blue hills are; But a man can have the Sun for his friend, And for his guide a Star."

I awoke to the far-off c.h.i.n.k of china, a babble of native voices in the back regions of the house, and a glare of suns.h.i.+ne bursting through a small canvas window.

I closed my eyes again, and lay for a long time thinking of the soft, sweet-aired September mornings in Ireland, all grey and misty--trying to believe I was back there in my chintz-curtained bed in my chintz-covered room with the salt sting of the Atlantic coming in through the windows on the faint peat-scented breeze. I made myself believe that the c.h.i.n.k of china was the c.h.i.n.k of the morning tea-cup on Nora's tray, as she came in with my letters and a bunch of violets and a soft bright:

"Good-morning to you, Miss Deirdre! I hope it's not waking you I am."

At last I opened my eyes and stared about me. Ah! what a glare! Alas!

how far off was Ireland, and what a different place this to my rose-chintz room! But what did that matter after all? I could go back when I chose, and in the meantime this was a new and strange land, with fascinations of its own that could not be disputed. Sleep had freed my heart from the paltry vexations of the night, and the spirit of the morning pervaded me once more. I felt nothing but glad to be alive in the gay and buoyant suns.h.i.+ne of which the room was full. It flickered on the bare white walls, and danced upon the pale s.h.i.+ning mats that covered the floor. Afterwards I found these to be native mats made by the Mashonas. Every one uses them on their floors, and for verandah blinds. The natives bring them round to the door and one buys them for a s.h.i.+lling apiece. The walls of the room were bare and whitewashed, but they looked soft and powdery, and perhaps that was why there was nothing on them anywhere. The dressing-table was a draped affair, without legs, and so was the wash-hand-stand. A tall strip of unframed mirror stood on the former, leaning against the wall; on the top left-hand side it had a broken corner, over which a lace handkerchief had been arranged.

At the foot of the mirror were some silver toilet articles and a _poudre de riz_ box with a faded pink satin puff resting on it. There were no flowers, no pictures, no photographs. My dressing-case stood open on a chair, as I had left it the night before, and my clothes were still hung up on the floor. I sighed.

The little sigh I gave echoed back to me across the room, causing me to turn hastily towards a screen which was placed down the room, dividing it. It was a dull pink screen with golden storks meandering across it, and it might or might not have come from j.a.pan, but seemed out of place in Mashonaland. It did not quite reach from wall to wall, and, to my astonishment, just beyond the top of it I could see Judy's face lying on a pillow. I had fallen asleep so swiftly the night before that I did not even know I was sharing the room with my sister-in-law.

She was in bed and still asleep. Her fair hair lay in two plaits down the folded sheet. Her lips were pale and slightly apart; her cheeks, faintly tinted, grew rosier towards the nostrils. She was still pretty, but she was losing her complexion, and the peevish lines I had noticed the night before showed more deeply round her babyish mouth. Her hands, resting before her on the quilt, had the calm, complacent look of hands that have grasped their fate and have got it safe. Her fingers were badly manicured, but her broad, gold wedding-ring shone with an a.s.sured, defiant glare.

She was a good deal changed from the Judy who had been the prettiest, daintiest girl in Wilts five or six years before. d.i.c.k's heart had been a house of many mansions until the hunting morn when he had first met Judy following the Duke of Beaufort's pack and had gone down before her grey eyes and pretty, appealing manners. Thereafter no more mansions in his heart, but only a chapel for adoration and prostration. Everything and every one else had gone by the board. I have seen that single-hearted devotion in husbands before, and always in the nicest kind of men; but I have noticed that it does not invariably make the marriage a wild success. The woman usually gets spoilt and selfish, and begins to think she is far too good for her husband. It is rather a sad sight then to see a fine man wasting his heart on some one who despises him for doing it.

For a year or two after their marriage it had been painful to those who loved him to watch d.i.c.k making ducks and drakes of his money and chances of a military career under the spell of his adoration for Judy. For her sake he resigned from his regiment when it was ordered abroad, and eventually left the army to have more time to be with her. For her sake he took a lovely house in Mayfair and lived with brilliant extravagance, throwing the dibs to the four winds as Aunt Betty (who has a respect for money) put it, until even his large income began to give out. But Judy (who, as the daughter of a poor baronet, had never been able to indulge her taste for the social life she adored) continued on her merry, expensive way until things got actually desperate with them, and one bright morning d.i.c.k was obliged to announce to her that unless he meant to live on his mother (which he didn't) they must pull stakes for some quiet little place in the country, where inducements to spend money would not be so pressing.

Judy was broken-hearted at the thought of going back to the life from which she hoped she had escaped for ever, but she consoled herself by choosing Surrey as her future home. In fact, she consoled herself so well that in a few months the financial position was worse than ever, and it really came at last to a question of d.i.c.k's taking the remains of his fortune to try for a fresh throw of the dice in some other country.

Africa was chosen and they departed, Judy weeping and reproaching every one but herself. d.i.c.k had bought an ostrich-farm ready stocked, in the Free State, and for a time all went well; Judy said she adored the life of riding and driving and they made many friends in the capital which was close at hand. Then suddenly the ostriches, afflicted by some mysterious malady, began to die by scores. In a few months poor d.i.c.k was thousands of pounds to the bad, and the horizon scowled once more.

Judy did her best to persuade him to let mother help him out of his difficulties, a course he had hitherto resisted with all his might, though my mother's heart and purse were always open to him. Judy wrote and begged me to use my influence with him, and I did, but while things were still unsettled my mother died suddenly, and almost directly afterwards came the American Bank crash, reducing us all to comparative poverty, and making poor d.i.c.k's horizon darker than ever.

But there was not much American respect for money in d.i.c.k. He was all Saurin and happy-go-lucky Celt, and I believe that except for Judy's sake he did not in the least mind being in deep waters. I gathered, too, that he was rather pleased if anything to break away from ostrich farming, which, he wrote me in confidence, was but a dull dog's life.

The next I heard was that he had left Judy in Cape Town, and joined the pioneers who were to open up Mr Rhodes's new country in the north.

Before many months Judy had joined him; and in love with the country and the men who had found it, he ventured the last of his capital in land near Salisbury. With the intention of making his permanent home there, he had started upon what promised to be a prosperous future in farming and horse-raising.

They had one little son, whom they had left in Durban, and who was to be brought up to them as soon as the trouble with the Matabele was finally adjusted.

I sighed once more as I looked at my own slim fingers. I had been too tired to take off my rings, and an opal and a diamond or two winked wickedly at me. I wondered if my hands would be like Judy's some day-- calm and complacent and badly manicured! Just because some good man would come along and admire them and kiss them and think them the most beautiful hands in the world, and thereafter fold them in his breast while he himself took the wheel and did all the guiding through stormy seas, and all the hard work on land of fighting and gripping and parrying for place and position and money! It seemed to me that it would be rather hard on the good man if one didn't keep the hands just as fair and alive and beautiful as when they first attracted him: and rather mean to let them grow plump and complacent and gripless and neglected.

Of course, d.i.c.k was my brother, my wild, gay-hearted brother, and the handsomest boy in Ireland, and Judy was only my sister-in-law. And of course, no one ever thinks their sister-in-law _quite_ nice enough for their brother. I wished to be quite just. Anyway, early morning reflections are always a mistake, so I gave them up.

I hopped softly out of bed, tipped up the canvas window, and peered out at the little towns.h.i.+p. Wattle-and-daub houses everywhere, some of them beehive shape, like kaffir huts, some of them barn-shape like the one I was in: but all with thatched roofs and some with verandahs, stuck here and there with apparent aimlessness, but not without a certain picturesque effect. Streets that were merely wide stretches of gra.s.s with a foot-path in the middle and wheel-ruts at the sides. A bush or a wild tree growing casually before a door. A porch made of packing-cases and clambered over by grenadilla, or a clematis-wreathed verandah, struck an individual note here and there. A plant with an enormous leaf and a floppy, sulphur-coloured flower seemed very popular and prolific.

I afterwards discovered it to be the ubiquitous pumpkin.

There were many waggons about, all of them piled up with things, as though ready for departure.

I rather especially noticed a square-built hut, the walls of which rose no higher than about three feet, and from thence were open to the high-pitched thatched roof, except for native mats let down here and there in narrow rolls like blinds. It was rather like a primitive j.a.panese tea-house, and I thought how lovely it must be to sleep there at nights with all the mats rolled up and the stars peeping in.

Evidently it belonged to a man, for just before its door sat a ring of black boys jabbering and cleaning a man's boots and a man's stirrups and other articles of riding-kit, whilst another boy was rubbing down a jolly chestnut mare with the same hissing noise grooms make at "home"

when they are grooming. At a second glance I recognised the handsome head, the long graceful flanks, and the white hoofs of "Belle." So her master was here, and lived in this glorified tea-house!

A little wave of gladness trembled through me, I knew not why. A good way off I could see the glint of galvanised-iron roofs--evidently the shops; and in the centre of the towns.h.i.+p was a big brisk building with a tall conning-tower rising from it, and a high-walled yard beyond. I recognised the post-office where the coach had drawn up the night before.

A dear little ridiculous, consequential place, I said to myself, and laughed with a heart as light as a feather, for the air that came in at the window was like champagne. Nevertheless, I still had post-cart ache, and decided that a day in bed would be the only real cure for my utter bone weariness. I slipped back amongst my pillows.

Judy suddenly woke up, yawned, looked at her hands, drew one of them up to carefully examine a spot on it, then let her eyes travel round the room until in the course of time they encountered me. Then she gave a great start and put up her hands to her hair.